You make your own luck in life, and the efforts of everyone who worked tirelessly to keep Chester FC alive are now set to be rewarded ten-fold.
Majorca-based businessman Stuart Murphy’s risk-free £1million commitment to Chester, spread over the next three years, is the opportunity of a lifetime for the football club, a chance to build an infrastructure which - if spent prudently - could protect this proud former Football League club for decades to come.
Turn the clock back to January, and the landscape looked very different for the cash-strapped Blues.
Supporters flocked to a packed City Fans United (CFU) meeting at the Swansway Chester Stadium and were dealt a hammer blow, as the true extent of the club’s financial troubles was revealed.
The club faced the very real possibility of going out of business unless £50,000 could be raised in the short-term, a second potential insolvency for this proud former Football League club within eight years.
Blues fans - who had been oblivious to the serious mis-management in the summer of 2017 which severely crippled their club - are used to a crisis and that initial £50,000 target was quickly passed. Within another six weeks it was doubled.
Over 1,000 supporters packed into a youth team game, raising £12,500, club legend Grenville Millington and Ed Jones raised over £7,000 by walking from Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground to Chester FC, and there was Colin Murray’s fantastic all-star game which featured the likes of Michael Owen and Ian Rush, which pulled in over £25,000.
Each and every one of those efforts – from those who put £1 in a collection bucket to those who wrote out cheques for four-figure sums – kept Chester afloat in the hope of better and brighter days down the road, and suddenly Murphy’s donation gives the club the chance to steer a fresh path towards building a sustainable fan-owned club, as was the vision when the club reformed in 2010.
The vast majority of the commitment from Murphy – who owns Chester-based business rates firm Exacta – is earmarked for improvements right across the infrastructure of the club, from what we all see on the pitch week-in-week-out, to commercial revenue to matchday experience.
Murphy will take his seat on the Operations Board, an obvious move given his considerable business expertise, but he has never asked for a share in the club and his seven-figure commitment is an extremely generous donation.
Chester FC now has the chance to become a self-sufficient, successful, fan-owned football club.
In Anthony Johnson and Bernard Morley, the club has two ambitious young managers who want progress through the divisions and have a proven track record of knowing how to do just that.
The product on the pitch must be such, that Chester’s supporters – who voted with their feet at the end of last season – want to come back through the turnstiles and watch their team, at their ground, in their city. There’s a strong belief Johnson and Morley are the right men to deliver on that promise.
The long-suffering supporters have had to endure 18 months of misery. They deserve this generous intervention. Let’s hope it’s the start of something special for Chester FC.
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