Chester City

[The Prisoner]

This should be in the General Football section and I will be delighted for the mods to move it. However there is a relevance and if a few people get to read it on a more popular board then great.

As we sit here tonight licking our wounds on what sounds to be an unlucky defeat berating the fact that the chairman won't put his hands in his pockets for a striker I would like to draw attention to how Chester City's fans are feeling tonight. You may be aware they started the season (having been relegated from the football league) on -25 following two spells in administration. They face expulsion from the conference for non-payment of debts and have the biggest egotistical knob of a chairman (actually he is disqualified for 11 years so he is a "backer/owner") going.

Such is the state of events that their own fans invaded the pitch when their team went AHEAD in the 75th minute today against Eastbourne to draw national attention to the fact that they have had enough.

I live in Chester and am proud of the statement that their supporters have made today. I do not condone pitch invasions, but i suspect when you read the thread below you must appreciate that sometimes enough is enough.

From http://www.devachat.com - http://www.devachat.com/index.php?showtopic=59891

In all my dreams, dear, you seem to leave me
When I awake my poor heart pains.
So when you come back and make me happy
I'll forgive you dear, I'll take all the blame.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

If todays game proves one thing, it's that the football club for the people of Chester will never die. Whether that is Chester City, Chester City 2004 or Chester FC, I don't know but I applaud everybody who took to the field today to show that we do care and that we are bigger than any one man.

I still live in hope that we will be saved but I can't see it. The price is outlandish and for anybody to consider buying the club without full due diligance is both foolish and unrealistic. Stephen Vaughan is trapped, the walls are closing in and the vultures are circling. Unfortunately, he will take OUR club with him. I feel like shedding a tear when I think about all of the memories Chester City FC has given me. The good times and the bad. The rough and the smooth. The laughs and the tears.

For me, Chester City FC died a long time ago. We have become a plaything, a place to fulfill your sons dreams of professional football and a place to entertain and impress your friends and associates.

Shouldn't a football club representing Chester be about more than that? Shouldn't it be about pride in your city? About standing with your mates and enjoying the good times? About playing on Cairns Crescent, County Offices, Hoole Park and dreaming of playing for your local club one day?

This club is an embrassment to the city and a pale imitation of the club that our fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers supported. From 20,000 against Chelsea to 600 against Eastbourne Borough. From the highs to the lows, we have fallen from grace like a penny from the top of the Empire State and there is no way back.

To the fans of Chester City, those who still turn up and endure the pain and those whose love has been tarnished, I say join CFU and share in our future. We need you.

To the authorities and the local press I say please, please, please make this horrible, disgusting man accountable for the damage, hurt and pain he has caused.

To the players, managers and supporters who have come and gone, and those who are no longer with us, I say thank you. Thanks for your cheers, your jeers, your goals and your mistakes. It's been a hell of a ride and the world will be a poorer place without you.

To the members of CFU I say well done. Well done for sharing the passion, belief and vision for the future of Chester's football club. The road ahead will be rough but if we stand together, work hard and give it our all we will return. Stronger, prouder and better.

I'll stop now - starting to well up - but please do not give up on us. The future of OUR club has nothing to do with the boardroom, nothing to do with the Conference and nothing to do with the FA's fit and proper person's test. It's about us, it's in our hearts and our heads. Without us there is no football club in Chester and with us, once more, there will be a great football club in Chester.

[AthleticoSpizz]

Whilst I think that they were barking mad

It sure was a bold statement to take the action that they did when they were 3-2 UP!

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

never been a great football club in Chester, a proud one maybe, and every town deserves one.

[soggy biscuit]

Up the TOB!

[Dirk Gently]

It is better to die standing than to live on your knees. The revolution came to a small corner of Cheshire this afternoon as what may end up being Chester City’s final match was abandoned with fifteen minutes to play after supporters invaded the pitch in protest at the continued involvement of the Vaughan family at their club. There had already been one pitch invasion during the first half and, with Chester having taken a 3-2 lead against struggling Eastbourne Borough, a second invasion led to the Eastbourne players leaving the pitch and refusing to re-enter the field of play.

The protests came at the end of another week during which the situation at The Deva Stadium continued to deteriorate. Rumours started to circle that the team was planning to go on strike and that manager Jim Harvey, who has done a little towards turning the teams fortunes around on the pitch, was set to also leave the club. This information found its way into the betting community (being mentioned in the same as the Weymouth youth team that lost 9-0 at home to Rushden & Diamondss after they were forced to field a youth team for a match between the two sides last season), leading to a run on the match that led to some bookmakers suspending betting on it.

The deadline for the club to have paid back its football creditors is Monday, and this has already been extended once. They needed a bumper crowd for their match this afternoon, but only reported a gate of only 862 people, a number that seemed to surprise the commentator on BBC Radio Merseyside, who was at the match. The story has made Sky Sports, the BBC and will give enormous amounts of publicity to their cause. Moreover, the overwhelming reaction to the protest has been one of support, even though Chester were actually winning the match at the time.

What alternative, one might ask, did they have? It is entirely possible that the club will be either expelled from the Blue Square Premier or bankrupt by the end of next week. It is a little bit late to worry about three points now. Reasond protests, stying away and highlighting the issue to the media haven’t made any difference. The football authorities, when given the opportunity to expel the club from football and get rid of the Vaughans once and for all in August, bottled the decision and allowed them to effectively laugh at them to their faces, weren’t any help. In the course of one afternoon, however, the clubs supporters have done more to publicise the imminent death of their club that any number of other protests might have done.

It is certainly worth pausing for a moment to reflect on how it all came to this. The humiliating relegation from the Football League, the attempt to enter into a CVA in circumstances so dubious that the court upheld a HMRC appeal against it. The questionable behaviour of Vaughan Senior at recent matches. The carousel fraud. The trail of unpaid bills and half-baked schemes to wriggle out of paying them by transferring a to b and hoping that either no-one would notice or that they would be unable to stop him jumping through legal loopholes. Finally, through an act of utter depseration, a final throw of the dice, Chester’s supporters have redeemed themselves, managed to get their message out to the football world and spoken for all of us with their revulsion at what has been done to their club.

[The Prisoner]

They were due to be expelled from the conference today but have had a seemingly pointless stay of execution til thursday:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/footbal ... 386307.stm

As for the comments about never being a good football team in Chester you could say the same about Reading til the 90s at least? CCFC were certainly regular opponents for us in the late 70s and 80s when I was a ST holder.

They are planning the same invasion trick against Luton in their next home game (if it goes ahead) and with Luton being more that sympathetic their fans are aiding them with advice and planning to join in! (loads on it on the http://www.devachat.com site).

Could this be the first game stopped by both sets of fans invading the pitch protesting at the same off field thing?!

Either way all very sad and good night Vienna for Chester. Four players left last week and they are banned from making new signings and the fans want the current incarnation of the team destroyed such is the pure hatred for the owner.