East Fife Supporters’ Trust Article

May 2006 Supporters Direct


“The Biggest Off-field Challenge Facing the Club”.

Now is that the kind of welcoming comment your supporters’ trust can expect from your club? These were the words of Derrick Brown, chairman of our local club, East Fife FC, at the club’s AGM last December when referring to our Supporters’ Trust. In fact he chose to spend much of the meeting lambasting us to the extent we felt sure we’d be held responsible for everything bad that has ever happened in Scotland, if not the world!

Mind you, back in December 2003, his very first comment on the proposal to create a Trust was along the lines of “it’ll never work”, so I suppose we should have expected what was to come.


So how did our local club manage to get itself to the stage whereby it regarded what could and should be one of its greatest assets as its greatest enemy?
Why is it our members have spent the last two years or so fighting tooth and nail simply to be allowed to help the club we love?
And why do we still have the belief that we will eventually be able to support the club in this way?

It had all started on such a positive note too - a few people wanting to get together to help our team in an organised way. Conscious of the fact that not many people knew what a Trust involved, (how little did we know then the level of suspicion we were to experience) we actually approached the club chairman informally before going public with our plans.

His lukewarm response didn’t put us off and in January 2004 a healthy turnout of just under 100 people (our average home attendance was about 500) attended a meeting at the club to determine the level of interest. As the Chair of that meeting I experienced the deadly sinking feeling at the end when I has asked for volunteers to help take us forward – and nobody moved! Then suddenly I was surrounded by people and we were up and running. One of the remarkable things about that period was that we had almost 100% attendance at all our planning meetings leading up to our official launch in August 04.

Perhaps I should mention that, unusually, our club was not facing any particular crisis – this was just a lot of supporters wanting to be part of the club in a tangible way. We were willing to fundraise and to provide volunteers to the club for all the mundane tasks that any small clubs needs help with – cleaning the ground, helping the ground staff, working in he bar etc. Of course we wanted our members to have a tangible part of the club through developing a shareholding but there was no real desire to own or control the club or even, if truth be told, to have Board representation – although we did hope that at some future point one of our members could be a director.

The entire problem came about because of a lack of trust on the part of the club chairman who saw us as some sort of threat to his own position. When we asked to buy 2000 shares he dithered, procrastinated, and refused. At this stage we organised an effective media campaign drawing both the public’s and politicians’ attention to the football club’s attempts to get public funding to support their plastic pitch project. Our argument was not about the plastic pitch but about the fact that a private limited club was refusing money from its own supporters yet was seeking money from the taxpayer.

This was a difficult line for us to hold and of course many attempts were made to represent us as football Luddites, preventing the development of community facilities, etc. Thanks to the support of our local press and local elected members (both Council and Scottish Parliament) we gained a partial victory, with Mr Brown agreeing to sell us 1000 shares with the rest to follow later in the year (2005).

When the time came for the second tranche of shares he had another trick up his sleeve. For the first time ever a request to buy shares was to be put to the club AGM for approval by shareholders. Despite only limited lobbying on our part we narrowly lost the vote but of course had established a strong moral victory!

This led to a spontaneous protest by supporters (not officially by the Trust to begin with) which has involved boycotting home matches and refusing to put any money into the club. The protest was officially backed by Trust members recently and will continue until we are allowed to participate in the club in the way we wish. Most observers interpret that as requiring a change in the current chairmanship of East Fife FC.

We are absolutely confident that eventually our members will be able to do what they want – help the club. We are certain that even the major shareholders of the club will see the absurdity of throwing away so much potential income and support. This confidence comes from the increasing political support for community involvement in clubs; it comes from the fact that we have received so much support from our local community; it comes also the support we have received from the fans of other clubs –even our arch rivals Cowdenbeath! With that level of sustained support it is inevitable that we succeed – the only question is when!

Eugene Clarke
East Fife Supporters’ Trust Member

Nice one Eugene - very succint - how can moronic Brown argue with that? - the man is a complete buffoon only HE does not realise it. Brown must GO.

great article - although I will never consider Cowdenbeath to be our "arch rivals", it will always be Raith Rovers, sadly I suppose it is indicative of how far we have fallen from grace...!

Nice one Eugene, cheers

agreed finbar, the cowdenbeath reference jarred