30/04/2022
Currently watching our last game.
Since Dan has already posted, I shall tell the full story.
We are the management and players of the old Southwick FC, unbeaten at home for two seasons having won promotion last year. We were on course for a return to the Southern Combination League, the one the old club was in when the ground was closed due to the neglect of the lease holder. (A man with no interest in football who was allowed to keep the lease by Adur Council despite allowing the ground to crumble to the point where it was no longer safe.)
We were the physical embodiment of the old Southwick FC, the people who kept it going against all the odds, solvent and with sponsors ready to back us.
But we did not receive a firm guarantee from the new lease holders Russell Martin Foundation that we would be the flagship club when the ground is finally ready. This despite all the loyalty shown, all the dedication and hard work of the management and players who dropped two divisions after the old ground was closed.
Russell Martin Foundation’s remit is all-ages community football, which is brilliant. But any football fan knows that a club needs a flagship senior team operating at the highest possible level to provide a focal point, attract fans, bring in sponsors.
We are, or rather were, that club. By the time the ground was ready for senior football, given the progress we were making we could have been in the Southern Combination Premier Division.
Our players have proved themselves on the pitch and manager Sammy Donnelly is one of the most successful and well connected characters in Sussex football, with Tony Gratwicke, Nobby Dartnell and Tony Dineen a fine supporting cast.
All we needed was the security of knowing that when the time came we would be welcomed back to Old Barn Way - a tiny version of that glorious day in 2011 when the Albion finally came home to Falmer.
But no. For RMF we were just another local team, the history seemingly counting for nothing, the opportunity to welcome a successful Southwick County League side back to Old Barn Way seemingly not for them the icing on their community football cake.
They haven’t saved Southwick FC, as Dick Knight and Tony Bloom saved the Albion, they have taken over the facility and are starting a completely new project.
But, nevertheless, we were intending to continue and stake our claim when the time came, confident that we would be by far the senior club in terms of league position.
Then came the killer blow. The initial ground share agreement with Whitehawk FC, who have welcomed us with open arms and given us a memorable season on and off the pitch, was torn up by those at the very top of the club and replaced with a demand that we pay £6500 per season for pitch maintenance per season plus £150 per game.
When that happened we went to RMF. We could have raised that money through sponsorship with a firm guarantee of a return to Old Barn Way but when we got the answer we did that was that. Local sponsors need the guaranteed promise of a presence in the community. The whole story is barely credible, but that’s how it is.
And so, heads held high, we call it a day. We have done all we can. This is amateur football, played for the sheer joy of it: by its very definition, it needs to be fun.
Very reluctantly, this lovely, loyal bunch, management and players, will now say goodbye to their dream of representing Southwick back at Old Barn Way and will find a new home where they will have the security and stability to enjoy the game they love.
After nearly six decades supporting and latterly campaigning to save the Albion this was my first taste of personal involvement in grass roots football and I have absolutely loved the experience and learned so much. Thank you, Sammy, Gratters, Nobby, Tony and the lads for giving me the opportunity and I wish you luck, and the respect you deserve and have not received recently, in your new projects.
As a Wicker whose maternal roots here go back 200 years I’ll be pleased to see Old Barn Way redeveloped and community football encouraged, and despite what has happened I wish RMF all the best.
The fault for this situation does not lie with them: they have no previous history in Southwick. The fault lies fairly and squarely with successive lease holders who allowed the ground to fall into such disrepair that it had to be closed - and, even more shamefully, with a council who allowed them to do so.
Yours, AFC Southwick, saying goodbye.
