From December 2022 to December 2024 I was a director on the board of the Dons Trust, the owner of AFC Wimbledon. Up to then, my career had been almost exclusively advising those involved on boards, clubs and football & fan related organisations – clubs, supporters’ trusts, leagues, governing bodies.
Being on the coal face wasn’t primarily a useful exercise career wise however. My decision to stand was made because I thought I had something useful to offer my club, and was made after a lot of thought and conversations, several of them with people I was involved with on the committee of the Wimbledon Independent Supporters Association (WISA) between 2001 & 2002. WISA was the fan organisation who fought the best fight it could against the franchising of Wimbledon’s football club, ultimately laying the foundations for fan-ownership of the club by the trust (which it helped to set-up in early 2002) when the time came.
Things to do, people to see, stadiums to build
Being Wimbledon, always with an itch to scratch, we had been through a lot in the years preceding. In the space of about three years we had nearly lost fan ownership, agreed a return to Plough Lane after nearly 30 years away, set-up a share purchasing scheme that raised around £3m and a subsequent bond scheme (provoked by the proposal to hand control to private owners) that raised the millions we needed to build and then finish the stadium (eventually two schemes we set-up raised well in excess of £10m). Even when we finally moved back to Plough Lane, we found ourselves in a bit of a pickle, the men’s first team getting relegated from League One and chief executive leaving.
The consequence of all this growth and change was a realisation that as owners we had to have a more appropriate way of structuring and running a club that had doubled in size and now sat on approximately £35m of assets, let alone the women’s team, player development and three (yes, three) charities (we’re an entrepreneurial bunch at Wimbledon!) We had to move towards a different relationship with the club, one where the trust operated more like a ‘supervisory board’ to the club (AFCW PLC) board. It is important to point out that the Dons Trust Board were and remain subject to the Owners and Directors Test (ODT) however.
Rather than directly holding senior club staff to account, as in the past, a new structure and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) were put in place that would better allow the club to grow and develop, enabling the Dons Trust to ensure things like good corporate governance and strategy. Strategy is talked about a lot in football: fan engagement strategy, marketing strategy, transfer strategy. I’m not convinced that a lot of these every survive first contact with reality, but we need it. Without it, the Dons Trust can’t properly hold the AFCW PLC board to account, and AFCW PLC won’t know what success looks like in the business. They were critical to get right when the rubber hit the road, because one of the distinctive differences between fan ownership and any other model is the almost constant need to justify your existence.
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That’s the context. What followed was a not uncommon experience of an owner – in our case an institution now with 6,500 members (the biggest number of members of a fan-owned club in the UK). Although none of my former colleagues have the experience I do in the industry, that experience has only so much use, because unlike advising someone what to do, your actions have very direct consequences and you’re held to account for your decisions as much as anyone else is. There is no hiding place. Yes, we all brought our own perspectives, bias, understanding, but we were all – are all – fans.
Our role on the board is to be the check and balance, and although sometimes it did necessitate a more hands-on role on certain issues (my public relations and crisis management skillsets came in useful more than once), much of what we had to do was to help the model to evolve its own confidence to operate effectively, whilst knowing where and when we could legitimately become involved. We also were very much the face of the club on a matchday to opposition directors, on which days the boardroom itself is frequently described as ‘belonging’ to the Dons Trust.
Wimbledon Back at Plough Lane: Arguably the pinnacle of our achievements….so far
During my time on the board, we had involvement in a whole variety of issues not directly connected to the playing, transfer or matchday side. These included the temporary closure of the Dons Trust messageboard because of a confidentiality breach early on; an important consultation process connected with debt and investment management that I led on, and a subsequent vote of members late last year; we commissioned a revision of our rules & procedures to make us a more effective ownership body, and colleague of mine instituted a strategic process to identify threats to us as owners, as well as a set of KPIs by which we as a board could be held to account better. On the club side, we had a change of Managing Director early on (now with the very impressive James Woodroof at the helm), helped to establish & recruit new Non Executive Director roles on the AFCW PLC board, and moved on other important elements of corporate governance. In summer 2024 we merged the trust and club membership and season ticket into an ‘opt-out’ system, and virtually doubled the membership overnight, creating both a challenge and an opportunity to grow the club and secure its future under fan-ownership.
Change around us
All this was dealt with whilst our board underwent sometimes significant changes. Two of our chairs stepped away to provide much needed (and appreciated) support to the club itself, and on one occasion we had to use a backstop rule to allow us to appoint a someone to the board to ensure we could continue to operate in our role as overseers. An extra word is necessary for the three representatives the trust has on the AFCW PLC board is important here: they play critical roles in the actual decision making at club board level, often carrying a huge burden, bringing issues to us as a board where necessary (according to the agreements in place), or exercising their judgement where they don’t.
