Chesterfield FC - a lesson from history
Jan 1, 2024 21:48:57 GMT
Roy of the Rovers, bucky, and 5 more like this
Post by rab on Jan 1, 2024 21:48:57 GMT
Here’s an old article relating to Chesterfield FC, which is nevertheless very interesting given recent events at our club.
www.theguardian.com/football/2005/sep/28/chesterfield
Former Rovers keeper Jim Brown, who was Chesterfield’s commercial manager at the time, played a big part in the proceedings.
A summary of the article is:
"Darren Brown, who took over Chesterfield Football Club in the summer of 2000 promising to make the 134-year-old stalwart part of his sporting empire, has been sentenced to four years in prison for emptying the club of cash and driving it to the edge of ruin.
Norton Lea [the previous Chairman] had agreed to sell Brown the club for £1.2m, payable in instalments. Brown had made a £384,000 downpayment, but £399,000 had gone out of the club to Brown's company.
In March 2001 Brown transferred the Chesterfield shares to an associate, Andrew Cooke. Cooke made contact with the supporters trust, the Chesterfield Football Supporters Society….and offered the now insolvent club to the trust. They bought it to save it, discovered the ground had been hocked to guarantee a loan and that there were debts of £2m, including £439,000 paid out as a loan to Brown's UK Sports Group.
Brown pleaded guilty to two charges of fraudulent trading, to having taken £800,000 out of Chesterfield for his own purposes - to repay people who had lent him the money for the first instalment to Lea….and also to live in style. He had used club money to pay a £55,000 deposit on a smart new house, ordered a Mercedes, Land Rover and BMW club company cars for his personal use.
To nobody's great surprise now, it turns out that Brown had no money…..he talked his way into buying Chesterfield with borrowed money [and] emptied the club of its cash to repay his own creditors.
Chesterfield's loyal core of supporters have since dragged the club towards a more wholesome future....the principle that football clubs should be owned collectively by supporters, not by individual businessmen, could hardly have been bolstered with more graphic evidence".
www.theguardian.com/football/2005/sep/28/chesterfield
Former Rovers keeper Jim Brown, who was Chesterfield’s commercial manager at the time, played a big part in the proceedings.
A summary of the article is:
"Darren Brown, who took over Chesterfield Football Club in the summer of 2000 promising to make the 134-year-old stalwart part of his sporting empire, has been sentenced to four years in prison for emptying the club of cash and driving it to the edge of ruin.
Norton Lea [the previous Chairman] had agreed to sell Brown the club for £1.2m, payable in instalments. Brown had made a £384,000 downpayment, but £399,000 had gone out of the club to Brown's company.
In March 2001 Brown transferred the Chesterfield shares to an associate, Andrew Cooke. Cooke made contact with the supporters trust, the Chesterfield Football Supporters Society….and offered the now insolvent club to the trust. They bought it to save it, discovered the ground had been hocked to guarantee a loan and that there were debts of £2m, including £439,000 paid out as a loan to Brown's UK Sports Group.
Brown pleaded guilty to two charges of fraudulent trading, to having taken £800,000 out of Chesterfield for his own purposes - to repay people who had lent him the money for the first instalment to Lea….and also to live in style. He had used club money to pay a £55,000 deposit on a smart new house, ordered a Mercedes, Land Rover and BMW club company cars for his personal use.
To nobody's great surprise now, it turns out that Brown had no money…..he talked his way into buying Chesterfield with borrowed money [and] emptied the club of its cash to repay his own creditors.
Chesterfield's loyal core of supporters have since dragged the club towards a more wholesome future....the principle that football clubs should be owned collectively by supporters, not by individual businessmen, could hardly have been bolstered with more graphic evidence".
