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Every major revolution sees a critical juncture were the tides turns. The exit door was still swinging in the wind after the departure of Ryan Lowe, meanwhile on the opposite side of the building, the now managerless Preston North End were rolling the red carpet out for an expensive new winger.
Perhaps I’ve been spoilt. Preston North End was bestowed on my in the early 1990’s, John Beck to be precise. We’d started to rise from the footballing doldrums. We were becoming pioneers, forward-thinkers, the leading light in English lower league football. We dared to sit in our BAXI-sponsored Ivory Towers looking on the financial miscreants that were Brighton and Bournemouth as some annoying pauper begging for scraps. Brentford and Fulham were yet to be gentrified into some middle class family theme park they are today. And, closer to home, the chaff of Wigan and Burnley were the poor neighbours leading protests on grass banks behind their goals ends.
Bryan Gray and his BAXI backers were enlightened, almost geeky with it. They had a vision, a plan, an ambition. We mined players, groomed managers and broadened horizons to improve our infrastructure. We found ways of funding stands from National Lottery grants to NHS contracts. If the club didn’t know how, we’d find a way to do it.
Read more: Craig Hemmings responds to frustrated Preston North End supporters open letter
For years we’ve always been the bridesmaid and never the bride. The footballing pyramid was starting to take note of Preston North End again, those that we played feared us, those in the Premier League admired us – awaiting our imminent arrival back in to the footballing elite. There was no stopping us!
Except there was! BAXI decided they’d done what they could and went to pass the baton on. Our playing squad broke up going in different directions, the shrewd operators in the back ground were all cherry picked and we started doing things a little differently, and with that we lost our midas touch.
Slowly but surely, those foundations have been chipped away and we arrive at this point in the present where an open letter was released addressed to Mr Hemmings from PNE Online and Preston Supporters Collective.
Today, I look around and football is unrecognisable to what I recall.
I listen fondly to the stories regaled of John Beck walking into London Road Labour Club, packed to the hilt with expectant fans, hanging on his every word as he started to rebuild the club from the inside out. I wonder what John Beck would’ve made of a ‘Digital open letter’?
Today the entity of Preston North End feels to me like a lost soul, a roaming spirit with no direction. It doesn’t even feel like a business, never mind a football club. It has all the hall marks of a secret society. I mean a business would have to answer to losses of £12,000,000 to someone, but it appears Preston North End forfeits that right.
Gone are the days of transparency, questions get lost into the vortex of gobbledegook answers and we get told to ‘suck it up’ while the vibes radiated to the football world is that we’re ungrateful brats.
We want to be self-sufficient, we don’t want to be living off the Hemmings cheque book, but that trailblazing attitude of the 1990’s is lost and we’re having to milk survival from the pockets of those in the Isle of Man.
Apparently we’re for sale, a once-attractive proposition, but it appears no one wants to touch us.
We go from season to season celebrating being reactive rather than proactive. Summer excitement is electronic turnstiles, advertising, floodlights and scoreboards. Don’t get me wrong – it’s all very nice to have all this shiny equipment but we’re just following the tail of every other club, albeit years late.
We’ve been at this point before. The club are very good at riding these things out.
Let’s be honest, if Hecky starts to pick up points, the letter falls into oblivion for the majority of fans as the stagnation behind the scenes continues to roll, very much like the Hemmings cash on a one-way ticket to the lost universe.
If Hecky doesn’t start picking a few points us, a couple of defenders and a disclosure of ‘we’re trying in tight circumstances’ would do well to garner sympathy off a fair chunk of fans.
We all know the authority at any level revels in divide amongst the masses.
Craig Hemmings was very quick to invite certain representatives to a meeting with urgency, but let’s be clear, the Hemmings family pay a lot of money for an advisor, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to presume that while they have the advisor on the payroll, they will take advice from him.
And so goes on the merry go round of supporting Preston North End. I’ve no doubt we’ll come to this point again in the not too distant future.
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