Sunshine over Blyth

Saved on Halloween and by people who genuinely love this little football club, Blyth Spartans have work to do but a brighter future to look forward to.

They’ll have to wait a little while for the party to really get started. After all, Blyth Spartans don’t have a home match again until they play Matlock Town on the 16th November. But that sound of champagne corks popping combined with an enormous sigh of relief that you may be able to hear is probably coming from the Northumberland coast, where one of the most famous names in non-league football has been saved.

It has been a close call. A mass resignation of club backroom staff ultimately seems to have forced the issue, forcing the postponement of successive home matches in the Northern Premier League against Gainsborough Trinity and FC United of Manchester. This seems to have focused the resolve of all concerned, and just nine days after I was asking “Are we witnessing the death of one of non-league football's most famous names?”, it turned out the answer was, “Not today, Satan”.

And this isn’t any takeover, either. Blyth are to be reconstituted as a Community Interest Company (CIC) by a new consortium of owners, local businesspeople who include long-time sponsors of the club. It’s a sure sign—not far off as sure as you can get—that they have the well-being and ongoing existence of their club as their first priority, rather than a desire to flip and spin an asset.

In honesty, this was the most sensible option, though any fool knows that the most sensible option isn’t always the way in which business works. Blyth don’t own their Croft Park ground, so they’re effectively assetless and valueless as a business. But where they do have value is as an asset to their local community. In an increasingly atomised society, central meeting places where people can come together in an environment in which they all have this one thing in common—wanting their local football team to win a match—are valuable commodities for any community to have in these fractured times.

It is clear that there is much work to be done. It’s only been five and a half years since Blyth were finishing 6th in the National League North and getting knocked out of the play-offs for a place in the ‘Fifth Division’ on penalty kicks by Altrincham in the quarter-finals. The four full seasons since then saw them finish 21st (and getting a reprieve due to matters occurring elsewhere, despite only managing 23 points from 33 games before the season was curtailed), 19th twice and then finally getting relegated at the end of last season.

And this season hasn't seen much of an improvement. On the pitch, they’ve only won two out of twelve matches in the Premier Division of the Northern Premier League. They’re bottom of the table and looking up at the rest. But this is fixable. They have thirty league games still to play, and at this even at this stage of what has been a fairly disastrous season so far, they’re still only four points from safety.

They travel to fifth-placed Ilkeston Town in their next league match on Saturday afternoon and then travel to 19th-placed Warrington Rylands the following week. Win both of those matches and they could even be out of the relegation places by the time of the Matlock match. That may be at the more optimistic end of the spectrum of things that could happen before that game, but if supporters can’t feel optimistic at this moment in time, then when exactly can they?

There are certainly lessons to be taken from this. I’ve been highly critical of the club’s outgoing owner Irfan Liaquat, and not without reason. But I will at least add that he has done the decent thing by stepping aside relatively quickly, before serious long-term damage could be inflicted upon the club. Not as easy as it looks, is it, Irfan, this non-league football game? Perhaps start focusing on walking the walk and a little less on attempting to talk the talk in the future, eh?

And there is a lesson for supporters and club volunteers here, too. Your clubs need you just as much as you need them. If your club is being run badly and you are the guys who keep these matches on every Saturday afternoon, your withdrawal of labour has the power to be able to force any issues and sharpen the focus of everybody concerned. The Green Army supporters group and the consortium put together to save the club could only have so much influence through protest. On this occasion, direct action saved the day.

Finally, there may be a lesson to be learned here for any incoming regulator. The days of allowing non-league football clubs to fall prey to the wilder end of the world of wild west capitalism has to come to an end. Spare us the hungry-eyed ‘ambition’ of loud men in loud suits. Spare us the sight of money being thrown at a team in order to make league divisions effectively a waste of time for everyone else for a season. Let non-league football clubs be the cornerstones of their communities, and let this part of the game continue to be a bolthole for those of us who are sickened by the excesses, tired by the hyperbole, or even simply priced out of the upper end of the game.

Blyth Spartans will go on, and the fans saved the club with love. Let that be the lasting legacy of this bracing story. All’s well that ends well.