Tag: Kettering Town

There sometimes comes a point at which a football club in trouble passes beyond parody and into what we might at a cursory glance even consider to be satire. That moment, we would contend, came yesterday morning for Kettering Town Football Club when several of the clubs players, who had requested a meeting with the clubs owners over – and there is more of a hint of inevitability about this – unpaid wages, found themselves involved in a chase reminiscent of a sketch from The Benny Hill Show in an attempt to get answers about their non-payment in a piece of behaviour from those running the club which not only seems to demonstrate a level of disrespect for their players which surely crosses a line into being no more than outright contempt. This, however, is Kettering Town, a club at which, for the senior management at least, “doing the right thing” seems to have become a thing of the past quite a while ago. After the clubs misguided move to Nene Park during the summer of 2011, a subsequent two division relegation into the Southern League Premier Division at the end of last season, the involvement and subsequent banning from all football of George Rolls, and a ten point deduction from their new league for entering into administration and an announcement that even though they had only just declared...

Their brave new world wasn’t meant to turn out like this. When Kettering Town moved out of their Rockingham Road ground to the then recently vacated Nene Park, the former home of near rivals Rushden & Diamonds, the aim was surely for a place in the Football League. Last night, however, the club played its first home match of the season in the Premier Division of the Southern League in front of a little under 600 supporters and was beaten by two goals to one by Hemel Hempstead Town. Relegated at the end of last season and subsequently demoted, following a goalless draw at Weymouth at the weekend, Kettering Town now sit at the foot of the league table with nine points of their ten point deduction for entering into administration during the summer still to make up, and judging by anecdotal reports of last nights match that doesn’t look like happening any time soon. As has become commonplace at this club over much of the last year or so, politicking has continued to be the main source of the interest within the club over the last couple of weeks. The involvement of former Weymouth and Cambridge United owner George Rolls came to an abrupt end earlier this summer when Rolls was banned from any involvement in football for five years over multiple of breaches of Football Association rules...

Farewell for now, then, George. At six o’clock this evening, the Football Association issued a statement confirming that George Rolls, the former chairman of Cambridge United and Weymouth, latterly of Kettering Town, had been found guilty of over 3,000 charges of their rules relating to betting, along with a small number of charges of “Misconduct relating to his conduct during the investigation of the alleged breaches of the Betting rules.” The punishment for his misdemeanors was strong, to say the least. Rolls has been banned from any involvement in football for five years, fined £10,000 and warned about his future conduct. The charges related to betting irregularities between the years 2007-2010, when he was on the board of Cambridge United and also associated with Weymouth FC, although it should be pointed out that both of these clubs have already been advised by the FA that these charges were personal to Rolls and that their clubs would not face investigation regarding them. He has been left with no option but to leave Kettering Town with immediate effect and, with the FA having issued a thinly-veiled warning that this ban would include any influence, management and administration in football – which would seem to hint at concerns over the idea of him getting involved in some form of shadow directorship – it seems that his involvement in the game may actually have come...

Quietly and without comment from the club concerned, a message appeared on the Football Associations website earlier today which confirmed a most curious piece of news. George Rolls, the acting chairman of Kettering Town FC – and the phrase “acting chairman” is one that we use with caution – has been charged by the Football Association with regard to their rules regarding Misconduct and Betting. The FAs statement on the subject is as terse as such messages come, but the devil may be in the detail of the statement released on the FAs website. The FA has charged Mr George Rolls in relation to alleged breaches of its rules governing Misconduct and Betting. Mr Rolls has been charged with the following offences: Three breaches of FA Rule E3 – Misconduct relating to his conduct during the investigation of the alleged breaches of the Betting rules 974 breaches of FA Rule E8(a) – Betting – during the 2007/8 season 1,707 breaches of FA Rule E8(a) – Betting – during the 2008/9 season 392 breaches of FA Rule E8(a) – Betting – during the 2009/10 season Mr Rolls has denied the charges which will be dealt with by an independent Regulatory Commission on 4 July. It is, of course, hardly our place to comment upon whether these charges are something that George Rolls is actually guilty of, although is acceptable to...

One of the great conceits of recent years in terms of the way that football clubs are run has been that there is a greater degree of transparency in the way that football clubs are run. There are examples of transparency within the game which are extremely impressive – consider, for example, the decision of Lewes FC of the Ryman League Premier Division to publish their annual accounts online – but, on the whole, this new air of openness often feels like little more than a veneer of democracy in action while business carries on very much as usual otherwise. Clubs continue to live beyond their means, make bafflingly bad business decisions and then walk away from the all too predictable results of their mismanagement, whilst shaking their heads and muttering, “But what else could we do?”, as if their behaviour as businesses is as natural and inevitable as the passing of the four seasons. So it was that last night, for the second year in a row, the supporters of Kettering Town found themselves in a public meeting after the final whistle had blown on their season. Last year, Imraan Ladak was polling supporters over whether the club should leave its Rockingham Road home and decamp eight miles away to Nene Park, the former home of the late Rushden & Diamonds FC. The results of that evening became...