Dover Athletic

lordromford

Apologies if there’s already a thread on this, but I was just reading about how the Dover Chairman, Jim Parmenter, has furloughed all staff and ceased football operations due to there being no financing of the National leagues. Dover are bottom of the league but now have at least 8 games in hand on their rivals due to being unable to fulfill fixtures.
Without knowing too much on the ins and outs, I have to say I have some sympathy. It seems the clubs are expected to complete a season without any income.

Just wondered if anyone on here has a bit of insight into this? Is the story more complicated than it seems?

LennyLowrent

I suppose a merger with Calais is not a likely option now that the channel is a bit wider...

Rob7Lee

Dovers main issue with the NL was that they haven't provided the promised funding.

http://www.doverathletic.com/news/chairmans-message-for-supports/

kentaddick

Lots of problems in non league, a bunch of clubs had to essentially hold a gun against the national leagues head to get them to cancel the rest of the conference north/south season. Most, If not all of these clubs are heavily reliant on gate receipts. 

lordromford

I know it may be an oversimplification, but it does seem particularly perverse that premier league teams are paying 50, 60, 70 million pounds for a single player while this is going on in the 5th tier.

PemburyAddick

Seem to remember that the lack of clarity over government funding post xmas was a major issue. Pre xmas it was a grant, then shortly before xmas it was declared that payments from Jan onwards would be a loan. Understandably a large number of clubs didn't want to run up a debt. Pretty sure most clubs sold streams (Dartford, my second club, certainly did) so there was probably some revenue, but the simple maths tell you it wasn't enough. Also think there was some beef over voting structure- if you took NL, NLS and NLN together they voted to continue, but if the votes were separated into three divisions the latter two voted to stop (might have that wrong). I can totally understand financial prudence for the teams voting to stop. But the funding from government should have been agreed for the whole season before a decision to start had been made. Got a feeling that those who run the NL are on a par with those who run the EFL. Nuff said!

lordromford

PemburyAddick said:

Seem to remember that the lack of clarity over government funding post xmas was a major issue. Pre xmas it was a grant, then shortly before xmas it was declared that payments from Jan onwards would be a loan. Understandably a large number of clubs didn't want to run up a debt. Pretty sure most clubs sold streams (Dartford, my second club, certainly did) so there was probably some revenue, but the simple maths tell you it wasn't enough. Also think there was some beef over voting structure- if you took NL, NLS and NLN together they voted to continue, but if the votes were separated into three divisions the latter two voted to stop (might have that wrong). I can totally understand financial prudence for the teams voting to stop. But the funding from government should have been agreed for the whole season before a decision to start had been made. Got a feeling that those who run the NL are on a par with those who run the EFL. Nuff said!

Interesting insight @PemburyAddick . Cheers. 👍🏼

SomervilleAddick

lordromford said:

PemburyAddick said:

Seem to remember that the lack of clarity over government funding post xmas was a major issue. Pre xmas it was a grant, then shortly before xmas it was declared that payments from Jan onwards would be a loan. Understandably a large number of clubs didn't want to run up a debt. Pretty sure most clubs sold streams (Dartford, my second club, certainly did) so there was probably some revenue, but the simple maths tell you it wasn't enough. Also think there was some beef over voting structure- if you took NL, NLS and NLN together they voted to continue, but if the votes were separated into three divisions the latter two voted to stop (might have that wrong). I can totally understand financial prudence for the teams voting to stop. But the funding from government should have been agreed for the whole season before a decision to start had been made. Got a feeling that those who run the NL are on a par with those who run the EFL. Nuff said!

Interesting insight @PemburyAddick . Cheers. 👍🏼

Just to point out that those who run the NL are representatives of the clubs, not some anonymous group of bureaucrats. It’s also interesting to note that one of the board members of the company that runs the league is a Trevor James Parmenter, who appears to also be the Managing Director of Dover Athletic. 

I’m not saying it hasn’t been run badly, it has, but the people to blame for the chaos, just as with the EFL, are the club owners themselves.