| The Athletic 15:04 - Aug 28 with 2225 views | UpTheDaleNotForSale |
Another article this weekend - the journo even made the trip up to watch the game last night too.
https://t.co/mTtjFptvdi
Great to see that the press are keeping on this, and also good to note from Curran / Rose a bit more detail in the letter they sent to the EFL (that was also mysteriously leaked to the press at the same time)...
"With the EFL seeking to conclude its investigation prior to providing Morton House with the assurances sought regarding its Owners and Directors’ Test, along with the precarious financial position of the club; the widespread speculation and rumours circulating across social media and the targeted harassment and abuse aimed towards directors, officers and representatives of Morton House; it is at the detriment of all parties concerned to protract the process any further, and Morton House have been left with no alternative but to withdraw from the EFL Approval process and seek to divest its Shareholding in the club.”
We'd suggest a forensic deep dive into their business practises and livelihood is anything but 'harassment', and actually would be welcomed by real businessmen as an opportunity to showcase their worthiness and credentials. They clearly don't like being in the public eye, so we need to keep them (& their associates) nice and visible over the coming weeks. |  |
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| The Athletic on 15:05 - Aug 28 with 2218 views | UpTheDaleNotForSale |
The full article reads:
“We’ve had two away games since the news so this is a homecoming. We can celebrate that we fought off the hostile takeover – we’re not out of the woods yet but it’s a celebration. So, inevitably we’ll be 2-0 down at half-time and getting on everybody’s backs.”
Rochdale AFC fans can afford to crack jokes again. It has been a big week in the history of the 114-year-old club and after many sleepless nights, this one under the lights at the Crown Oil Arena brings a home clash in League Two against Colchester United and a chance to smile again.
For the time being, fans in this town on the outskirts of Manchester have cause to celebrate after winning a vital battle against a hostile takeover of their club. Lifelong fans like Rochdale AFC Supporters Trust chair Colin Cavanah can take this evening, which marks 100 years of the club’s Football League status as well as their most recent victory, to finally focus on football after months of worry.
“Relief is the word. We were concerned over the long-term prospects of the football club because of this – we weren’t worried about being relegated or anything like that. It was, will we still have a football club? There has been an awful lot of work done by an awful lot of supporters on this.
“The feeling is unanimous across the fanbase, we’re ecstatic with the news. We’re pleased with the EFL for putting the pressure on and doing their investigation and they’ve not got the best reputation for dealing with stuff like this but they’ve really come through in these circumstances. There is a bit of trepidation because we don’t know what happens next. It leaves us in limbo.”
The uncertainty stems from the takeover conducted by two businessmen, Andy Curran and Darrell Rose, who are believed to have acquired shares amassing a 42.3 per cent ownership of the club. They are a mysterious pair linked to a dizzying tangle of seemingly related but opaque companies, each with a limited digital footprint and no obvious connection to Rochdale the town or football club.
It was an acquisition done quickly and behind closed doors until fans learned of the developments and responded with fierce resistance much greater than Curran, Rose or their affiliated company Morton House can have anticipated. Typically, takeovers of football clubs happen much slower than this and an investor would approach the club directly before going before the EFL for their fit and proper owners test.
Curran and Rose did neither, instead reaching agreements and paying well above the valuation of £2 per share after directly approaching existing shareholders in a bid to build a majority shareholding. It is thought they bought out five or six major shareholders of the 331 different individuals or groups who hold the 502,957 total ordinary shares that have previously been issued but now their takeover is off.
“What’s happened in this case is the investors tried to do the share purchase before the EFL process,” club chairman Simon Gauge told The Athletic’s Business of Football podcast this week. “So, the EFL has started an investigation — because there are a lot of questions over the whole affair — and (the investors) have not wanted to participate in that investigation. They have then pulled out of the process but even that isn’t simple because, even though no share-transfer forms have been submitted to the club and they haven’t then been added to the share register, they say they have legal documents that at least give them powers over the shares, although we’ve not seen any of that. That is my understanding of the latest position.”
