Wanted - A Saviour (However Disreputable)

When it comes to results I’m a pessimist. Hope for the best, expect the worst. I’ve found it helps to ease the disappointment. But when it comes to the survival of our club, somehow I’ve always believed we’ll pull through. We did it in 1982 – my first but by no means last experience of buckets being rattled inside the ground and crisis public meetings, we did it in ’85 – albeit it cost us ownership of Rocky Road, an unexploded bomb ever since, we did it in ’91 when the unpaid tax liability threatened our future and the following year when English pushed us to the brink that night at Telford.

There have been other times since and numerous before, as the club has been engaged in a perennial struggle to remain solvent for decades. Some might say that ought to tell us something about the viability of a senior non League club in this part of the world. But hang on, this is Kettering (pop 80,000), not Forest bloody Green and if they can hold their own at this level without going pop, and smaller towns can sustain Football League clubs, why do we seem perpetually unable to get by without a sugar daddy?

Hmm, how long have you got? For now the only question that matters is – can we make it into 2012?

Kettering Town’s own version of the Doomsday Clock moved several minutes closer to midnight this past week, with five players leaving in a single day and the rest still standing against the playground wall with no takers. Thanks to the transfer embargo, not even the youth team is an option any more. More’s the pity, because as we know from Poppynet’s excellent Scully, they’ve been so brilliantly coached (by Scully) they’d piss this league and evoke comparisons with the Busby Babes.

As yesterday showed, there is still enough – just – left to be competitive and maybe squeeze out the odd point. The moving reception they received at the end will hopefully sustain them on the difficult trips to Fleetwood and York, when anything less than a pair of painful beatings would be a pleasant surprise. But these boys can’t play for nothing for ever, and any of them could go AWOL between now and January. Plus some will get knocks, others may get suspended – how long until we can’t muster a starting XI and face further punishment?

The transfer embargo is the thing that is most likely to kill us in the short term. Somehow, we have to get that lifted. Emergency fundraising may do it, but no one should give a penny unless there are guarantees it won’t be siphoned off by the outgoing chairman. If we can keep going until the playing staff can be reinforced, there’s a chance of a longer future. Whether it’s anchored to the bottom of the table after a string of defeats is a distinct possibility, but it’s a measure of how much our prospects have shrivelled that most people would already be content to be kicking off next season as high as the Blue Square North rather than several rungs lower.

But like I say, when KTFC’s future is on the line, I’ve always been an optimist. There are only so many football clubs at a senior level which foreign moneybags can buy, why not pick us up for a tiny fraction of the price of someone you’ve heard of and let us be your plaything. We could be in the Premier League in 5 years! Or, more likely, back where we are now! Come on, pick up the phone. You’ll find that passing our fit and proper person test is a doddle. Right now we’d accept a bid from Pol Pot.