Thoughts on a Home Ground: Part Two

In the second part of the article. I wanted to look at other issues that can affect a stadium, and fans' relationship with what is their home ground. When I was reseaching the first part of the article, I had gone down my usual rabbit hole and, yet again, a variety of thoughts, ideas and issues had surfaced. Many of those could easily have affected Evertonians in our recent history. While none are a disaster in terms of lives lost, each one could have been traumatic in their own right. 

My starting point is Old Trafford. It's a stadium that, much like Goodison Park, has seen more than it's fair share of history, success and club folklore in the making. It is also an old stadium, one that has gone without investment, without essential maintenance, for a number of years. By way of example, rain water is reportedly pouring into the stands through their covers. While there are plans for a new stadium — and I think there has been some engagement with fans around this — it must feel like empty spin from what are truly awful owners.

You have an uncaring, heavy-handed minority owner in Jim Ratcliffe, whose approach to running the club is to implement cost-cutting measures at every turn. You then have the majority share owners, the Glazers, who just see Manchester United as a cash cow, having reportedly taken £2bn out of the club during their time there. With owners like these, do United fans really believe that they will finance the cost of a new ground in a way that suits the overall health of the club, or the wishes of the fans?

All of the above is happening against a backdrop of an incredibly sharp decline in fortunes on the pitch. United have become also-rans with a speed no fan thought possible ten years ago. At least during our very lean years, Evertonians had a crumb of comfort in an ageing but fully functioning Goodison. Something alive, something wonderful, something that was glorious in and of itself. It was something that we could draw solace from. United fans, by comparison, are watching their club fall apart before their eyes in a home ground that seems to be rubbing salt in their wounds. 

There is a part of me that can empathise with Man United fans. Goodison was on borrowed time for a number of years. It wasn't just that it was an ageing stadium, fabulous as it was. For the club to grow, to progress, to keep pace with the direction football, and the Premier League was going in, we long needed a newer and bigger model. As with United now, we had had our own version of spin and nonsense from poor quality owners when it came to a new home. Over a short period of time, we had the Kings Dock fiasco, with the non-existent 'ringfenced money', the ground share with Liverpool, which we didn't have the price of, and the Kirkby bowl, with nobody knowing who exactly was going to pay for it. 

For varying reasons, each of the three stadium plans may well have caused, distress, upheaval, dissatisfaction and dismay for Evertonians. I'm not going to go into huge detail here. as each plan is worth an article in it's own right, I will however reference KEOIC a little later.

We eventually did get it rght with Bramley-Moore Dock. As I said in Part One, the move from Goodison was seemless. It was relatively painless and hassle free. However, what if BMD had been another false dawn, another missed opportunity? Can you imagine the impact on the club, and any hope of a new stadium if, say, we had lost one of the recent relegation battles? 

Would we now be limping along in the Championship, sweating on a ground that was edging closer to being refused the necessary permits to operate? Would we being going cap in hand to our neighbours, looking to become tenants, hoping that they, the council and regional police force would agree to it?

A ground share with even less apeal than the first one proposed. Would we be looking back at Destination Kirkby with a different pair of glasses on? Would we have spent ten years, as Wimbledon did, renting space in another club's home ground, never feeling any ties or fondness for the place? Would we eventually have moved miles away to another ground, well away from our geographical and spiritual heartland? 

If I am being particularily fatalistic, could the lack of a home ground have eventually become ruinous for the club? Financially, and in terms of our very existence, it may well have done. Would it have led to a series of points deductions and demotions for financial mismanagement? Would we have had a series of disinterested and sub-par owners, with little or no interest or competency in running a club properly? Owners who would have assisted in running the club into the ground. 

Would we have eventually ended up in the position Sheffield Wedneaday found themselve last season, in administration, under threat of winding up petitions, and scrambling for new owners? Only maybe with the humiliation of no home ground. 

Perhaps we have have had to endure what Bury had to in 2019. Despite the joy of promotion to League One that year, the club was expelled from the Football League altogether for long standing financial difficulties. 

Both examples are, I know, drawing things out to a worst case scenario. But a death spiral can be sudden in its arrival, and when it does, it can be quick in it's acceleration. It can also be something that a club can lose control over quite quickly. Could anyone have predicted the mess Manchester United — yes, that United — finds itself in now, from where it stood only very recently? 

However, as with the first part of this article, I would like to finish the second part on a positive note. AFC Wimbledon fans created a new club, with a close version of their original name. They also developed their own home ground, only 250 miles from where their original one stood. They didn't just stop being Wimbledon fans.

Bury fans, following their expulsion, created a new club, starting near the bottom of the footballing pyramid. They eventually returned to their original home ground in 2023, having purchased it from the administrators. They didn't stop being Bury fans. 

I would like to think that if any of the scenarios above had happened to us, or that we had lost our own home ground, that some version of KEIOC would have surfaced, would have been established. That Evertonians would not have given up on the club either. That we wouldn't have given up on what it meant to have our own home ground, our own stadium to to celebrate on team, our club in.  You would hope that this would be our legacy to Goodison.