The Return of the Vaughans: A New Club for an Old Problem

A Familiar Name in Widnes

The announcement from the North West Counties League on Wednesday was as surprising as it was unwelcome for many. The Vaughan family, a name synonymous with club destruction from Cumbria to Cheshire, is returning to football. This time, however, they are not taking over an existing club but creating a new one: Widnes Town FC.

The club intends to play at the 13,350-capacity Halton Stadium, a ground with its own ghosts. It was here that Runcorn FC Halton played after selling their own ground in 2000, only to find themselves unable to afford the rent. They left in 2005 and folded a year later. Now, a new club with a controversial ownership group plans to call it home.

The new venture will be chaired by former England international Mark Wright, with Stephen Vaughan Junior installed as manager. Vaughan Junior quietly became the owner of Chester City in April 2009, two months after the club entered an administration that would ultimately prove fatal. His father, Stephen Vaughan Senior, would later be disqualified from acting as a company director for eleven years and imprisoned for assaulting a police officer.

A History of Ruin

To understand the deep scepticism greeting this news, one must look back to Vaughan Senior’s previous football involvements. His time at Barrow AFC in the mid-1990s ended with his resignation in November 1998 and the club’s liquidation just two months later. During the insolvency process, a liquidator established that Vaughan had illegally transferred the club’s Holker Street ground into the name of one of his own companies, Vaughan Promotions. The courts eventually returned the ground to the club’s new owners.

Vaughan arrived at Chester City in 2001, where controversy followed him. When Chester drew Barrow in the FA Cup, the FA threatened to expel both clubs because Vaughan still held shares in the Cumbrian club. A temporary sale for £1 to a painter and decorator allowed the tie to proceed, after which Vaughan bought the shares back and sold them on for £29,500.

On the pitch, Chester gained promotion back to the Football League in 2004, but off-field issues were never far away. In November 2007, the club held a minute’s silence for Colin Smith, described as a “major benefactor”. It was later revealed that Smith was a right-hand man for the notorious criminal Curtis Warren and had been murdered in a gangland shooting in Liverpool.

Not Just Football

The Vaughan family’s interests were not confined to football. Vaughan Senior also took over the Widnes Vikings rugby league club, completing his acquisition in 2006. In November 2009, he was handed his eleven-year disqualification from acting as a company director for his involvement in a £500,000 VAT “carousel fraud” while a director at the Vikings. This fraud involved buying and selling consignments of clothing through a complex international structure, including a bank in the Dutch Antilles which was later shut down. The Vikings ended up in administration before being saved by a local businessman.

This disqualification should have made him fail the FA’s Fit & Proper Persons Test, yet he continued as the de facto owner of Chester City until its demise in early 2010.

The irony of the Vaughans returning to Widnes, a town where their actions almost destroyed a founding member of the Northern Rugby Football Union, will not be lost on anyone.

Vaughan Senior was released from prison in September last year. While he was away, his son took care of the family’s other enterprise, Vaughan Boxing. Now, with Vaughan Junior as manager and Mark Wright as chair, the family is back in football, even if the senior Vaughan’s name is absent from the official documents.

The North West Counties League has confirmed that “as this approach is from a new club we have had to refer the matter to the FA as per National League System Regulations”. The official aim is to “develop the club into a community-based football facility.” Given the family’s track record, the question is not just whether the FA will accept their application, but what, exactly, will be different this time?