Hereford United, the bullish football club forever loved for their
gleeful 1972 FA Cup giant-killing of Newcastle
United, face a winding up petition on Monday that could bring 90 years
of longevity to a sad collapse. In financial difficulties for two years
before relegation from the Conference to the Southern League this summer
for a refusal to pay a £350,000 bond, it will the latest hearing for a
petition first issued in April for money owed to the former manager
Martin Foyle.
Under new owners, from east London, with patchy records who are
bitterly opposed and boycotted by much of the fanbase, the club has been
told that creditors’ patience is paper thin, and Her Majesty’s Revenue
is pushing for a winding up. Foyle, with whom a settlement was
previously reached, has joined this petition again after the club
defaulted on his payments. He told the
Observer that he does
not blame the owners, who have put money in to pay some of the bills and
pull together a team, but reserves his ire for the previous regime led
by the locally-born chairman David Keyte, under whom the club failed to
pay the manager, players and many others, amassing debts of £1.2m.
“Whatever the fans’ views,” Foyle said, “my issues aren’t with the new
people.”
That is not a perspective shared by many around Edgar Street, the
club’s home since it was founded by a merger in 1924, where matches are
now being shunned by many fans and the mood is disconsolate, rancorous
and, increasingly, toxic.
At the end of May, Keyte ceded ownership of the club for £2 to Tommy
Agombar, described as an entrepreneur and developer, from east London.
Supporters, who have forensically researched their new owners in ways
that were beyond fans’ groups in the pre-internet age, swiftly
discovered Agombar had a past conviction for lorry theft and had served
time in prison. That made him not “fit and proper” to own or be a
director of a football club under the Football Association rules, and
according to a speech in parliament by the local Conservative MP, Jesse Norman,
Agombar’s son, Tommy jr, who was banned by the Essex FA, and Philip
Gambrill, who had been subject to personal insolvency proceedings, were
similarly prohibited from being directors.
Ownership passed to Alpha Finance, described as dealers in
“distressed debt”. Stepping in as a director, and currently the most
public face of the club, came Andrew Lonsdale, a friend and advisor of
Agombar’s. In a long interview with the
Observer, Lonsdale
acknowledged that the information the fans found out about him is also
correct. Although he insists he and his partners have taken over
Hereford because of the club’s heritage and potential and that they
believe they can revive it, his record has only fed fans’ bleakest
nightmares.
The 50-year-old has worked in the haulage and construction industry
and, for 17 years, ran his local non-league club, Feltham FC. Many of
his companies have been dissolved over time; he went bankrupt in 2007
and was disqualified from being a company director from October 2006 for
six years. The grim fate of the Feltham Arena, the former home of
Feltham FC, is the one that most chills fans of Hereford because there
is a property development opportunity at each end of Edgar Street.
Feltham moved out, with the intention to build a new stadium on the
site, and Lonsdale, whose company was to carry out works, was given
permission to import 15,692m³ of soil on to the ground.
After years in which a procession of lorries dumped rubble to the
bitter complaints of neighbours, the London borough of Hounslow mounted
an investigation. Its task force found that 73,485m³ of soil and rubble
had been dumped, five times more than permitted. The council report said
Lonsdale had “a clear conflict of interest” between his position at the
club and his involvement in the company paid to do the work. They did
not rule out that Lonsdale had made significant money from his company
being paid by other construction firms to dump their excavated waste,
although Lonsdale maintains that the delays and other costs meant he
lost money on the saga. No new stadium was built, and the site stood as a
derelict dumping ground for years, with the club merged with Bedfont.
In the course of its investigations, Hounslow found that Lonsdale
had, in 2008, been convicted of illegally dumping 600 lorry loads of
waste on green belt land within South Bucks district council. Lonsdale
says the FA were made aware of that conviction but has cleared him to be
a director of Hereford under its owners and directors test, something
the FA confirmed, indicating the conviction is considered spent under
its rules.
For the campaigning
Save Edgar Street website, and the
Hereford United Supporters Trust,
this record does not inspire confidence in Lonsdale, Agombar and their
associates from whom Lonsdale said they are seeking to raise the
necessary investment in time for Monday and continue in charge of the
club.
The volume of rancour increased this week with the public airing of
threatening and abusive voicemails left on the telephone of a supporter
who had texted a rude message. Lonsdale accepted the voicemails were
from an associate of theirs who, he said, is no longer involved, but
emphatically insisted it was not Agombar. The messages were
“disgraceful,” Lonsdale accepted, saying he did not condone them, but
argued that he, Agombar and their partners are being subjected to an
excessive level of abuse and suspicion on some messageboards.
Lonsdale says they have invested a significant sum and are seeking to
raise more to fend off the petition because they believe they can
restore Hereford to the Football League, partly by identifying promising
players who can be sold on. “We are being painted as the bad guys,” he
said, “but we took the club over for £2, immediately faced a winding up
petition, and have put a small fortune into the club to keep it going.
“If we had raped and pillaged the club, sold the assets, I would hold
my hands up, but we have done the opposite; we’ve put money in,
borrowed money, and taken on a huge task.”
Martin Watson, the vice-chair of HUST and a lifelong fan who has put
money into the club in the past, said there is too little trust in the
owners and if the club goes bust, the trust hopes to be involved in
resurrecting it, still playing at Edgar Street. “Many supporters believe
the club died at the end of last season. They don’t recognise this
season’s Hereford United as the one they followed,” he said.
All of which is a world of heartbreak from
Ronnie Radford’s 35-yard screamer against Newcastle in 1972, and the pitch invasion by hordes of ecstatic boys in parkas that, for 42 years, has always brought a smile to the faces of football lovers.