Nuneaton Borough: The Football Club Without An Owner

An 89-year-old supporter arriving on his mobility scooter with a £500 donation from his life savings should be a heart-warming story of a community rallying around its football club. For Nuneaton Borough, it was a public relations disaster. The club had to issue a statement confirming it could not accept the cash, a painful admission of its chaotic state at a time when it desperately needs every penny it can find.

This well-meaning gesture, which backfired so spectacularly on social media, perfectly captures the paralysis gripping the National League North club. Nuneaton Borough has no owner, no directors, and according to manager Nicky Eaden, no money left to pay the players at the end of the month. It is a club in limbo, a ghost ship sailing towards the rocks while those on board are powerless to change course.

A Club Without Directors

The current crisis began to take shape on the first of August. That was the day Lee Thorn, the sole director of Boro Leisure Ltd, fulfilled his promise to resign. He had sold the club to Norman Smurthwaite, the owner of Port Vale, but this was no straightforward transaction. FA rules are clear: an individual cannot own more than one club. Smurthwaite’s involvement is therefore limited to that of a “facilitator”, a landlord trying to find a buyer for the company he acquired from Thorn.

This arrangement leaves Nuneaton Borough in an impossible position. Since Thorn’s departure, the club has operated without a single director. Key decisions cannot be made. No one has the legal authority to sign off on the drastic measures needed to secure its future. With low existing debts, administration would be an unlikely path anyway, but without directors to formally initiate the process, it is not even an option. The club is being run on a day-to-day basis by the manager, his assistant Lee Fowler, club secretary Adam Etheridge and general manager Carly Morris. They are keeping the lights on, but they cannot steer the ship.

Smurthwaite, for his part, has made the gravity of the situation clear. In a statement last week, he noted the monthly payroll of circa £25,000 contributes to a shortfall of between £17,000 and £19,000 each month. He warned that the club faces its “most critical time” over the next week to ten days, with a new board needing to be in place before the Football Conference meets on the first of November. His message was stark: “If the town wishes to keep the heritage and the football club alive it now needs your immediate assistance.”

Empty Seats, Empty Coffers

The plea for support is understandable. Attendances this season have hovered around the 500 mark, the eighteenth-highest average in a twenty-two team division. While boosted slightly by clubs with larger travelling supports like Hereford and FC United of Manchester, the crowds are simply not big enough to sustain the club’s outgoings. But who sanctioned the budget that created this shortfall? Was it Thorn, on his way out of the door? Or was there no budget at all, just a vague hope that something would turn up?

The last available accounts for Boro Leisure Ltd, for the year to June 2017, showed a loss of half a million pounds. A monthly shortfall of around £20,000 suggests that some progress has been made in cutting costs, but that figure is meaningless when the money is not there in the first place. The club is hurtling towards the point where it can no longer pay its players, a breach of contract that often signals the final, irreversible stage of a club’s collapse.

Smurthwaite’s own position is complicated. The Football League confirmed he gave undertakings that he was acting “purely as a landlord” to avoid contravening regulations. He is not a popular figure at Vale Park either, as supporter forums make abundantly clear, which raises questions about what kind of owner he would be even if he were permitted to take control. But that is a hypothetical problem.

The immediate reality is brutal.

The town did respond to the call to arms for yesterday’s home match against Bradford Park Avenue, with 823 turning out at Liberty Way. The supporters did their part. The players, however, could not. They were beaten six goals to nil, leaving them languishing in the relegation places with only two clubs below them.

An Uncertain Future

Where does Nuneaton Borough go from here? The Nuneaton Borough Supporters Co-operative (NBSC), which had previously tried and failed to negotiate a purchase with Lee Thorn, issued a statement on the eighth of October confirming that “Outright ownership of the football club is not one of our main aims.” With the ownership of the club and ground now separated, no new buyer on the horizon, and the team reeling from a humiliating home defeat, the outlook is bleak. The club is trapped, with no one at the helm and a facilitator who is legally prevented from taking charge. Unless a solution is found before the first of November, the question may no longer be who owns Nuneaton Borough, but whether Nuneaton Borough exists at all.