Why do football clubs collapse? ft. Football Heritage's Rory Bryce

Exciting news this week as Football Heritage podcast host Rory Bryce joins Guy and Francesco to discuss the decline and disappearance of football clubs. With several years of experience hosting the Forgotten Football Clubs podcast, Rory shares valuable insights on identifying when a club is in trouble and strategies for recovery. 

Rory also sheds light on his involvement in establishing the open-air football museum, Football Square Mile, in Glasgow. Stay tuned for this insightful conversation on the challenges and solutions in the world of football clubs! 

#Football #Podcast #Heritage #FootballClubs #Insights

Rory can be found on Twitter/X here and the Football Heritage X account is regularly updated while the podcast is available on Spotify here.

Transcript

Why do football clubs collapse? ft. Football Heritage's Rory Bryce

Guy Burton 00:00

Hi, it's Guy here. Before the episode starts, I just wanted to let you know that since we did the recording with our guest, Rory Bryce, in this week's show, he's now moved on to a new project. As you'll hear in the episode, we talked to Rory about the work he was doing on the Forgotten Football Podcast and the broad insights and lessons he gained while doing that podcast. 

Guy Burton 00:20

Since then, however, Rory no longer hosts the Forgotten Football Podcast, which is now known as Forgotten Football Clubs. Rory is involved in a new project, which he is curating and hosting, and which is called the Football Heritage Podcast. 

Guy Burton 00:32

It still maintains the spirit of the work he was doing before, but it does mean we'll be referring to the previous podcast during the episode. We'll leave the links to Rory and the Football Heritage Podcast in the show notes. 

Guy Burton 00:43

Thanks, and on with the show. 

Guy Burton 00:55

Hello and welcome to a new edition of the Football Podcast where football meets politics. I'm one of your co -hosts, Guy Burton, and I'm joined here by my other co -host, Francesco Belcastro. 

Guy Burton 01:04

Francesco, how are you doing today? 

Francesco Belcastro 01:06

I'm all right, Guy. How are you? 

Guy Burton 01:08

Yeah, not too bad. Not too bad. So do you know what we're talking about today? 

Francesco Belcastro 01:12

Today we're talking to some friends of ours, to a friend of ours from a podcast that we really like. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:17

So it's good. We're working together. 

Guy Burton 01:20

Yeah, it's a bit of a mutual loving, really, because we like their podcast, we listen to theirs, and they listen to ours, and they also put it out on the same day, which means that anyone listening to this, you know, if you've listened to ours, you should go and listen to theirs, and vice versa. 

Guy Burton 01:34

But yeah, so we're talking to Rory Bryce, who's the administrator and host of the Forgotten Football Podcast. Rory, welcome to the show. 

Rory Bryce 01:45

That's a lovely introduction, guys. It's great to be here. Thanks very much for having me on. 

Guy Burton 01:48

Yeah, no, you're welcome. And so let me just sort of give the listeners a bit of a blurb about Rory so that you know who he is and what he does. So Rory, as I said, is the administrator and host of the Forgotten Football Podcast. 

Guy Burton 02:00

That's a football history and heritage project which has been active since 2023. And Forgotten Football itself is more than just a podcast. It brings together blog articles and podcasts about football history and heritage, covering lost clubs, unknown stories, forgotten histories, and pretty much everything in between with new podcast episodes coming out on Mondays, as I mentioned. 

Rory Bryce 02:20

Rory is also the heritage officer for the Football Square Mile in Glasgow, whose mission it is to showcase the 21 heritage sites across Glasgow and which make up the world's biggest open air football museum. 

Rory Bryce 02:31

And Rory has pedigree in this because he graduated from the University of Stirling with a distinction in an MSc in Heritage. And his dissertation focused on the heritage elements present within football in Scotland and how fan led heritage initiatives have led the charge in preserving, promoting, and maintaining the heritage of football clubs around the country. 

Guy Burton 02:49

Rory also has his own personal project, which he was telling us before the show, to create a map of every form of football grounds in Scotland. And you are up to how many entries now? 

Rory Bryce 03:00

387 at the moment out of, oh god I don't know, 10 ,000 maybe at the very least!

Guy Burton 03:05

So this could be a lifetime project for you I think? 

Rory Bryce 03:08

I think so yeah. 

Guy Burton 03:09

And tell us, you also have a football team as well, who do you follow? 

Rory Bryce 03:13

So I follow Celtic, I've followed Celtic pretty much my entire life, and my junior team or local team to go down that route is Lanark United. 

Guy Burton 03:21

Okay, junior obviously has a slightly different term in Scotland, north of the border as opposed to in England, right? 

Rory Bryce 03:28

Yeah, yeah that's right, so the Scottish pyramid is effectively split up into senior, junior and amateur. 

Rory Bryce 03:34

Junior not in the sense of the age, but in terms of the level of football being played, but the junior sides were recently absolved into the Scottish football pyramid, so there's a pathway for them into the professional weeks now. 

Guy Burton 03:45

Right, okay. Well listen, Rory, it's great to have you on the show, and maybe we could start a little bit by, you know, if you could tell us a little bit about, you know, forgotten football, what it is, I mean, I've given a little bit of a blurb, but I would love to hear from you about it, and, you know, how long you've been doing it for, what, you know, what you've found, well, who's involved in it, sort of the clubs you've covered? 

Rory Bryce 04:06

Yeah, sure thing, so Forgotten Football started as Forgotten Football Clubs, it was initially a blog by my former co -host, Phil O 'Rourke, and he eventually turned that blog into a book, Forgotten Football Clubs: 50 teams across the world gone but never forgotten, which was published last February. 

