RUSHDEN AND DIAMONDS SEEMINGLY CAME OUT OF NOWHERE TO BECOME A FOOTBALL LEAGUE TEAM AROUND THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM. A DECADE LATER THEY WERE GONE, BUT NOT FOREVER, AS PETER KENNY JONES EXPLAINS.
When Rushden & Diamonds were dissolved in 2011, it appeared that the club would never return. Its history is built upon amalgamations and extinctions. In 1992 Rushden Town and Irthlingborough Diamonds were separated by less than five miles, yet they became combined through the bigger aspirations of Dr. Martens owner, Max Griggs. Financial misadventure meant that they were forced into administration in 2011 from which they never recovered. Their successor, AFC Rushden & Diamonds, were born soon after and now exist as a supporter owned club.
It would be easier to tackle this story in chronological order, starting with Rushden Town. The Russians were founded in 1889 and played mostly in the United Counites League (UCL). They stayed in the UCL until they gained promotion to the Southern League Premiership (6th tier of the English football pyramid) in 1990. They were demoted from the Premiership despite finishing six places above the relegation places, due to their inadequate ground which no longer met league requirements. Their inability to afford the upkeep of their ground jeopardised their future.
As for Irthlingborough Diamonds, they were founded nearly sixty years after Rushden, in 1946. They were originally an under-18 side inspired by Moscow Dynamo. They soon graduated to semi-pro level in the UCL, and in 1969 opened their own ground on the site of Hayden Park, the eventual home of Rushden & Diamonds FC. In the early 1990s, with crowds and budgets shrinking, chairman Tony Jones wanted out, on the condition that the Diamonds lived on. Max Griggs agreed to take over the club.
Rushden were playing a higher standard of football with a passionate fan base, but their infrastructure was failing them. Irthlingborough were a well-run team with an impressive stadium and an ambitious new owner. A merger seemed to be advantageous for both clubs. They were only attracting a couple of hundred fans each but the combination of the two clubs paved the way for a larger more committed support base, backed by Griggs’ money. This proved to be a recipe for success and Rushden & Diamonds were soon in the Football League.
Attention must now turn to the spearhead of this amalgamation, Dr Martens tycoon Max Griggs. When he merged Rushden with Diamonds it was a bold move. He was formally on the board at Northampton Town and said he “didn't see the point of putting a few million into a team rather than a club” and orchestrated the creation of Rushden & Diamonds. The £20 million he pumped into the club put them streets ahead of their immediate competitors which caused plenty of raised eyebrows. Derek Lowbridge, a former UCL player for AFC Long Buckby who played against the Diamonds, recalls that some questioned the legitimacy of this new club. Griggs was accused of having circumnavigated some of the FA rules over the ownership and merging of two clubs and the deal appeared “a little murky”. This was due to “the speed and secondly the ease” that his plan came together. Lowbridge claimed that teams within the league were “bemused that this financial giant of a club suddenly appeared in our midst”.
Defending his spending, Griggs claimed “We may have spent £20million creating all this but in a way we've just swapped money for assets. We've still got the land, a 70-acre site, so people who think we've just poured money into a non-League team are missing the point. You create things around the club to offset the costs”. He was also confident that this injection of money would lead to success by saying Diamonds would “be in the League by the end of the century”. Griggs did eventually make good on his prediction; Rushden & Diamonds completed a double promotion to climb into Division Three (4th tier), in 2001.
Criticism from opposition fans towards Griggs are certainly not shared by most Diamonds supporters. One lifelong fan, Alex Jefferies, provided his opinions on the role of their influential owner. “I’ll be forever thankful for Max, if it wasn’t for him I’d be an armchair Premier League fan. All in all, I love the bloke and will always thank him when I see him”. Griggs’ support lifted the club to heights that the fans could never have dreamed of, but the subsequent fall from grace cannot be ignored.
In 2005, Griggs gave Rushden & Diamonds to its supporters for the sum of £1. Within six years the club were in administration and Griggs must take some blame for this.
Jefferies believes Griggs saw the club as “his play thing, and he pulled out when he got bored”. This argument has weight. Griggs attempted to support the ownership change and highlighted his generosity in the deal, which included ‘a new stadium, conference centre, car parks, restaurant and bar, two training pitches and, of course, the players’. Dr Martens went on to say that “The debt-free handover of a club to a supporters' trust in this way is unprecedented in modern British football history and stems from the love held for the club by Max Griggs”.
There was no reason for Griggs to feel obliged to be at the club. He carried them to the Football League and perhaps felt his time had come to an end. He achieved his goal and felt it time to step down. Despite the club being wealthy in terms of infrastructure, they were losing money and the responsibility now lay with the Supporters’ Trust. The Trust was set up to look after the club for years to come but this was not how it transpired.
Helen Thompson was appointed chairwoman to aid the Supporters’ Trust, whom it was said that ‘if you cut her open, she would bleed Diamonds’. However, some supporters claim this was a ‘load of old bollocks, and I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire’. These feelings display how terrible things got for the Diamonds and how quickly it happened. The club was not sustainable, and financing was not aided by falling attendances.
The season following the Supporters’ Trust takeover, Diamonds were relegated back to the Conference and performances off the pitch were poor too. Relegation left a group of players on Football League wages entering the Conference, an immediate financial issue for the Trust. Keith Cousins and Colin Hill took over the club in 2006 for £500,000, relinquishing the power of the Supporters’ Trust, less than a year after they had taken control. Cousins promised to support the club, having acquired £6 million worth of land for £500,000. This take over ended the involvement of that incarnation of the Supporters’ Trust. The club then went through six managers in five years whilst battling with their finances, and attendances in the 2008-09 season fell to less than half of what they were in the Football League era.
