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| Altrincham's Ground |
On Sunday FC United of Manchester, of the Evo Stik Northern Premier League, beat Altrincham FC of the Conference North in the FA Trophy. It's about 15 miles from Altrincham to Bury and Altrincham suggested that 400 fans would attend. In the event about 150 made the journey. Pretty poor by any standard.
FC United won the game, it seems the Altrincham players are as lacking motivation as their supporters. But then, if you take a look at the Altrincham fans' forum you find that they are even worse than the impression they gave on Sunday. Here are one or two of their comments about FC United:
until they fail to meet the conference's rule on security of tenure coz bury get bought by a lottery winning fan and kick fcum out, their numerous committees start in fighting on location of new ground reflected by a poor season on the pitch and everyone gives up and goes back to OT....they've not had a bad season yet.......lets see how they respond to failure and how that impacts on crowds and volunteers............alty could get taken over by a euro millions lottery winner......
Our third* season in this division, not won a trophy in two seasons. FC United do not have committees we have a board elected by the fans. We have planning permission for a new ground, by the earliest date we could possibly be in the Conference we will no longer be playing at Gigg Lane.
I didn't go yesterday on principle. I refuse to acknowledge their existence as a club in the same way that I dont recognise MK Dons. Starting a new club when things aren't going your way goes against everything I understand being a supporter of a club to be about.
The above comment typifies all that is wrong with football, and is perhaps partly the reason why Altrincham FC are in a huge mess.
As we all know, FCUM was set up by Man U fans who opposed the take over by the Glaziers. It would be interesting to see whether or not the FCUM fan base dropped if Man U was ever sold.
Another one who has obviously neither discussed FC United with an FC United fan nor done any basic research. If United were sold to another money grubbing millionaire nothing would change. It wasn't just the Glazers, it was the whole corporatisation of football that we rejected. No, I wouldn't go back and I doubt many would.
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| Fans at an FC United home game. |
This next comment is obviously from somebody who really does need help:
So when fcum get into the BSP, are told to sit down by stewards at Luton, have to pay their players more to compete so come up with the marketting idea of having 3 kits a year, have to market themselves and become a brand name to progress find out they have to pay more than fans of Histon when they play cambridge, start to sign players from the south who don't represent manchester........wil they start up FC FC Utd?
While there is no end of local clubs with proud histories they could have changed allegiances to, they decided to create a toy that (as has been pointed out as their good points) is ruthlessly raking in cash to fund thier rise......they have become to all intents and purposes a mini Manchester Utd turning into the club doing all the things they said they left for....as soon as they started out they were having their traditional saturday kick off time of 3pm changed on police advice...and it wont be long before they are succumbing to the lure of TV money either.
They are a parady of themselves....
We have no problem with players who don't come from Manchester and never have. He's made that one up. If the board want to make a major decision there is a vote among the members. So if wer don't want to change the kit we vote not to, just as we voted against having a shirt sponsor. The Histon/Cambridge thing doesn't make any sense. If he means clubs putting up prices when they play us then I would boycott that game.
Yes we are raising funds to build a ground, you need go do that in the real world. But we are not being royally shafted by our club which "ruthlessly raking in cash" implies. We pay what we can when we can. Even our season tickets are sold on the basis of pay what we can afford.
As for changing allegiances to a local club with history, that really would have been the height of stupidity and hypocrisy. We hated the way football and our club had been taken over by greedy bastards so we go and take over another club!! On the other hand it would have given Altrincham fans even more to moan about. I can imagine the; "who do these arrogant ManU bastards think they are taking over my club" comments had we gone down that road. Personally I wanted to remain with a group of people I felt an affinity with and a shared purpose, that being football for the fans not the bank balances of multi-millionaires.
The following comment is, I suspect, made up. I doubt this person has ever consulted an FC United fan on the issue of moving games. If he had he'd have been told we attended the FA Cup game because we knew that games could be moved when we entered the competition. We boycotted a league game at Curzon Ashton because it was arbitrarily moved with no consultation.
That box has already been checked as well... And no FC United fan could explain to me how they still went to a Friday night match that was rescheduled just for TV when that was one of the major factors of them making a breakaway.
So it seems to me there are two options. Sit on your fat lazy arse moaning about your owner, manager and players as Altrincham fans do when not moaning about FC United. Or get off your fat lazy arse and do something positive like the founders of FC United did.
If you can bear to
here is a link to the Altrincham fans' forum.
For a refreshing change
here is a link to the FC United fans' forum.
Have a look and decide who you'd rather spend your Saturday afternoons with.
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It's been pointed out that this is actually our fourth season in this division, just proving how time flies when you're having fun!