Rory Bryce 04:21

So we created the Forgotten Football Clubs podcast, which was supposed to be a companion to the book where we'd basically get on to talk with the people he'd interviewed in the book about the clubs they'd spoken about, and we just kind of pick out some of the themes a little bit more from, so the angle that I was quite keen to bring onto the podcast was, well, you've got all these lost football clubs, 

Rory Bryce 04:42

and yeah, you've got the history of them, which is great, but you've also got the heritage of them, and the distinction there is that, whereas history is looking at what they've done in their story, the heritage is more what have they influenced in the present and what impact have they had in the past, so drawn out themes like identity. 

Rory Bryce 05:00

The different types of things that their fans would do, their viewpoints, the kind of legacy of the club in a wider setting and then any other clubs that would spring up after them. So phoenix clubs, for instance. 

Rory Bryce 05:11

So in that kind of first run, we started off with Sporting Fingal, which were a short -lived club from Ireland. It was a club that Phil used to follow. And I think like many other clubs who've came and went, they really started off just by being bankrolled pretty heavily. 

Rory Bryce 05:26

And then I think after about five or six years, the money basically just dried up. Because of the property crisis and they folded because there was nothing left there anymore. But we've covered clubs from the UK, Lebanon, Ireland, you know, just anywhere in the world. 

Rory Bryce 05:42

We're quite happy to go anywhere and talk about these clubs because they all have a meaning and in some way or another, they all meant something to someone at some point. And we'd like to think anyway that there are still people out there who have followed these clubs and have memorabilia and merchandise from them. 

Rory Bryce 05:55

And then... in December or January I think it was this year we finished up that first run and we basically just kind of removed the boundaries from what we were doing and said right we've been using Twitter or X now as our kind of hub for posting out pictures and different football history content so let's expand the podcast include things like stadiums, players and different topics and themes like the role that politics and identity plays in football clubs and fan groups. 

Rory Bryce 06:25

I suppose that's kind of like my special interest if you like and yeah that's where we've been going from now and now we've kind of branched out in its grown arms and legs into this larger project which I'm really proud to be a part of. 

Francesco Belcastro 06:40

That's fantastic. Now obviously you mentioned that the clubs that you looked at are from different parts of the world and yeah so I guess we will have different different trajectories there but can you tell us a bit what you learn from doing the podcast and also like are there some kind of patterns in the way that the clubs close in this or their their trajectory across the world would you say or is just too difficult to generalize Rory? 

Rory Bryce 07:09

No it's a really good question I think I think there's an element of both there so every country has their context in which football operates so for example in Iceland there's a really big merger culture because you know the clubs there if you're not based in Reykjavik it's very remote it's a bit more difficult to travel and a bit more difficult to actually challenge the Reykjavik clubs because they're from a much more urban area they've got a big a bigger catchment in terms of getting supporters in bums and seats if you will. 

Rory Bryce 07:40

So what a lot of their clubs would do was merge together to try and create a bigger powerhouse to actually challenge those clubs and be a little bit more successful so that's that's kind of their context but then somewhere else. Belgium for instance one of the episodes that we've done recently was on KV Oostend who just went bust there's also a big merger culture there, but that's sort of part of a wider problem where football in Belgium is not unregulated, 

Rory Bryce 08:03

but it's not the best in terms of a lot of these people still managed to get into positions in power within football clubs that ends up seeing historic clubs fold. But then by basically forcing the club that's folded to merge with an amateur team, you're still erasing that team's history and there's still a wider problem there in terms of fan representation and the identities of those fans. 

Rory Bryce 08:28

So that's kind of another issue, but there are a lot of commonalities as you asked Francesco and I think the biggest one for me is that it doesn't matter what level of the game that you play at, your club is still at risk of going under at any point and it all comes back to the ownership, it all comes back to the powers that fans have to stop certain owners coming in and I think that's the important part is that no club is safe from financial difficulties. 

Guy Burton 08:53

Can I just...

Francesco Belcastro 08:53

Sorry Guy, before you come in, just remind listeners that last year we had a fantastic episode on Belgian football with Scott Coyne. 

Rory Bryce 09:03

Yeah, Scott's brilliant. 

Francesco Belcastro 09:03

Yeah, Scott's brilliant, absolutely. He's a fellow Scott 

Guy Burton 09:08

Are you saying you're a fellow, you're a Scot now, Francesco? 

Francesco Belcastro 09:11

No, I'm a fellow Scot of Rory, not of mine. 

Guy Burton 09:14

Right, right. 

Francesco Belcastro 09:15

I mean, if you say you're Brazilian, you know, we can say everything!

Francesco Belcastro 09:20

It's all about identity, guys. You should know that in the second season of football. So, yeah, listeners should really check these out because it gives a lot of context in terms of Belgian football, what Rory was referring to. 

Guy Burton 09:34

But absolutely. But also, I mean, just to plug as well, you know, Forgotten Football's podcast with Scott. I mean, you know, with Scott, he talked to us very broadly about sort of the relationship between football and politics in Belgium, whereas I think having listened to that episode on Oostend myself, you know, he really drilled down into the into the into the club as well. 

Guy Burton 09:52

So that was really, yeah, actually, I was going to ask because, you know, there's one of the things that you see with I mean, there's a lot of discussion about, say, for example, German clubs that maybe that especially when Britain because we've got this club, there's this tension, isn't there, between sort of clubs as a community asset and yet also being a business and a lot of the owners being having to run it. 

Guy Burton 10:16

And and so whereas in Germany, you have this model where, you know, the fans dominate the ownership, does that have any kind of impact at all in terms of German clubs going under? Does it does it reduce the the the the prospect of that happening? 

