DOVER-SHARING?
While many football fans spend their summers refreshing Fabrizio Romano’s feed on Dying Social Media Disgrace Twitter, most non-league supporters have to get their transfer updates from the source. Supporters of National League South side Dover Athletic are in need of some good news – after deductions resulted in them demoted from the 2021-22 National League with a solitary point, they dodged a second straight relegation on the final day of the 2022-23 season with Dulwich Hamlet going down instead. Spirits were quickly lifted when Dover’s 28-year-old manager, Mitch Brundle, announced a deal for midfielder Ade Shokunbi early in June.
Four days later, the club announced they had convinced player of the season Myles Judd to return for another year – “a sign we are heading in the right direction again”. Then, on 2 July, former Charlton player Ricky Holmes arrived as player-assistant manager. Maybe things were finally looking up? Three days later, fans heading to the timeline in search of more signings were greeted with a bombshell. “With the news that Ademola Shokunbi has now signed for Dulwich Hamlet, we look forward to announcing players who actually want to play for the club. #onwards.” Yes, after four weeks at Dover, Shokunbi had instead opted for away-days at Hashtag United in the Isthmian Premier. Still, at least Judd was on board, right? Oh.
“I put a trust in a mate and a friend who I played with and that’s not reciprocated, so I have to learn from that and I will,” claimed Brundle on 8 July after Judd signed for Hemel Hempstead, despite (or perhaps because of?) the manager texting the right-back on a daily basis. Still, plenty of time for Brundle and Holmes to get their heads together and get new recruits in. Right? Wrong. “I have parted company with Ricky Holmes as assistant manager,” wrote Brundle in a statement three days later. “It was always going to be difficult for him with his wedding coming up.” Dover quickly moved to replace Holmes with the somewhat bemused-looking Lee Flavin 90 minutes later, but it wasn’t enough to quell the rising tide of fan frustration.
“We are an absolute laughing stock,” tweeted one fan – and with three recruits opting out in the space of six July days, it’s hard to disagree – although they’ve since added Joshua Anifowose and Michael Olarewaju, along with a trio of academy graduates. All still appear to be at the club. The club’s slipshod approach to social media disgraces has ramped up the entertainment factor – this effort to promote a community day led to fans posting their own, objectively superior versions – but Dover’s summer of discontent is not all fun and games. The town’s clubs have spent more than a century trying (and often failing) to stave off extinction. The original Dover FC folded in 1901, 1909, 1933, 1947 and finally in 1983, when Dover Athletic were formed to replace them. The club escaped two more brushes with financial meltdown in the mid-noughties, then were docked points for bringing an early end to the 2020-21 campaign.
“Nobody has addressed what happens to clubs that have no income, and can’t afford to carry on,” declared Dover chairman Jim Parmenter during a pandemic-hit season when they were left with four players on their books. The chaos of non-league life has also hit the former Football League clubs that have fallen into it. Southend are living week-to-week, with the water turned off at their training ground and a £275,000 tax bill hanging over their heads. Yeovil, a Championship club 10 years ago, are in Dover’s division this year. Fans of clubs waiting in vain for money to trickle down the football pyramid have seen far worse than the current chaos – even if, much like the rest of us, they dread checking their social feeds these days.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Basically, the women’s team are taking the hit for what’s happening to the club in general” – Paula Martin, chair of the Reading supporters’ trust on the right Royals mess behind the scenes that has left the men’s team with a threadbare squad and facing another points deduction in League One, while the women’s team – also freshly dropped from the WSL – have had to go part-time.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
Not often one writes to Football Daily about something that is not a trite and pithy comment about an overpaid footballer. However, as someone who deals daily with the clinical mental anguish of a loved one, I was inspired by Dele Alli and his comments (yesterday’s Quote of the Day). Of course, his hand was forced by the fact some media organisation was about to expose him, which is, as we have seen just recently, nothing to do with decency. Yet, that makes him no less brave. And yes, I am sure plenty of people will say he has nothing to be sad about; he is playing football and making lots of money, so ‘just get over it’. I have met far too many of these idiots. Mental health is little understood by the majority of us, yet it is very real and has many sufferers. We need more brave souls in the public eye like Dele, because it helps and inspires the millions who suffer silently” – Paul Arnold.
What will it take for the owner(s) of a top English football club to wake up to the fact that a highly successful manager, someone with a far better record than some of the geniuses upon whom they have lavished shedloads of cash, hides in full view before them? I can name, at most, four of the current Premier League managers who might do a better job than Sarina Wiegman, if only someone had the nous to offer her a job” – Tim Healy.
Re: yesterday’s Football Daily. As a romantic (and, yes, that sort of fans still exists), I would rather have my heart broken by a failed return of my favourite football player to my team than to have some mercenary kissing the badge of the club I love only to find him signing few weeks later for some Saudi Arabian or Chinese outfit for a gazillion Euros” – Bogdan Kotarlic.
The chat surrounding the pros and cons of contemporary kits (Football Daily letters passim) takes me back to less sophisticated times when I was but a muddy-kneed youth of about seven or eight years of age, in the early-to-middle-1960s. Being an avid Chelsea fan I was expecting a smart Pensioners outfit but, unbeknown to me, my mother was sent to find the kit from the nearest sports shop. I was later made aware of the conversation that took place between her and the shop assistant. Mum: ‘Have you a Chelsea kit?’ Assistant: ‘Sorry, sold out.’ Mum: ‘What else have you got in blue?’ There is a picture of me in a blue-and-white-striped shirt, white shorts and blue-and-white-hooped socks, and that is the reason I hate WBA ever since” – Ross Dunning.
Sheffield Wednesday played for a few seasons in the early-2000s with a piece of Salvador Dalí artwork emblazoned across the front of their shirts” – Tim Grey.
A mate of mine has always fervently maintained that ‘Rothko is a (Bradford) City fan’. See” – David Scally.
The dearth of football stories in Football Daily has enabled your ‘Open University’ to thrive. Yesterday I learned about Dutch art, not Rembrandt but … Neoplasticism, then an insight of manufacturing techniques in textiles. The pinnacle was reached with penicillin from Kilmarnock, as I had read recently of the increase in syphilis reported in the United Kingdom, it being the drug of choice. My heartfelt appreciation to Football Daily for broadening my horizons outside football” – Alex Cameron.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Ross Dunning.
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