In terms of fan engagement, although the the trust isn’t responsible for direct delivery, we do have to sign-off (and in my case, help) with things like the club’s new Fan Engagement Plan, Customer Charter and support various club initiatives in this area.
The aim of fan representation
Yes, structured fan representation in decision making is somewhat different structurally at Wimbledon to those on Fan Advisory Boards and other supporters’ parliaments and similar structures – even those supporters’ trusts who have significant minority shareholdings – even a board director. However, the purpose – and the ideal – of such representation is ostensibly the same: being able to hold the club to account.
Having now seen and experienced it directly, I’ve seen what a tremendously important exercise if it is properly defined, structured and respected by those involved on all sides. Yes, there is invariably friction. Yes, some fans will not always like not knowing certain bits of information, but overall, it was clear that it has a massively positive impact and ensured a greater degree of transparency in what are traditionally very opaque organisations.
‘Process’ sometimes gets a bad rap, but at Wimbledon, it was so much about the process. Not a stodgy, disruptive object getting in the way of ‘Something That Must Be Done’, but the discussion, the healthy arguments & debates, and to-and-fro between the two boards, the points of reflection and consideration that really mattered, producing better decisions in the end. That and relationships: realising that you’re all going to have to spend time together, and look each other in the eye, regardless of what happens on the pitch.
I’ve collected together a few lessons learned below that I hope will be useful for anyone involved in football at any level, whether as a fan representative, the board of a club of any type, or even running the club day-to-day.
Ask yourself where the noise is coming from
It’s common for all of us, in an age of interconnectedness at the touch of a button, to claim that it’s obvious that something is a problem. ‘All my WhatsApp groups are saying it’ is now a common refrain, just like it used to be ‘they’re saying it on social media’. The same applies to the residual group of messageboards and chat sites, as it does our own, individual social circle. Look beyond it. Are the same talking points springing up elsewhere? Is it all isolated in one place, one group, one demographic, your head, even?
Have empathy with those not on the inside
It’s really easy, because you’re in receipt of a lot of information that others aren’t, whether that’s about the status of the coaching staff, the sale of a player, financial insights, detail about discussions or negotiations, to get very impatient with people who don’t have that information. None of this means you won’t sometimes come up against difficult people who are cross that you won’t tell them what they want to know or who decided that something is your fault. It should however mean that you understand the need to try to explain as much as is reasonable to those on the outside, without breaking those confidences.
Have empathy with those who are on the inside
This is a lesson that is frequently ignored by some who I think have adopted the very corrosive view that if you’re on the inside, you can fix anything, and if you don’t, you’re incompetent – or worse. It applies as much to those who have never and don’t ever want to be on the inside, as it does those who have.
Being elected with a ‘manifesto’ doesn’t mean you can implement it
Manifestos are not statements of policy, despite what elements of the media like to pretend. You might want to change something when you get elected, but what is it that will make this possible – or impossible? And I mean time and resources as much as anything else. Especially in a football club.
Sometimes the process is what matters, rather than making the decision itself
I don’t envy football managers, club chairs or anyone else who has to constantly be running the rule over whether a player or coach is good enough, bringing the right skills, attitude, whether they have a future even as a professional. The ridiculous pressure we all in football put coaching staff under is one good reason that I have grown in my admiration for them in my time in football, and my time at Wimbledon particularly, and I’m in particular admiration of Wimbledon manager, Johnnie Jackson. Something I’ve heard a lot from the coaching profession is about process. The process of something matters, and in a board, the process is made up of the conversations you have, the way in which each person is able to have their say, the information you are given in order to have that conversation in the best way possible, even if it doesn’t require an actual decision.
Be kind to each other
I’ve always valued the opportunity to be forthright. I prefer to be able to walk away without having lost respect for the other person or people I’ve spoken with. Personalities vary, just as responses to situations and circumstances do, and there are inevitably going to be moments where you cross words, and even fall out with each other. The key is to ensure you understand that you’re all working collectively, and to try to understand each other, and yes, be kind. You are all joined by one common thread: your support of the same football club, and whilst it’s a very strong one, it won’t keep every person connected unless you work at it.
More people are nice than horrible.
This is my final lesson. It’s something I’ve come to a very clear view on over the 20-years I’ve been in the industry, even with people I disagree with. Yes, there are always cynical and exploitative people, and no it doesn’t mean that you trust everyone unconditionally. People have views about things that result in them doing certain things that you might not agree with, but it doesn’t mean they’re horrible. It just means you don’t agree, and it doesn’t have to be the end of the world.
The AFC Wimbledon/Dons Trust Strategy and AFC Wimbledon Fan Engagement Plan are below.
Keep an eye out and sign-up to the View on Fan Engagement to keep up-to-date with what we’re doing.
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