Scandal that 153 years of history counts for nothing

1866. Butch Cassidy was born, the Fire Brigade was founded, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and WG Grace made 224 not out against Surrey.

Meanwhile, in an industrial corner of Lancashire, the members of Swinton Cricket Club decided to take up an athletic winter sport to keep fit. They had an annual game against the Lancashire Rifle Volunteers, but mainly played among themselves. In 1871, they joined the Rugby Football Union as Swinton and Pendlebury FC. The Football League was still 17 years away from its first season at this time.

In 1873, Swinton and Pendlebury found a new ground and began changing in a local pub, The White Lion. They became known as the Lions, which has been used ever since. And it hasn’t always been plain sailing.

Swinton — the Pendlebury soon disappeared — went three years unbeaten in the 1870s and were still considered the strongest team in the north west a decade later.

A initial reluctance to join the newly-formed Northern Rugby Football Union — the precursor to the rugby league — led to the first of many financial challenges that continue to this day.

Swinton have won six league titles, the last in 1964, and three challenge cups, most recently in 1928, but have struggled in the modern era, dropping as far as the third tier. What cannot be taken away from them, however, is their history. Until now.

On September 5, 2017, a former director of Leigh Centurions, Andy Mazey, announced that he would be Swinton’s new chairman. Mazey owns the SR Waite Group, a leading firm of electrical contractors and business service managers based in the heart of rugby league country. His board included Tony Sheridan, former brand manager of Manchester United. And, this year, Mazey

revealed his big idea to guarantee the club’s future: this was to kill Swinton.

In its place, Manchester Lions, a club name with greater brand appeal. Who, after all, knows where Swinton is? Manchester, however — that is different.

Maybe Mazey thought he could piggy-back on the popularity of the local football clubs. Maybe he thought Manchester Lions, too, could tap into lucrative new markets, or at least achieve association with Manchester as a host city of the 2021 Rugby League World Cup.

The problem is, however, that people who love Swinton rugby league tend to come from, well, Swinton, or most certainly its parameters. Swinton might be a town in Greater Manchester, but its metropolitan borough is Salford. There is an authenticity about Swinton that Manchester Lions does not replicate.

Manchester Lions sounds as if it came out of a marketing meeting courtesy of a sporting brand manager, and probably did. Swinton sounds like 1866. It speaks of history and tradition, of sons and fathers and grandfathers passing on their commitment. And even if the club itself has been without a real home in three decades, that hardship is part of the identity, too.

It is tough following Swinton and there is a certain pride in this. Not everybody wants to be part of a new and shiny marketing man’s dream.

Ironically, attempting to change Swinton’s name has put the club in the news more than becoming Manchester Lions ever would. The local reaction has been so savagely negative that Mazey and his board — bar one member — have resigned. Mazey says his car was stolen and he received threatening messages. ‘You’ve nicked Swinton, now someone’s nicked your car,’ read one.

He needed protection to watch a recent home game with Sheffield and says the messages on social media became particularly abusive. ‘What these people don’t understand is there were times when the club was four or five grand short of wages and I made sure they could always be met,’ he said.

Actually, they probably do understand that. Nobody is trying to justify threats, theft or abuse, but if any group of people understand the shoestring running of Swinton it is probably the supporters who have done without a proper home game since 1992 and have seen the club

rise and fall through divisions in varying states of disarray throughout that time.

What they won’t understand is why anyone would want to save Swinton one day and extinguish its very name the next. Just as Hull City fans couldn’t understand why an otherwise supportive owner would wish to make them Hull tigers and no amount of investment from Vincent tan at Cardiff City could justify changing the shirt from blue to red.

the name and the colours are the soul of any club. Fans like the badge and the ground, too, but accept change if they can anticipate improvement. the name, however, is sacred. the aspect of milton Keynes Dons that fans of AFC Wimbledon loathe most is the appropriation of Dons.

milton Keynes are not the Dons. In England, Wimbledon are the true and only Dons. It was their name, and milton Keynes stole it. Just as Swinton, not manchester, are rugby league’s Lions.

all of the football clubs that have gone to the wall in recent years have reformed in lower divisions, but kept their name. Hereford United became Hereford FC, Chester City became Chester FC, aldershot FC became aldershot town. Bury will endure, too, eventually. maybe as Bury town, or AFC Bury, to signify the new dawn. yet Bury they will remain.

‘ manchester Lions Est. Swinton 1866’ read the surround of the proposed new badge, an attempt at compromise that fell on deaf ears. the supporters trust have been asked to take the club forward, with a single director, Stephen Wild, remaining in an interim position to ensure a smooth takeover.

and this is sad. the abuse is sad, the resignations are sad, it is sad indeed that the board did not include supporters in their plans from an earlier date, to avoid this turmoil.

yet 153 years of history is not a matter of brand identity. It is life, and soul, and that is something far greater.