Rory Bryce 10:33

It does, I would say the majority of German clubs that we've looked at have went under before the 50 plus one came in and even then a lot of it is mergers. And what a lot of it also is, is a sort of hangover is probably not the right word, the aftermath from the the fall of the Berlin Wall, um, done an episode on Union Berlin with Kit Holden, who wrote the book, Scheisse! We're Going Up. Brilliant book. 

Rory Bryce 10:59

If you hadn't read it, it's absolutely exceptional and kind of digging into all these problems. But the disparity between the ball clubs in the, in the former West and the former East of Germany, Germany is huge. 

Rory Bryce 11:10

And it, not to simplify a really, really complex situation, but it basically boils down to the clubs in the West already having this established capitalist infrastructure, basically picking apart the assets of all these teams. 

Rory Bryce 11:22

So there was a large influx of teams who, who went bust around then because they effectively couldn't cope with their surroundings because they didn't have the infrastructure for it. So there's different, there's different political contexts there in Germany, but I would absolutely agree that the, the 50 plus one rule and the fan ownership model in Germany is a reason why a lot of clubs haven't went under there. 

Francesco Belcastro 11:46

I mean, the sort of stereotype about a club closing, it's, you know, owner comes in, spends too much, you know, they cannot balance the books and, you know, the club goes down. But really like, I mean, the book and a lot of the work you have done shows kind of, there are different trajectories there. 

Francesco Belcastro 12:02

And there is also like a quite different dimension talking about big clubs where sometimes it is, you know, the big investor that, you know, doesn't put money anymore. As smaller clubs that sometimes depend on a kind of small group of people not necessarily money, but just kind of, you know, run out of interest or not able to. 

Francesco Belcastro 12:21

So does that make a difference in terms of the impact or when a club goes down, a club goes down? 

Rory Bryce 12:28

I think you're right. I think there are different factors that lead to a club becoming defunct. And I think it can happen for different reasons as well, but more often than not, they're intertwined. 

Rory Bryce 12:37

So the example that probably comes to my head first is Stort Sunnhordland from Norway, who were called by the media, the club with no soul, because basically a couple of rich investors decided to form this club for the Sunnhortland region in Norway, but based in Stord, they just could not get them off the ground in terms of getting buy -in from supporters. I don't think they had an attendance of more than a hundred at any game. 

Rory Bryce 13:05

Oh, yeah, so literally like, if you've not got any supporters and how can you run a football club? And after a few years, they said, yeah, there's no point in us doing this anymore. So let's just leave it, which is entirely fair and Stord are now competing as their own club. 

Rory Bryce 13:19

So that was one reason. Again, going back to KV Oostend, myself and Scott Coyne discussed clubs within multi -club ownership models who are effectively used as the sacrificial lamb, if you like, where their assets are stripped, players are sold off so the money can then get redistributed to other clubs higher up the food chain within that ownership model. 

Rory Bryce 13:38

So that certainly happens as well. And then you've got the case where maybe not so much through malicious. tendencies, but clubs put all their eggs in one basket with a specific owner. Maybe like in the case of Gretna, who I mentioned quite a lot in the early stages of the podcast, and the owner becomes unwell, the money has to be pooled and they have no trust. 

Francesco Belcastro 14:01

Where are they based, Rory, for listeners that don't know them, this club? 

Rory Bryce 14:04

So Gretna were based literally on the border with England and Scotland. They played in the English lower leagues for a number of years before they decided to start competing in Scotland. 

Rory Bryce 14:15

And they're probably most well known for the reign of Brooks Mileson who owned them. I think it was from about 2004 to 2008, something around then. They won three back to back promotions. They made it to the Scottish Cup final, narrowly losing out to Hearts on penalties. 

Rory Bryce 14:34

And then they, I think they had a very, very short run in Europe, but maybe one game by then the wheels were already starting to come off. And then. Brooks ileson sadly became ill, quite a tragic scenario, and his family decided to pull his assets away from the club and, you know, completely understandable. 

Rory Bryce 14:53

But because they didn't have any other crutch to lean on, they went bust because they couldn't pay any other players. 

Francesco Belcastro 14:59

Now, these examples raise a very interesting point about the connection between football clubs and identity, right? 

Francesco Belcastro 15:07

I mean, the Norwegian case, it's sort of an extreme one to one, to one end of the spectrum. But you also have, on the other hand, the first club that comes to mind is Wimbledon, right, in England. So you're kind of the opposite, a club that, you know, has got big bases of supporters for reasons that have gone not into the club or partially to the club, then moved to Milton Keynes and become MK Dons, 

Francesco Belcastro 15:30

and then funds come back. So would you say, I mean, I know it's not exactly what you look at in the podcast, but would you say that there are some clubs that go more of a soul than some others? And what, how can we define that? 

Francesco Belcastro 15:43

Is that something that explains that? It's a difficult question. 

Rory Bryce 15:47

No, no, it is, but it's a good question. It's a complicated one as well. And if anyone's interested in looking into this more than them, please get in touch. 

Rory Bryce 15:56

I can provide you with some great articles from various academics and other sources because it's really, really fascinating digging into it. So the way that I would define it as a club with soul as a club with supporters first and foremost, it doesn't necessarily need to be a club with a lot of history. 

Rory Bryce 16:10

Because otherwise we wouldn't have any more new clubs, right? That's just a fact of football. I'm not, I'm not a big fan of people, you know, they slag off clubs for having no history, unless it's like a case of MK Dons, right? 

Rory Bryce 16:21

If it's just a new club that's formed, then fair enough, you know? But I think a club that has a soul has to have supporters and it has to have the supporters back in. In the case of Stord Sunnhordland, it was two rich guys, not from the area who decided they were going to make a club for this region. 

Rory Bryce 16:37

They didn't really understand. I don't personally think they knew what they were doing. They didn't really understand how to make a football club. Um, because to have a football club, you need to have different things. 

