Bath Chronicle

League suspended amid cash flow crisis

- Mark Stillman sport@bathchron.co.uk

Bath City face at least another week without a match as the National League South and North divisions have suspended their fixtures during a cash flow crisis.

The decision was made on Friday, January 22 with immediate effect, cancelling City’s away match at Braintree Town last Saturday and Tuesday night’s fixture with Welling United at Twerton Park.

Clubs were asked to vote for their preferred option from the following three on Wednesday 20 January: Taking on long term low-interest loans with initial payment holidays; The National League takes on the loan and gives clubs grants, with future League central payments to clubs reduced; Suspend the season.

“Of the three suggestion­s we were in favour of the suspension,” confirmed Bath City Football Club chairman Paul Williams when speaking to the radiobath.com Sports Show last Saturday. “In my email to the league I suggested it could be a bit longer than two weeks.

“It’s been the most difficult season anyone could have envisaged. No-one knew what was going to happen and how it would pan out.

“We had a board meeting last Wednesday [20 January] and were unanimous in saying we didn’t want to borrow any more money.”

Representa­tives of Concord Rangers, Havant & Waterloovi­lle and Slough Town confirmed that they would refuse to play fixtures on Saturday before the suspension was invoked.

The National League informed its 66 clubs before the season’s start that £10m worth of funding from the National Lottery promotiona­l fund would be available between October and December, brokered by the DCMS. Clubs were under the impression that funding would continue while crowds were not able to attend matches.

On Wednesday, the three options above were put to clubs for the next £11m of funding from the Winter Survival Fund (WSF).

“Towards the end of November, an announceme­nt was made that further funding would come through the WSF,” said Mr Williams. “We then heard nothing for 6-7 weeks. There was a suggestion that a small proportion would be grants but 80 per cent of it would be in loans which started to frighten clubs because it’s a lot of borrowed money. From the league meeting it became clear from a majority of clubs that they don’t want to borrow it.

“If this two-week window doesn’t resolve the funding issues with the FA and DCMS, I believe a vote will be put to the clubs to ask do you want to continue or end the season.

“If you asked me to vote on it now, our vote would be to end the season.”

City have played 16 matches behind closed doors, with 11 of them at Twerton Park. The last three away matches were in front of restricted crowds before the third UK lockdown.

“If we had crowds coming in and the bars open we’d have income to pay our expenses,” Mr Williams explained to radiobath.com. “With no income it’s very difficult for any organisati­on to operate.

“We’ve reduced our losses the last two years, we might have even broken even this year if there was no Covid situation.

“We’re very fortunate to have a great support base that raised a lot of money and we sold more season tickets than last season, unfortunat­ely none of those supporters have been able to watch a game yet.

“Our sponsors have been excellent this year, funding advertisin­g at the club because they want to support us.

“The government have been very generous with the furlough scheme as well, but without the grant funding we’ve had of £90,000 we wouldn’t have been able to get this far forward.

“As soon as we can get fans back into Twerton Park the place will be great again.”

Mr Williams highlighte­d the support for the club as ‘amazing,’ using the same praise for the management and playing staff.

“The club is moving forward well,” he told radiobath.com. “We have made great strides over the last two or three years to make the club more financiall­y sound.

“We need to look at the redevelopm­ent at some point of the near future. That’ll secure the long-term future of the club and make it more sustainabl­e.

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that we have to look at the future and make sure there is a club still in existence after all this.”

A DCMS spokespers­on told The Non-league Paper last week: “It is untrue to suggest funding to the National League was ever promised as all grants and they have been unable to substantia­te this claim.

“If any individual Step 1 and 2 National League club can demonstrat­e it is in critical need of support and would be unable to repay a loan, grant applicatio­ns will be assessed on a case by case crisis.

“This will of course be through the same rigorous process that we apply for other sports.”

 ??  ?? Alex Fletcher was named man of the match during his debut last week for Bath City
Alex Fletcher was named man of the match during his debut last week for Bath City

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom