In Burnley we Trust

Remember the date, because it could just prove seminal in the history of our football club.

Ours, no-one else’s. Ours, shared in someway between every man, woman and child who supports the team which plays at Turf Moor, Burnley.

The character of a football club is a curious hybrid. It is not fully a business, yet it shows many of the qualities of one. Its legal owners are the shareholders, in proportion to their stake, and those in control are the chairman and the board of directors. Yet it is not quite capable of being bought and sold as other inanimate companies and properties can be traded.

It is not really a sporting society, like your local Sunday league team, although it started life like that many years ago, before it turned professional and those players became paid employees who move about without any sort of bond to the club beyond the contractual.

It does have a particularly large band of individuals who are involved because they want to be; but they are not members in any formal sense. They pay to come and watch the club, but they are not customers either: they occupy some sort of no-mans land, formally unrecognised but tacitly accepted as the underlying foundation of every single one of these clubs. These individuals are called supporters.

Chairmen and directors do not really own football clubs. They steward them during their tenure – and in Burnley’s case, it happens that they generally do a damn good job. But emotionally, clubs are owned by these supporters in common. Explain this to a business executive with no appreciation of the game and he’ll look at you is if you have two heads, but to a fan it makes sense in an illogical sort of way.

At Burnley we are lucky. Pretty much every single shareholder in the club - and certainly Barry Kilby, the chairman – is a fully paid up Burnley fan. The difference in Barry’s case to yours and mine is that he has had the money, and the desire, to invest big bucks in the club. Otherwise, he’s a just like us – a passionately committed fan.

..... and on that day at Scunthorpe in 2000

But those of us who, for whatever reason, do not own shares in the club (and, for that matter, those who have a shareholding so small as to be insignificant), being a fan can be a frustrating business. I’m not talking about the strange phenomenon where a team who were brilliant two days earlier look as if they’d be vulnerable against a conference team, or even the blatantly obvious substitution that the manager didn’t make. I’m talking about the frustration we all feel when we can’t afford to buy that extra player, or when protestations about a particular matter seem to fall on deaf ears in the boardroom.

At different times too, there is a sense of anxiety, and of sheer helplessness about being a fan. You feel like a spare part, unable to contribute materially yet desperate to help. Remember six months ago when the club was staring oblivion in the face? Remember the uncertainty, and the angst? Commit it to memory, and hope we never go there again.

It’s for all those reasons that I believe the ideals of a Supporters Trust should be embraced. Supporters matter – yet for all their emotional entanglement with the club, they have never had a formal stake. Yet this offers that opportunity. Each year, for the cost of a round down the pub – a tenner – you can become a member of this organisation. The basics of the plan are that every Burnley fan will ultimately join, and that all of those marvellous subscriptions can be put to good use.

In time -with the mandate of members, of course – it can buy shares to be held by the trust on behalf of the members. The Clarets Trust can, in time, acquire a significant shareholding in the club. Maybe one day, it will have enough to warrant a seat on the board, to follow an agenda set by the Trust.

Certainly, that will ultimately enable supporters to bring more influence to bear than you or I could alone, unless we win the lottery. There’s an old maxim about strength in numbers, and it is certainly true. A band of men working together gets a lot further than those same men working as individuals. Look at the England team if you don’t believe me.

It’s such a good idea, this supporters trust, that I can’t imagine how anyone didn’t dream it up years ago. Don’t write it off as just another supporters club, or as a minor interest group, which will be presided over by a narrow group of people – it sounds idealistic, but it has the potential to be a lot more than that. It genuinely can provide that missing link and make every single supporter a recognisable part of this football club.

If it doesn’t achieve anything else, the money it raises should ensure that this great old club never goes as close to the wall as it did last spring. If that were all it achieved, it would leave an incalculable legacy to the future generations of Clarets. But if that is all it achieves, it will be a tragic missed opportunity.

Don’t just remember the bad times, by the way. Remember the best days – York in ’92, Wembley ’94, Plymouth, Scunthorpe, Tottenham in the cup…and the rest. Remember the elation, and the sense of belonging. Celebrating with people you’d never met before, and who you haven’t seen since. The shiver down the spine when you recall those games.

The Clarets Trust is about all of that. It’s about everything to do with supporting Burnley. But above all, its about belonging to the creed. There are many, many more, but that’s the best reason I can give you.

Oh, and if you’re currently kicking your heels on Saturday night, I hear there’s a bash on down at the club. Big launch do, a bit of a celebration of a major new venture.

Here’s hoping it’s a success.