Rory Bryce 16:48

It needs to have roots in the community. It needs to have a clear identity that's linked to the community. Um, and it needs to have supporters and put who have lived in that community and grew up in that community. 

Rory Bryce 16:57

I think that's the things that you need to make a football club. And that's what gives it its identity course. Then you do have situations like with MK Dons and AFC Wimbledon, probably the worst thing that could have ever happened in football, to be completely honest, um, you, you wouldn't wish that on, on any club. 

Rory Bryce 17:15

Uh, and again, it's, it's happened in other circumstances and Clydebank when they initially went bust, they were bought by Airdre who had also went defunct and moved to Airdre and then called Airdreonians before that an owner had planned to move them to Dublin. 

Rory Bryce 17:29

But this is just taking clubs out of their communities. I think, I think for a club to have a soul, it has to be rooted in its community. It has to have the supporters input so that it properly represents them. 

Rory Bryce 17:40

And it has to have a clear identity that's linked to its surroundings. 

Francesco Belcastro 17:44

That's interesting, though, because I mean, we often associate, as you said, like, I think you're right, it's wrong to just think, you know, only like old clubs can can have a soul because there could be something that happens in a community that that kind of makes it important to have representation. 

Francesco Belcastro 17:59

So a new club can sort of intercept that particular, I mean, whether it's whether it's a group that it's so I think it's very important this point of sort of new versus versus old. And I like to I like to stress that I completely agree with it. 

Rory Bryce 18:12

Yeah, I think I was just going to say, I think a good example is a case study to look at is Clyde FC in Scotland. So Clyde's first ground was in a battlefield, which is in the east end of Glasgow, just towards the top end of the Gallaghey near where Celtic play now. 

Rory Bryce 18:31

But for the majority of their existence, they played in Shawfield, which is very much their spiritual home. It's sort of just over into Rutherglen and Shawfield was the heart of Clyde FC and where the majority of their supporters came from until they were forced to move out. 

Rory Bryce 18:45

I think that was in the 80s or 90s because the stadium was falling apart. But Clyde haven't had a permanent home since then. After that, the ground shared for a little bit and the Clyde fans referred to themselves as they... 

Rory Bryce 18:57

It's not a term that I enjoy using and, you know, obviously feel free to edit out, but they called themselves the Gypsy Army because they were nomadic. And they didn't have a home for very long because of a ground sharing in places like Hamilton, Partick, you know, nowhere near their home. 

Rory Bryce 19:13

So then in the early 2000s, they moved to Broadwood, which is in Cumbernauld, miles away from Rutherglen, you know, and not even just like a five minute walk from Cumbernauld train station. It's in the middle of nowhere. 

Rory Bryce 19:25

There's nothing around it. No pubs, noeries, nothing that Clyde fans from the area would have known. And then they get kicked out of Broadwood in 2021 after a controversial signing and the ground shared with Hamilton, which again is miles away from Rutherglen. 

Rory Bryce 19:41

So now you have this club who have three generations of support, have seen Clyde in different places. You've got the core fans who would have seen them at Shawfield and consider that the spiritual home. 

Rory Bryce 19:50

You've got the fans who would have known them as the nomadic ground sharers. And now you've got the fans who would have known them at Broadwood and the club were very, very close to falling out of the professional league in Scotland, uh, just this season, which would have been absolutely disastrous for them. 

Rory Bryce 20:03

And thankfully they didn't, but it's because in my opinion, it's because they don't have a home. They don't have any roots in any community anymore. And it's not going to be long until a lot of their core support that knew them when they would at Shawfield are no longer going to be living. 

Rory Bryce 20:18

And that just creates a whole other problem. 

Guy Burton 20:20

Yeah. 

Unknown speaker 20:21

Very interesting. Dramatic, but very interesting. 

Guy Burton 20:23

I'm just, I'm just, uh, I mean, I don't think it's really a question. It's more sort of an observation because, you know, as someone who is also supporter of a club that went defunct and then reformed, in my case Aldershot but you know they also...

Rory Bryce 20:36

 Of course, yeah.

Guy Burton 20:37

And I know you've done a, I did an episode on that as well. But of course we stayed. We stayed at the same ground. But there is this sort of and I get the sense from the fact that from the support you know there are many many the older supporters who see really sort of the Aldershot 1992 as a continuation of the of the previous Aldershot in many ways. I do as well because that's the club I followed but... And yet there is something there was something different at the time when that when the new club was reformed because of course it was very much fan -led. You know, obviously we... eventually... that lost out you know when business people came in. But it what it did feel like more like ours plus also it's playing more locally we could get to the games a lot easier because we weren't going up to the north of England so much - my grandfather loved that - but it's but I mean I'm curious like whether you find it you found in talking to people around about these you know forms these clubs that have you know gone defunct and restarted; whether there is this sense of here is actually a club that is continuing from the past or is it a new club. I mean how does the community engage with that?

Rory Bryce 21:39

So I think they, in the terms of Aldershot and Chester I think a lot of people do see it as a continuation.

Guy Burton 21:45

Mm -hmm

Rory Bryce 21:47

And I'm kind of the same opinion. I think for a club to be considered entirely different from the previous iteration there needs to be a very clear identity change, whether that's in kit, badge, name, stadium, philosophy.Whatever that might be I think it needs to be quite clear and quite distinct and I know that can be quite hard to justify at times but football's one of those things that thrives on intangibles and that's what we need to go by. So I think for Aldershot and Chester they can be considered a continuation of the similar of the same club. Now one of the episodes that we've done just towards the end of our summer break was Hereford right? So Hereford obviously, a massive club for a number of years playing in the lower leagues of English football and when we spoke with Matt Huey and Simon Wright on that show, 

Rory Bryce 22:31

they both said that the period surrounding Hereford's demise - and don't get me wrong, it must be the same for any fan of a club that's going under. The time surrounding that was just awful, the support were completely divided and by the time the club was wound up, they just said they felt a massive sense of relief. 