In a statement sent to The Athletic after they withdrew from the EFL investigation, Morton House said it had “reluctantly withdrawn from the EFL approval process,” adding that, “at all times Morton House have acted in good faith following assurances from the Club that the relevant documentation had been submitted, and approved by the EFL.
“With the EFL seeking to conclude its investigation prior to providing Morton House with the assurances sought regarding its Owners and Directors’ Test, along with the precarious financial position of the club; the widespread speculation and rumours circulating across social media and the targeted harassment and abuse aimed towards directors, officers and representatives of Morton House; it is at the detriment of all parties concerned to protract the process any further, and Morton House have been left with no alternative but to withdraw from the EFL Approval process and seek to divest its Shareholding in the club.”
At first instance offers of up to £10 per share is no easy thing for a fan to turn down but swathes of Rochdale supporters have gone further by becoming part-time investigators and putting their own money on the line to access documents to find out just who Curran and Rose are. Evenings have been devoted to deep dives on the Companies House website, lunch breaks and early mornings spent scouring over family trees and every crumb of information available.
“When the takeover started to happen we got in touch with shareholders to ask them not to sell at this time and one guy replied to say that he’s a third-generation shareholder,” says Cavanah. “He got his dad’s shares and they were his dad’s shares before that. He said they are only going to go to one person and that is his son when it’s his time. I got quite emotional reading that. The ownership of those shares meant that much to him.
“The one thing we have not been able to fathom is why they were interested in us because we’re not a sleeping giant, we’re not a team or a town that they have any links with. There must be about 40 teams that think by rights they should be a Premier League team and then there’s all these other teams that think they should be in the Championship. We have never had that among our fanbase and given our history that’s probably for the best.
“We’ve always tried to do things the right way and there’s not a sense of moral high ground on this and it’s not us being snooty and looking down on other clubs but it’s a badge of honour for us that we have always been run within our own means. It works. We had Bury (with their recent problems), five miles down the road and we have all got loads of friends who support them so we have lived that with them side by side.”
“The vast majority of people who own shares whether it’s 100 shares or 1,000 have chosen to do the right thing this time,” adds Mark, one the fans behind the “Officially Dale, not for sale” Twitter account founded to spread the word of the takeover outside Rochdale. “But you have to think, Rochdale is not a well-off town and if people own 1,000 shares and they are being offered £10 a pop for them when they are only worth £1.60, it takes a lot for fans to turn around and say no and that shows how important the club is to the town.
“I’m not ashamed to admit there were tears in the kitchen when we found out at 11 o’clock on Saturday that Morton House had withdrawn, it was just a build-up of stress and pure elation at that point. By Sunday it had faded to cautious optimism and we’re not out of the woods yet. There’s no glory in it for us, nobody knows who the vast majority of us are but we have got to do the right thing and preserve the football club for future generations.
“It shouldn’t fall to a fanbase to do what we have done, the EFL need more powers to do it as part of their fit and proper test. This is the second time we have been through this, the last time happened about 20 years ago but there needs to be some kind of reform to give the EFL the powers that they need to be able to stop this in its tracks.”
Greater power for the EFL is something that Gauge supports. Praise has come from all quarters in Rochdale for the Football League’s governing body for their role in stopping the takeover before it was too late, even if questions remain about what happens to the shares now under the control of Morton House.
“Firstly, we’ve all seen the horror stories in football and know the criticisms of the EFL in those cases. We have the odd criticism about the process, maybe, but, looking at it as a whole, they’ve done their job very well here. They haven’t allowed themselves to be steamrollered, which I think was how the people who tried to buy the club planned to do it.
“They told everyone they had 50 per cent of the shares, it was a done deal, we ourselves bought into that at one stage, hence why we had those meetings with them. But the EFL went through the process. I think the way forward is there needs to be a clear process as to how you buy a football club. It’s not like other businesses. If we weren’t a football club, we could easily have been taken over but we weren’t because we have to abide by EFL rules.”
