Northwich Victoria: A Summer of Rancour and Discontent

Exile to Stafford

The deal was as bizarre as it was desperate. Northwich Victoria, a club without a home, would ground-share with Stafford Rangers for the coming season, forcing any remaining loyal supporters into a round trip of more than eighty miles. This was just one indignity in a summer that has seen the club evicted, relegated, and stripped of its dignity. For a club just two years shy of its 140th anniversary, the end feels closer than ever before.

The current chapter of this sorry tale began with the collapse of a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA). Having been turfed out of The Victoria Stadium, their home for six seasons, after failing to purchase it from the liquidators of the previous owner’s company, Beaconnett, the club was then barred from the Northern Premier League play-offs. An FA-imposed relegation followed, punishment for the failed CVA and issues with the transfer of membership to the new company under owner Jim Rushe.

While Europe enjoyed the continental championships, Northwich fans were left to worry about simple survival. In May, over one hundred members of the Northwich Victoria Supporters Trust signed an open letter to Rushe, demanding answers about the CVA, the loss of their stadium, and the absurd groundshare plan.

A Fractured Support

As the club’s owner scrambled for a home, the club itself began to disintegrate. Manager Andy Preece left for Welsh Premier League side Airbus UK, and six players soon followed him across the border. Former Wolves striker Andy Mutch has been brought in as his replacement, but he inherits a shell of a club with a deeply uncertain future.

Rushe’s attempts to find a ground closer to home have descended into farce. He publicly claimed “The FA says we can’t play at Warrington”, but this was contradicted by Warrington Town’s CEO, Toby Macormac, who stated his board decided against the move for logistical reasons. The Northern Premier League added to the confusion, telling the Northwich Guardian that no application to ground-share had even been made. Such an application would have missed the league’s March deadline in any case.

Rushe then turned his attention to Valley Road, the former home of Flixton FC on the west side of Manchester. The ground, however, holds only an “F certificate”, making it unsuitable for football above Step 5. With no clarity on who would pay for necessary upgrades, the FA and Northern Premier League confirmed Northwich Victoria would not be playing there. Instead, another of Rushe’s clubs, Northwich Villa, will make the move to Flixton. Villa had previously shared The Victoria Stadium before finishing last season at Winsford United, but a deal to stay there collapsed when Winsford asked for payment up front.

Complicating matters further is the peripheral involvement of Steve McNally. Arriving from Liverpool late last season, McNally set up an “Official Supporters Club” in apparent opposition to the established supporters’ trust. He has spent the summer attempting to discredit the trust on its own forum, with his interventions often timed to coincide with its meetings. His motives remain opaque, but they may be connected to the fate of the club’s former home.

The Stadium Question

Both Rushe and McNally have painted Thor Investments, the company that bought the Victoria Stadium site in January, as the villains. Yet Thor may represent the club’s best hope. The company, which committed to preserving the stadium’s assets like stands and floodlights rather than demolishing them, has now confirmed its intention to convert the land into a packing centre.

However, Thor seems keen to manage the situation carefully. Its original plan was to hand the stadium’s assets to the local council, Cheshire West and Chester. Now, it has indicated it could instead award these assets to a single body representing the supporters. This raises the question of whether McNally’s sudden interest was a bid to position his new group to receive them. The supporters’ trust has responded by setting up its own Stadium Development Committee to find a new home in the Northwich area.

Who Thor or the council would rather work with is an open question.

The new season will begin with Northwich Victoria a club in name only, playing miles from its town with a fractured support base. How can a club with almost no home attendance possibly pay its bills? The question of why anyone would travel from Northwich to Manchester to watch Northwich Villa, a club with no prospect of returning, is similarly baffling. The ideal solution appears to be a supporter-owned club, working with Thor and the council to build a new ground. But with the fanbase divided, partly by what appear to be manufactured schisms, even that seems a distant prospect.

It is difficult to see how this version of Northwich Victoria will even complete the upcoming season.