Problems at Macclesfield

Macclesfield Town, who entertain Hereford United in the LDV on January 24th, have problems both on and off the field at present.

The Silkmen lie in 22nd position in League Two having obtained just 22 points from 22 games.

However at home they are draw specialists. Their record to date is won 4, drawn 6, lost 2. They have scored just 14 goals with 16 against.

Their manager is Brian Horton. His squad is 26 strong but with three players currently out on loan. One of those players is Neil MacKenzie who played for Scunthorpe at Edgar Street last Tuesday.

However their main worries are off the field with the club facing hugh financial problems.

Bulls News has already outlined the position in two articles earlier this week, but below is an edited insight from thesilkweb.com written by Andy B.

Last Monday morning, Macc Town were a club with strong links to the community, who, despite a lowly League ranking and small attendances, had as bright a future as any other club in the League.

By 4pm, they became a club on the verge of extinction.

I won't bore you with the details, but Macc Town were charged by the FA of misusing a Football Foundation grant which paid for a new stand. At no point did the money go near the playing staff, and the club gained no competitive advantage (no points were docked).

Our current board (which bears no relation to the board of 4 years ago which committed the offences) plead guilty to those charges, and they were fully co-operative with the FA at every stage of the investigation.

Naturally, we were mainly optimistic about the outcome of the FA's enquiry. Of course no-one expected a pardon from the FA, but we did expect a substantial but even-handed fine that would see justice done without unnecessarily hampering the considerable efforts we've made in building a community club.

After all, the FA (according to their website) are about 'Promoting the development of the game amongst all ages, backgrounds and abilities in terms of participation and quality. This also involves promoting the availability of the sport to the greatest possible number of people.'

Perhaps I am being particularly short-sighted, but I am unsure how giving Macc a £300,000 levy to pay in six weeks quite ties in with this. Sadly it will almost certainly prevent us from helping the FA to achieve these laudable goals, due an imminent lack of existence on our part. Perhaps there is a clause in the FA's many regulations which exempts Macclesfield from this having to do any of this tedious 'promoting the availability of sport' stuff.

Essentially, the FA is serving a brand of justice with a much greater injustice. If you'd like a portrait of how the great minds at the FA work, I recommend Simon Jordan's article from The Observer, 'So Who Is Barry Bright?'. He talks about the sort of people running your game - people unconcerned about promoting the availability of football, but in expanding a relentlessly punitive bureaucracy.

Samuel Johnson is always good for a quote, and he once said 'An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.' And so it is the case here, because this is a punishment that will aid nobody. £195,000 will admittedly go to the Football Foundation, but the benefits of that will be entirely outweighed by the loss of a community football club.

By fining Macc so harshly, the FA are in fact failing in their fundamental obligation to promote football, which is a much higher injustice than the extinction of a tiny club in Cheshire.

Of course, I implore you to donate to this scheme because it will directly save my club. But I also offer this as a referendum against the damaging bureaucracy of the FA, and ask you to consider that by assuring the future of Macc Town, the goals of 'promoting the availability of sport' are upheld. If the FA can't do this, then we must.

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