Rory Bryce 22:47

And the vibe that I got from them when we finished the episode is that they see Hereford as in Hereford United you know, there's always going to be, they're always going to remember the good times and there's always going to be memories and nostalgia attached to them, but Hereford FC are the ones that they feel the best about because it's fan owned. 

Rory Bryce 23:02

As you said, it's theirs, they've got it back and it feels like the club is going in a really, really positive direction now. So I found it quite interesting how they were quite willing not to cast aside Hereford United but just to say, you know, they're in the past, they're done. 

Rory Bryce 23:16

This is Hereford FC and when I asked them the question, would you rather have the Hereford United name back, they were both, I would say if not on the fence, leaning towards No. because they were quite happy with Hereford FC and the direction the club was going in now. 

Rory Bryce 23:31

So that was a really, really interesting sort of nuance to it as well. 

Guy Burton 23:35

Yeah.

Francesco Belcastro 23:35

That's interesting. Sorry, Guy, before you asked the next question, the last episode of our first season was actually on football and nostalgia and melancholy. 

Francesco Belcastro 23:48

So I think we spoke particularly, we spoke with Jack Black about it. Jack has written on these and there was a lot about the English national team, but I think it kind of mirrors, you know, it's the same idea of nostalgia, really, we're talking about national teams or clubs. 

Francesco Belcastro 24:04

Guy, sorry. 

Guy Burton 24:05

Yeah, no, I wanted to talk a little bit more about this idea of what the community does when a club goes under. I mean, you've alluded to this in some specific cases, but are there sort of like some broad, you know, sort of patterns that you've seen in terms of looking at these different clubs over the course of doing your podcast in the way that the community involved responds to that? 

Rory Bryce 24:28

Yeah, there has been and they're all tied to the context of the club at the time. So obviously in the case of Aldershot, Chester and Hereford, the various supporters trusts rallied around the clubs and formed a phoenix club almost immediately because that's what they wanted. 

Rory Bryce 24:43

They were quite happy to start off at the kind of bottom rungs of football in England and work the way back up again, which is brilliant and it's really, really fantastic. One of the earliest episodes we've done of our new run was with Caroline Parker, board member of Sell Before We Dai, who are probably one of the most publicly, I guess, promoted fan protest groups within England from last season because they're the reason that Reading didn't drop down into League Two and go under. 

Rory Bryce 25:17

And I think last season was probably the best we've seen in a while for fan movements in England, Torquay, another one that comes to mind. because fans rallied around them. Sadly, it's not the case for all clubs. 

Rory Bryce 25:33

If you support a football club who, and you're in the unlucky position where the owner is just going to dig their heels in and effectively let the club dissolve, then there's not an awful lot you can do, which is a real shame. 

Rory Bryce 25:44

Sometimes the supporters aren't able to do it. They're not able to get enough buy -in from other fan groups. And again, it's just one of these facets of football. I think every football club will have a supporters trust, but it's how many people are fair weather fans, how many people have grown up with this club, how many people have given it the kind of buy -in that other fans might do, like Sell Before We Dai, 

Rory Bryce 26:04

like the Torquay United Supporters Trust. So it can be a really, really difficult one to try and monitor, I suppose, but it does just depend on the fans that are there. I mean, Italy clubs go defunct and then reform. 

Rory Bryce 26:18

It's almost like a nuance that we get in the Football Association over there. The fans don't really need to do much. There'll be loads of name changes and things like that. And then you get clubs elsewhere where they'll change names constantly, they'll be moved and the fans are just powerless to stop at Thailand, probably being the best example of that that we've covered. 

Guy Burton 26:35

I mean, would you say that's also partly to do with the sort of just the, because the one thing that England is also quite well known for, I should say Britain, is the depth of the football pyramid and the fan culture around it and the community level. 

Guy Burton 26:49

You've got these very small teams in the UK, but with solid fan bases, whereas abroad, maybe that's not so much the case. Would that explain the difference between sort of the British approach or the English approach versus abroad? 

Rory Bryce 27:03

In some cases, maybe it's similar to... It depends on the football and culture and also the political and social culture of the country as well. If you're in a country where fans are being priced out of going to games, then there's not going to be the same kind of culture there, sadly. 

Rory Bryce 27:21

I mean, to an extent, Indonesia is one of those countries, just China as well, where ticket prices are extortionate and people aren't able to go and see them, the same kind of fan culture doesn't exist. 

Rory Bryce 27:33

I think where there is a very, very clear football and culture and a very clear support and culture, that's what is strongest. However, what I would caveat that by saying is, I think, that there is a serious threat in Britain that that supporters culture is going to be overshadowed by bad ownership and bad investment decisions. 

Rory Bryce 27:52

I think we're a bit of a crossroads and a bit of a precipice in terms of how we deal with that. So, you know, it's weird because it's not something you can necessarily compare between countries from what I found. 

Rory Bryce 28:04

It just it does depend on the different contexts that other countries and fan groups will find themselves in. 

Francesco Belcastro 28:09

Can I ask you one thing? So we mentioned the idea of impact on communities that obviously it's massive changes according to the size of the clubs and our they are in communities but would you say that what we need is to think more of clubs as community assets and what can be done in terms of football governance? 

Francesco Belcastro 28:28

Does it need to be changed in that sense Rory to also change the way that we consider football clubs in relation to the communities? 

