Supporters’ Directive

An ultimatum and directive have resulted from a perceived mis-use of social media by the then Chief Executive of Supporters’ Direct (SD). It is the overseeing organisation formed by the Government (with cross-party agreement) to provide support to ‘supporters’ trusts (fans) to secure a greater level of accountability and democracy within football clubs and more recently in other sports.  

The alleged remarks, reported in The Guardian, made his position untenable and has resulted in his, only this week, using the hashtag on the same platform, Twitter, #gizzajob.

£1.2M funding has been pulled (SD’s enabling fund for the next three years).  This decision courtesy of the Football Stadia Improvement Fund (FSIF), a grant-giving body the Premier League wholly finances. The FSIF board stated the withdrawal of funds was in response to insulting comments, including swearing, by the Chief Executive after AFC Wimbledon won promotion to the Football League.  Naturally some of our clients are pro-greater supporters’ involvement as was much of our recent Turkish conference.  I have only worked on projects in consultation with former SD employees Brian Lomax (earlier Managing Director) and Simon Binns who conducted themselves professionally (others less so) – and a former Director, Sean Hamil now at Birkbeck College, who was credible as a guest speaker at our aforementioned conference also.