Losing East Thurrock United, the club many in the community have followed for decades, had left a void in terms of high level football in the area and socially for many of our loyal fans. You take your local football team for granted and when it is suddenly gone overnight, without warning, your weekends are never the same. You can go and watch other teams but it never feels the same, as you aren’t emotionally invested like before.
We started as a group of volunteers who had helped the old club on match days but never been involved in the day to day running or decision making positions. We all missed our club and after some discussion it was decided we would work together to bring football back to East Thurrock.
From our very first face to face meeting at the end of September it was clear that we all had the same goals in mind, to honour the traditions of the old club as much as possible in terms of team colours and acknowledging the roots of the club but to ensure that what we offered would be 100% fan owned, democratic, transparent and sustainable.
The first thing we had to do was research how a fan owned football club would work, luckily many people had been through this before so we could look at models from Lewes to AFC Wimbledon as blueprints. We had support from the Football Supports Association, from meeting us, speaking at our first public meeting and assist us moving forward as we grow.
We have seen an overwhelming level of support generated by our social media updates keeping everyone informed of our progress, this was exemplified by over 80 people attending our first public meeting. Having the FSA attend and speak on the legal framework of a Community Benefit Society and what the club was going through allowed fans to have confidence in our project and know what we were doing was best for the club for generations to come.
We set what we believed would be an ambitious ownership target of 100 by our first game, 22 days after we launched, we had reached 100 owners. Football fans are passionate and keen to get involved in a well run local project. Everyday we are seeing progress for the club as everything comes together and more people get onboard as owners and volunteers.
Democracy being one of our core beliefs and our ethos has seen our fans decide via voting on our club badge and indeed the location of our home pitch. The design of kit, away colours and charity partners will also be decided by the fan owners at our next monthly owners meetings. These are held both online and face to face, allowing everyone to take part as we have owners from Australia, England, Italy, Qatar, Scotland, Spain, USA and Wales already.
We are ambitious in terms of what we want the club to achieve and with the support of our fan owners, the FSA, local businesses, the community and our expanding online audience we look forward to what the future holds for our fledgling club.
You can read our full business plan by clicking here to download the PDF.
If you would like to get involved or have any questions, please email EastThurrockCFC@gmail.com.
