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Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Ron Waller, star of SMBU, tells us what he thinks the new Trust should be for.

I was asked what I want from a newly-merged Wycombe Wanderers Trust, but I think I’ll try and be slightly less demanding and write what I’d like to see from it instead. I’ll probably drift off and start preaching a bit, but I’ll try my best not to. I should say at this point that there’ll be massive holes in arguments and plenty to pick further holes in, but I’d like to get the ball rolling.

I think the WWFC Trust should be as inclusive – and I’ll try not to repeat that word too often – as possible. In that sentence, I’ve said everything I want to, but I promised a bit more, so I’ll elaborate.

It isn’t the worst thing in the world to sit back and accept who we are and what we are. Maybe some of us don’t want to accept it, but there aren’t that many people in the world that really care about the future of Wycombe Wanderers Football Club. Really, it’s not that many. So for any Supporters Organisation created solely with the future of the club in mind, it has to attract as many of those people – the ones that care – as possible.

Firstly, it should cost as little as possible to join. £10 a year sounds fair to me.

Secondly, its communication should be to the whole world, via the internet. It should be open and transparent, and proud of what it stands for. It isn’t enough to just report back to the Trust board, or to the Trust members, it should be to everyone. How are people supposed to know what the Trust does, when it only tells itself? If there is hard work being done to preserve and uphold the proud heritage of Wycombe Wanderers Football Club, then stick your chest out and tell the world.

Someone suggested to me that the new Trust website would have its content restricted by technical wizardry so that only members get full access to the information available. When I heard this my heart sank. If the Founders and Supporters Trusts suffered from one thing, it was the inability to convince the wider fanbase that it actually wanted them to become members. The impression given by a password restricted website reminds me of the school swot covering his algebra answers with his arm: slightly smug; pleased with himself that he knows things that other people don’t; incredibly unappealing; and no-one ever liked him. And it turns out none of us ever needed the algebra answers in life anyway.

In an ideal world, I’d like to see a Trust newsletter pasted to the side of a 40ft truck and driven round the edge of the pitch while Bodger sounds the horn, but I’m not sure the Desso can take it. Instead, I’d like to see the Trust website become regularly updated, regularly contributed to, regularly offering new comment and diverse opinion – bold in its conviction and in its content. The information – what they do, what they stand for, what they can do for supporters, what supporters can do for the club – is there for everyone, whoever they are, wherever they are.

There are enough clubs, enough cliques, and enough groups. The merger of the Trusts is an enormous step in the right direction. We have to swallow our pride. If we as fans want to have a meaningful say in the future of this football club, we have to accept that, actually, we shouldn’t be asking people to pay before they even know what the Trust does – that really, it IS enough for people just to be interested enough to go onto a website. From that website, they might like what they see and commit to membership of an organisation that welcomes anyone who feels strongly about WWFC.

The WWFC Trust, and NOT, contrary to popular belief, the gasroom, can be the place where you get a chance to have a say in the future of the club, the club we as fans used to own. What right does anyone have to turn round and say to anyone else, “My support is more important than yours”, or “I care more than you do.” They don’t. They just don’t. When you’re stood there watching Wycombe win, there’s no-one in the world who can tell you it’s more important to them or can tell you it means more to them. Whether you’ve had a season ticket for fifty years or whether you’re following the results on TV on a farm in Dumfries, or on the internet in Hong Kong, we are all Wycombe Wanderers supporters. I feel so strongly about this I’d usually swear at this point, but I’ll hold myself in.

Major decisions about the future of this club are going to be made in the next few years and due to the fear of alienating the supporters (or customers, if you must) those decisions are going to have to be ratified or given the green light to by the Wycombe Wanderers Trust. That Trust can either be a collection of 300 members, tacitly agreeing to everything ever suggested for the “good of the club”, refusing to question or argue any differing points of view, regardless of whether they protect and preserve the enshrined areas, or uphold the proud heritage of the club. Or it can be the genuine voice of every single person who cares about Wycombe Wanderers Football Club – an organisation to support the goals of the Founder Members, to ensure and put pressure on their commitment to the objectives they’ve promised to achieve and the values they claim to uphold.

If you care, if you have an opinion, if you debate the future of club on the internet or in the pub, then I urge you to pay the £10, and join the Trust. If you don’t, then to me, you are accepting that Wycombe Wanderers Football Club is a closed shop, an in crowd, run by people who can force their opinions and policies whether they make sense to you or not.

And it’s not, you know.

Ron Waller is a special correspondent for irreverent Wanderers website “Stack My Beech Up”. More of his work can be found at www.smbu.co.uk, though some of the site's content may offend the faint of heart.

posted in special-features | 21.11.2008. 21:54

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