Continued problems with cash meant influential players like Lee Tomlin, Mark Byrne, and Paul Terry left the club and the 2010-11 season was dominated by off-field matters. Goalkeeper Dale Roberts tragically committed suicide, leading to his number one shirt being retired. Cousins and Hill sold the club on again, apparently debt free, to new owners Liam Beasant and Gary Calder. The club were faced with a transfer embargo as well as players threatening to refuse to play over unpaid wages. With the club spiralling out of control, that season proved to be their last, they were not permitted to join the Conference as they could not guarantee they could play all their fixtures for the 2011-12 season. In the end, the club had debts somewhere between £750,000 to £2million, and many creditors have still not been repaid in full. They were given two weeks to pay £750,000 or face administration. Consequently, in July 2011, Rushden & Diamonds FC were extinct.
Many from within the club still love and appreciate all the money and work that Griggs put in to realising his lofty ambitions. Current Vice-Chairman Jon Ward said he believed “everything he did, he did it with a genuine belief that it was the right thing to do. We wouldn’t be here doing what we’re doing today if it wasn’t for him, he’ll be highly regarded by everyone within the club long into the future”. As an outsider looking in, it appears that he could have done more to oversee the club was run properly after he left. Within a year of his sale, the Supporters’ Trust were defunct. He appeared to get bored, realise the club was losing money and moved on quickly. He still sometimes watches Diamonds play with his son and clearly loves the club, he brought them the greatest period in their history and is worshiped by many fans. However, he does have to shoulder a considerable amount of blame for the collapse of the club and could have provided more aid for the Supporters’ Trust.
The players all left, and Nene Park was taken over by rivals, Kettering Town. The club was dead, yet the beating heart remained. The supporters did not give up and announced their desire to create a fan-owned club, AFC Rushden & Diamonds, from the ashes. Jon Ward stated that the original idea for the new project was inspired by the success of AFC Wimbledon. The SaveRDFC fund was set up to help the old club, and this money was used to help build the new one. They provided hope for the phoenix club, their website states: “a small group of the club’s supporters decided to take it upon themselves to try and ensure that those memories survived, that the friendships built up during that period could continue and prosper, and that the name Rushden & Diamonds would not be condemned to the footballing annals of yesteryear”.
The club’s resurrection was a phenomenal display of the love the fans had for their club. Through working with Supporters Direct, which operates to ‘help supporters gain influence in the running and ownership of their club’, the members of the club were now at the helm. They work under the slogan ‘One fan, one vote, one community, one club’. This ethos will hope to ensure the club is run properly and not face the turmoil they had in their previous incarnation. This membership scheme replaced the Supporters’ Trust and runs as a community benefit society, from around 400 original member there are about 860 today.
The turnover from extinct club to a new one was very speedy. The old side played their last game in April 2011, only three months later AFC Rushden & Diamonds were playing their first game. Due to registration issues, the first season was played as an under-18 team. Gates still reached 500, unheard of for any youth side across the country. The following season, the first senior team entered the UCL, and six years on they’re on course for their third promotion.
One of the issues that faced the phoenix club was the inexperience of the new board. As the reformed hierarchy of the club only contained supporters, it meant that the board had no prior experience of running a football club. Jon Ward stated “that was possibly the biggest challenge. From organising line marking, to negotiating with players and managers, to stadium safety. All of that stuff is something that we’ve all had to learn and that was the biggest initial challenge”.
All within the club must look forward and ask what they can achieve in the future. In many respects, they have already achieved what they set out to do. They are an operating team again; the rest is superfluous. To most supporters that is enough, Alex Jefferies said “We have a hardcore of 400 or so fans, who will be there no matter what level we play at. Of course, our aim is to play as high as sustainably possible”. This is seconded by their Vice-Chairman, his key line was ‘sustainable existing’, he said “in our constitution it’s set out that we want to provide sustainable football at the highest level possible”. Of course, the aspiration will be to return to the Football League but, as Jon Ward says, “going as far as we can as long as its sustainable is the important thing”.
They no longer play in their own stadium, instead share with Rushden & Higham United. This, according to Jon Ward, has been the biggest struggle; “having a nomadic existence has proved the biggest issue”. The dream is to have their own stadium as and when they can afford it, a further example of sensible ownership. All members meet regularly at Members’ Forums where they are ‘invited to submit any items they’d like to be put on the agenda’. The most recent vote being the 96% in favour of a new ground-share.
AFC Rushden & Diamonds have seen relative success since their birth. They have won seven trophies in seven years. The club are in a similar position to 1992, they have been on a rollercoaster since then but are the perfect illustration of the benefits of fan-owned clubs. When asking about the possibility of a new multi-million-pound owner, Jon Ward said “the way our constitution is, someone cannot take all the shares. Someone can come and invest some money in the club, but they would still only be one member, one vote”.
AFC Rushden & Diamonds are a well-run club with the best chairmen in their history – their own supporters. Hopefully for the Diamonds fans, one day they will return to the Football League. If that day comes they owe it all to the supporters.
It seems fitting to end with Jon Ward’s thoughts on where the club would be in ten years’ time “The biggest thing is sustainability. I would hope that within ten years we would have our own ground somewhere around the Rushden area. The biggest thing is that there is a club and that it is sustainable.”
A special thanks to: Jon Ward – AFC Rushden & Diamonds Vice-Chairman Alex Jefferies – Life-long Rushden & Diamonds Supporter Derek Lowbridge – Former player for AFC Long Buckby
PETER KENNY JONES - @PeterKennyJones
https://peterkj.wixsite.com/football-historian
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