The work of Gauge, Cavanah and the sprawling effort from the wider fanbase – described to The Athletic by one fan as a “three-pronged attack” operating at different degrees of professionalism to protect the club’s interests – has been vital.
As the team walked out to face Colchester on Friday, with the sun setting behind the rolling hills of the Pennines that loom over the Wilbutts Lane stand, a new scoreboard provides ample reminder of just how important this club is to its people. It is a new addition this season, bought with money left to the club after the passing of lifelong fan David Clough last year who, in the course of his Rochdale-supporting life, raised more than £500,000 before leaving his entire estate to the club he loved.
The screen sporadically flashes the “Up the Dale, not for sale” logo as chants of the same ring around the ground – proof that as long as Rochdale’s future remains in doubt, its fans are alert and ready to take on any challengers. Club legends parade the pitch at half-time to celebrate 100 uninterrupted years in the Football League and fans are set to celebrate with an afterparty in the stadium bars after the game.
As for the match, the first half passes without incident until the closing stages when things go awry as a pitch invader stops play and then Rochdale concede a disappointing own goal as Joel Coleman is left stranded by Max Taylor’s back pass. Jimmy Keohane gets the equaliser from close range in the second half and the stadium erupts but the game is a scrappy affair of missed chances.
Not that fans will mind the chance to celebrate a point after moments of sustained Colchester pressure and their off-field victory which seems the much bigger result this week.
“We take pride in doing things the right way for the right reasons,” lifelong fan Mark says. “We will do everything we can to protect the club before it needs saving. We’re never going to win the Premier League, we’ll probably never even get into the Championship but if we’re a sustainable club that plays football that we are proud of and that we enjoy, that looks after itself financially and continues to be inclusive in the town then every Rochdale fan will sleep better at night knowing that’s what we’ve got.”
full credit to Nancy Frostick of The Athletic for this one. | |
| Twitter : @DaleNotForSale
Facebook : facebook.com/upthedalenotforsale |
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| The Athletic on 15:36 - Aug 28 with 2140 views | D_Alien |
Great summary, with someone from outside the town gauging the club and fanbase correctly which makes a refreshing change
[Post edited 28 Aug 2021 15:40]
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| The Athletic on 17:26 - Aug 28 with 1923 views | mikehunt |
So, if MH somehow own the shares i.e. they have actually handed money over to the original share holders, this appears to be the next hurdle.
From reading the various threads, there does not appear to be any clear procedure to resolve this (am I right?) My solution would be that, if the shares were acquired illegally but the original shareholders, genuinely, weren’t aware of any dirty dealings, then, I think, the EFL need to buy the shares back from MH at whatever they paid for them and keep hold of them until our board can decide what to do with them.
Would that work do you think? |  |
| The worm of time turns not for the cuckoo of circumstance. |
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| The Athletic on 18:31 - Aug 28 with 1793 views | Sandyman |
Funny how the Morton House lot haven't mentioned the "targeted harassment and abuse" aimed towards our directors, club, supporters and fellow Rochdalians from Morton House representatives. |  | | |
| The Athletic on 18:57 - Aug 28 with 1715 views | jacko_dale |
| The Athletic on 18:31 - Aug 28 by Sandyman |
Funny how the Morton House lot haven't mentioned the "targeted harassment and abuse" aimed towards our directors, club, supporters and fellow Rochdalians from Morton House representatives. |
I would argue, considering Curran's wife and son are quite active and easily accessible on Twitter, that as a fanbase we've been incredibly restrained when many might have turned to what they call 'targeted harassment'. |  | | |
| The Athletic on 19:04 - Aug 28 with 1695 views | judd |
| The Athletic on 18:57 - Aug 28 by jacko_dale |
I would argue, considering Curran's wife and son are quite active and easily accessible on Twitter, that as a fanbase we've been incredibly restrained when many might have turned to what they call 'targeted harassment'. |
Ah but Puggles and the other nancy pet did get the sort of stick you don't normally throw at dogs. |  |
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