Rory Bryce 28:37

Yes it does, without doubt. So again it's a big question and it's not something that I'm expert on by any means but just through doing the podcast and the different research that I've done and I suppose just you know being a football fan and keeping abreast with everything that's going on at the time, 

Rory Bryce 28:55

it's about what you consider the football club to be within the community. So what I consider it being isn't just you know it's a place where people go for 90 minutes every week or every second week. 

Rory Bryce 29:06

They do the same things, they go through the same sort of ritualistic patterns that they do with their friends and it's something that it's a day out and it takes their mind off different things, that's fine. 

Rory Bryce 29:16

But it can also be something that supports the community, invest in the community, brings investment into the community and actually empowers the community to do better as well. And that's, I guess, where my interest in heritage comes into it as well, because with every football club, if they've stayed reasonably close to where they were founded, then they're going to have a history going back about maybe even 150 years. 

Rory Bryce 29:37

That's massive. If you are from the area and you know your family's from that area, chances are you're great, great whoever in 1860, 1870 went to see their club in their first game. And that can be massive for communities. 

Rory Bryce 29:49

I mean, you know, Francesco, you'll know yourself from living in Glasgow. There's some really, really impoverished communities up in Scotland and down in England as well. The ball clubs and these communities in particular have a massive role to play and they need to be doing more. 

Rory Bryce 30:02

And that's where governance has to come in and do something about that as well. I mean, obviously, there's been chat in the UK and in England specifically about independent regulators coming in that needs to be done properly. 

Rory Bryce 30:15

When I spoke about that with Scott, I think Belgium have just voted for there not to be changes to be made to that, which given our conversation seems insane, but it needs to be done properly. There has to be actual checks and balances put in place. 

Rory Bryce 30:27

And I know we're I know it's we're in modern football and I understand that money is going to take precedence over everything. Don't get me wrong. I'm not naive to that. But if people still want football clubs to exist, if people still want their clubs in this iteration to exist, even if they don't want their clubs to become like a Man City, then they need to get behind independent regulation that works properly within the UK. 

Rory Bryce 30:49

I mean, Motherwell is probably the best example I've seen of a fan owned club operating at the top level within the country. So I think they recently had an offer to be bought by someone who was involved in Netflix. 

Rory Bryce 31:00

This was only about a month or so ago now. And he got an independent value of the club done. And he said, I'm willing to come in and buy Motherwell for four million pounds. Right. That's that's that's insane amount of money for a club that's operating at the top flight of Scottish football. It's absolutely nowhere near what they should be offering or what they should be getting for their football club. And Motherwell are fan owned and their fan association turned around and said no, basically. 

Rory Bryce 31:26

Which I was really pleased about because it was a terrible, terrible deal. But what people were saying was, well, you know, if they come in and they buy it for cheap, but then they invest in us, but then you're just devaluing your club. 

Rory Bryce 31:38

Other people are going to see that they can do that within the league and, you know, it's just going to become this cheap thing. Who knows what that guy is going to do? He could completely strip the assets and leave them with nothing. 

Rory Bryce 31:47

And then a community is left without his football club. You know, what do you do in that case? And you invited that. And so this is what I'm saying about as being at a bit of a crossroads is that you've got these people like vultures who are swirling and don't get me wrong. 

Rory Bryce 31:59

I know some of them will be well intentioned, but there needs to be proper checks and balances in place to make sure that people are getting the best out of what they want for the club. Another really interesting one is Dundee. 

Rory Bryce 32:10

They're going to be moving away from Dens Park lately. And a gentleman who's actually a Dundee United fan and from the city, Steve Finan, he wrote the Lifted Over the Turnstiles series of books. He has effectively started the campaign for Dundee's Archibald Leech stand to be turned into a museum because it's one of the last remaining examples of a full Archibald Leech Stand and they're planning to develop it for housing. 

Rory Bryce 32:34

This could be such a great asset for the community to go in and find out about the history of football and Dundee, what their family has done in the different socio -political contexts as they say. And they're just planning to build those out for kit houses, you know, and again, I know money takes precedent, but it's just, yeah, I think these are the things that we need to look at in terms of what football clubs can do for the communities, 

Rory Bryce 32:55

but out with just being 90 minutes on a field. 

Francesco Belcastro 32:58

Can I just add one thing? We didn't mention it, but very often in some communities, clubs are also the ones that provide the only opportunity for a youth clubs, but also sometimes recreational football can be related, can be either managed and run in the facilities of the clubs. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:16

So a club going down for some communities means almost like everything football related going down. So it's not only, as you mentioned, you know, the Saturday match, the Sunday match, but the impact is kind of the economic aspect. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:28

There's also kind of, you know, it means that the kids next year won't be able to play football in that community. They'll have to go to, you know, 20 miles away. So I think sometimes it's sort of, we obviously kind of, I mean, the first team, it's the first thing that comes to mind, right? 

Francesco Belcastro 33:43

That sort of like, compet- competitive aspect, but there is, there is a much, much broader aspect there. 

Guy Burton 33:49

So Rory, one of the things I'm curious about, you've alluded to the importance of community and you know, how the governance, we need to be looking at governance of football. And in England, basically there is this drive we should be seeing, you know, coming through a regulator, at least in the English game. 

Guy Burton 34:05

But what about in Scotland? I mean, where, where are we with that? 

Rory Bryce 34:10

That's a good question, actually, and quite topical. So last year, I think, you know, I think, you know, I think, you know, I think, you know, reason the SFA effectively passed a motion to allow minority stakes to be purchased by multi -club ownership models in Scottish clubs. 

Rory Bryce 34:22

Probably the most publicised one was Bill Foley, owner of Bournemouth, who bought a 25% minority stake in Hibs. And I don't know, it's weird, call me a football purist but I'm against it myself because for so long, you know, it's not that I don't want Scottish football to grow and succeed, I do. 

