Hereford United: How It Came to This

On Tuesday 10 June 2014, at 11 a.m., Hereford United were expelled from the Football Conference. After a season of unpaid wages, winding-up orders and a dramatic final-day survival, the club had failed to satisfy the league’s financial requirements. The decision, while expected by many, confirmed the catastrophic result of years of decline.

The club was sold for two pounds. That was the price paid by new owner Tommy Agombar to chairman David Keyte, reportedly because Agombar did not have change for the Supporter’s Trust’s £1 offer. That deal, however, came with conditions Keyte was unwilling to accept, namely the writing off of board loans. The sale to Agombar, a man who once served time for lorry theft, has set off alarm bells among supporters, who fear the club’s only real assets - the leases on its Edgar Street ground - are now the primary target for development.

The Long Slide

Hereford’s problems did not begin this season. The seeds were sown during the latter years of Graham Turner’s long tenure. Turner had rescued the club from a financial crisis in 1998, slowly building a competitive Conference side through shrewd cost control and an eye for talent. He delivered a return to the Football League in 2006 and a second promotion to League One in 2008. But his focus on the pitch came at a cost to the club’s infrastructure; facilities at Edgar Street were left to decay, and a burnt-out social club was deemed too expensive to repair. By the end of his time, Turner seemed downbeat, and after a poor season in League One and a failed experiment with manager John Trewick, he put the profitable, if neglected, club up for sale.

The arrival of local businessman David Keyte and journalist Tim Russon in 2010 was met with optimism. That mood quickly soured. Their first managerial appointment, Simon Davey, lasted just ten games but left behind a squad of inadequate players on long contracts. His successor Jamie Pitman kept the club up, but was then handed a two-year deal with no release clause, an expensive mistake that was repeated when he was eventually fired in March 2012. By then, the club was paying Pitman, his generously compensated advisor Gary Peters - with whom he was not on speaking terms - and a new manager, Richard O’Kelly. Despite O’Kelly’s best efforts, Hereford were relegated back to the Conference.

The financial consequences were immediate. Players on multi-year deals had no relegation clauses, strangling the budget. The new manager, Martin Foyle, operated under a chairman who budgeted for a £360,000 loss before a ball was kicked and whose cash injections had become loans against the club. Tax deadlines were missed, and fans were repeatedly called upon to raise money to stave off HMRC winding-up orders.

A Club Betrayed

By early 2014, Keyte had stopped paying players and staff. Morale collapsed. Foyle, who had won a manager of the month award in January, was dismissed in March after a dreadful run of form. Youth team coach Peter Beadle stepped in and, against all odds, guided the unpaid squad to safety on the final day of the season. An 88th-minute winner against Aldershot, combined with a late Salisbury equaliser against Chester, secured Hereford’s Conference status.

Or so it seemed.

Keyte hailed the escape as a “platform to build on” before heading to his second home in Barbados. He offered Beadle no thanks and no discussion about the manager’s job, leaving him to depart for Sutton United. Keyte then refused a credible takeover offer from the Hereford United Supporters Trust, which had pledges in place to pay off football creditors. Instead, he sold to Agombar, a man with a questionable past and, it appears, insufficient funds to run a football club.

An Uncertain Future

Agombar’s promises to pay creditors proved empty. The Conference board, unimpressed, demanded a £350,000 bond to secure the club’s place in the league. The deadline passed, and Hereford were expelled. Now, the new regime’s motives are under scrutiny. Agombar has already asked the council to reassign ground leases to one of his businesses, fuelling fears of asset stripping. His associate, Mark Ellis, has been presented as a coach with links to Arsenal and West Ham, though little evidence supports his claims.

The human cost is stark. Long-serving staff like media officer Jamie Griffiths and webmaster Mark Farmer have resigned after going unpaid for months, the latter facing eviction from his home. They are the people who represent the heart of a club like Hereford, but they felt they could not continue under the new regime. Supporters are now split, with many calling for a boycott of Edgar Street to force the owners out, even if it means the club must be reborn as a phoenix entity. The local MP, Jesse Norman, is pushing the FA to investigate. As of today, no one knows which league, if any, will accept Hereford United for the coming season.