Rory Bryce 34:42

I don't think multi -club ownership models are the way to do that. And the justification that people make is, well, you know, they'll send us their best players on loan and we'll sell them their best players. 

Rory Bryce 34:53

I'm like, yeah, that's what it might be for a few seasons but it doesn't always end up like that. Doesn't necessarily mean it's going to bring you success either. And the last thing I want is for these different people to start getting involved in our game and basically just stripping it away because it would be devastating and it's not something that anyone wants to see at any level of the game in any country. 

Rory Bryce 35:13

So I think if that continues we are going to need a regulator, we are going to need someone who says if you can prove that the finances across your other football clubs have been steady and stable for the last X so many years then fine you can go ahead with it and that's okay. 

Rory Bryce 35:28

I think they need to present a clear plan for what they want to do with the club up here as well. Up until that I probably wouldn't say we haven't had as much of a need for one. I think Gretna were the last senior football club to go defunct in Scotland, I think depending on how you see the situation with Rangers but I won't get into that. 

Rory Bryce 35:49

Of course there's been clubs further down the divisions that have gone defunct but that's just been because of Covid and lack of funding elsewhere so I think that's been the case. So I wouldn't say that there's been a massive need for regulation in Scotland however with the direction that things are taken out I think it's something that we should be considered. 

Guy Burton 36:06

Okay. And I guess also I mean for me at least the last thing I'm curious about is we've talked quite a bit about the insights you've gained from doing the podcast on Forgotten Football looking comparatively but is there anything that we've overlooked that you think is worth factoring in? 

Guy Burton 36:22

I mean we've touched upon why some of these clubs go defunct, what this means for the community but is there anything else that you've noticed from doing the podcast? 

Rory Bryce 36:33

I think again coming back to what I said at the safe from financial demise ultimately and it's down at the fans because that's putting a lot of weight on their shoulders but it's up to the fans to try and dictate how that looks and how their clubs look and how their owners look but also within that the clubs that lack any form of identity and to a degree some fan bases as well they are the ones that are the least likely to be successful, 

Rory Bryce 37:01

they're the ones that are the most likely to go defunct. If you don't have a fan group that's behind your club doing their best to try and save it then the demise is just going to be so much quicker. 

Rory Bryce 37:09

Also as I said you get these people who come into clubs they think they can just form a football. club and you know build it and they will follow type thing. It really ever works and that's just kind of par for the course as well. 

Rory Bryce 37:20

I think one thing that we've probably missed is you know you've got a lot of people especially in the modern day saying that politics doesn't have a place in football. Utter nonsense. Politics always has and always will have a place in football. 

Rory Bryce 37:32

It's always been a political game. 

Unknown speaker 37:34

It's good for us and since we still have a podcast right? 

Guy Burton 37:36

And also we didn't pay him to say it either!

Rory Bryce 37:42

No they didn't pay me! It's a very very strong belief of mine! 

Rory Bryce 37:47

No matter which club you support I would urge anyone to go out and find out more about them. If your club has a museum visit it. If your club has you know different programs on go and visit them and actually that's quite a good point as well. 

Rory Bryce 38:00

We can edit that bit out. One of the distinctions that I made when I was studying my master's and writing my dissertation is that you have club -led heritage initiatives so just Celtic as an example, they have the stadium tour and they have, you know, obviously Celtic has a really strong heritage anyway and it's reflected in the club through a lot of ways but if you want to go and see it as a visitor, 

Rory Bryce 38:24

the museum isn't really a museum, it's part of the stadium tour so it's already behind a paywall and anything else, heritage like a lot of other clubs is known as like the heritage collection, it's like a clothing line or something like that. 

Rory Bryce 38:38

But then you've got fan led heritage initiatives where they've got a little bit more freedom and a little bit more creative freedom. Celtic Graves Society who does tours of Glasgow related to Celtic's history. You've got the Founders Trail which is the Rangers equivalent. You've got Hearts Heritage who were an independent heritage initiative for Heart of Midlothian and are now part of the club and they run a free museum. 

Rory Bryce 38:59

There's a lot of different ways that you can engage with your football club and the history of the club and I encourage anyone to go and do it because it'll give you such a greater understanding and it'll hopefully make you closer to your club as well and ultimately that's what it's all about. 

Francesco Belcastro 39:11

Now you mentioned Glasgow as a former resident of the city of Glasgow, I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about the Football Square Mile that sounded very interesting. 

Rory Bryce 39:19

Sure, yeah so Football Square Mile is effectively a family heritage initiative. But it started off as the Hampden Collection in 2018. 

Rory Bryce 39:30

One of my colleagues Lindsay, she has the Glasgow football tour and she's been doing it for a number of years now. Effectively she's just doing a tour of Glasgow going round the different football and history elements that it played with the kind of broad theme being these people invented the modern game as we know and now Queen's Park with her passing game, the very first purpose built stadium at Hampden etc etc. 

Rory Bryce 39:51

She was approached by Graham Brown who was the head of the Hampden Collection and said I need you to save my bowling club which was Hampden Bowling Club which still stands and through saving that she actually uncovered a document which proved that the very first purpose built football stadium in the world was built at Hamsden Bowling Club. And it's just grown arms and legs and become this full project and our aim now is to gain UNESCO World Heritage status for the south side of Glasgow to showcase and protect all of these heritage elements. 

Rory Bryce 40:20

It's really, really fascinating. The Football Square Mile is a part of that, so there's 21 sites all in all. There's QR codes up on lampposts. It's the world's largest open -air football museum because you can walk it, you can cycle it, you can drive it, you can do whatever you like. 

Rory Bryce 40:33

It's all in public spaces in Glasgow. You don't need to pay to enter. Just go for a walk and go and scan these QR codes and find out about the history of the football in the city because we promise you, your mind will be absolutely blown by it. 

Guy Burton 40:44

Right. 

Francesco Belcastro 40:45

And people that want to find out more, there's a website, right? 

Rory Bryce 40:49

Yeah, it's just footballsquaremile .com, I think. If not, you can check out the Hampden Collection on Twitter and all the links will be on there. 

Guy Burton 40:57

I was going to say, we should also ask Rory to tell us where people can find Forgotten Football as well. 

Rory Bryce 41:05

Of course, yeah. So if you go into X, underscore Forgotten Footy. And on Spotify the Forgotten Football podcast. And those are the places you can find us all of our links are on our Twitter. If you like blog articles we're going to be launching a website soon. Yeeah it's all there. Drop us a message if you want us to cover anything as well. We're very open to speaking to people within the football community.

Guy Burton 41:25

Brilliant well thank you for taking the time to talk to us we really appreciate it.

Francesco Belcastro 41:30

Thank you very much it's been really really interesting and we encourage listeners to go and check out Forgotten Footy. What  you guys do compliments very well what we do. We are we're cousins!

Rory Bryce 41:39

Yeah i think that's a good way to putting it. Thanks very much for having me on and i can't wait to do the return leg with you guys on our podcast as well.

Guy Burton 41:48

Our pleasure.

Francesco Belcastro 41:49

Can i just specify that i'm not claiming that i am scottish, Guy. But Glasgow is a very welcoming city so i feel a bit Glaswegian. 

Guy Burton 41:56

Well, you know there is there's a sizable italian community up in in scotland in particularly Glasgow. I think... didn't Armano Iannucci come from there, I believe?

Rory Bryce 42:06

Yeah, you can still visit his family's cafe in Prestwick. And a family friend of ours, um Mario, he came over to see the the European Cup final in Hampden in 1950 something I want to say... He came over to see that i think it was between Real Madrid and someone else and he never left. 

Guy Burton 42:26

He loved it so much!

Rory Bryce 42:26

Yeah, which is mental coming from um coming from the the lovely sands of Sardinia! So there you go!

Guy Burton 42:33

Well i just expect the quality of ice cream to be really good in Glasgow as a result of all those Italians there! Okay well listen: so that... so thank you so much Rory for taking the time. Um, Francesco before we go what do we need to remind the listeners?

Francesco Belcastro 42:46

Well the usual things our episodes and we have done about 50 of them we still got a lot of good ideas but listeners got even better ideas than we do so they should get in touch and tell us what we should work on which we speak to i know you've been working on the last couple of weeks to get us the guests, Guy, and you could really use from our listeners so you could take a weekend off.

Guy Burton 43:08

Yup.  

Francesco Belcastro 43:10

And where can they find us? 

Guy Burton 43:11

As ever, they can find us. Well, we we we still call it Twitter, but it's X. There's also we're also we're also on Facebook. We do have an account at Blue Sky. We're on Instagram. And Francesco really wants you to contact him on LinkedIn. 

Francesco Belcastro 43:26

Please do. Please do. Yeah, I confirm, confirm. Yeah. The other thing that I wanted to remind listeners is that we spoke about two podcasts, our one and Forgotten Footy. But there's a third one they should check out. 

Francesco Belcastro 43:40

That you are doing. And it's a it's a completely different one. So if they're tired of football, which one should never be, they could check out something else. Can you tell us what that is, Guy? 

Guy Burton 43:49

Yes. Thank you, Francesco, for the plug. So I do a short sort of 10 minutes on a particular topic that happens to be happening that week. And it's called, ironically enough, Ten Minutes On. And you can find it by clicking onto my Twitter account, which is @guyjsburton or find it through LinkedIn as well. I think I post it there. Comes out on Wednesdays. But thanks again for letting me say that.

Francesco Belcastro 44:11

If you got a dinner party on Friday and you want to sound smart with your friends, you should really check out Guy's podcast because it gives you all the key information on that particular topic, which is an important one that way. 

Francesco Belcastro 44:21

And it's literally 10 minutes. So, you know, you can do it on your commute. 

Guy Burton 44:25

Exactly. Doesn't break the bank, you know. So there you go. 

Guy Burton 44:28

Yeah. Anyway, listen, thanks again for... 

Francesco Belcastro 44:29

There's another thing we need to remind listeners, Guy.

Guy Burton 44:32

We do. We do. OK. What?

Francesco Belcastro 44:33

They need to they need to like... 

Guy Burton 44:35

Oh, yeah. 

Francesco Belcastro 44:36

...Share. Retweet.

Guy Burton 44:39

Yeah. 

Francesco Belcastro 44:40

Our podcast. Forgotten Footy and your podcast, so they've got a lot of work to do. 

Guy Burton 44:44

Yes, they've got to subscribe. If they just subscribe, then they don't ever have to think about finding this stuff!

Guy Burton 44:50

It will just come to their inbox. Yeah. So if you're listening to this...

Francesco Belcastro 44:53

We need them to rate it, right?

Guy Burton 44:54

And yeah, and then we need them to rate it and share it with friends and, you know, just get it out there. 

Francesco Belcastro 44:59

The last thing to to tell listeners, we're going to be back here. Same time, same place on Monday. 

Guy Burton 45:05

All right. Well, take care, French. I've got great speaking to you this week. And again...

Francesco Belcastro 45:08

Thank you. Thank you, Rory. 

Guy Burton 45:09

Thank you, Rory. 

Rory Bryce 45:11

Thanks for having me on guys, thanks again. Cheers. 

Guy Burton 45:12

OK, bye. 

Rory Bryce 45:14

Bye.