Yes... But
This article originally appeared
in the November 2001 issue of When Saturday Comes.
The last few years have been strange ones for
Burnley. We no longer fight relegation to the third division, but instead hold plausible
hopes of a top six finish in the first. A new regime runs the club, season ticket sales
are through the roof, and our manager has put together a team that wins a lot.
Supporters are, therefore, mostly happy. They
also have an opportunity to feel more involved. Representatives from Burnley’s diffuse
network of supporters’ clubs are treated to regular meetings with the Chairman and
Chief Executive. Compare to the infamous days when one director asked, "what can a
fan tell us that we don’t know?"
Since Chairman Barry Kilby saved us in 1998, the
club has been keen to say that they want to listen to supporters and work with the
community. For example, they've tried to involve children. An outstanding innovation last
season was the introduction of the £35 child season ticket. Rather than cash in on
promotion, the club saw a chance to capture a new generation of Clarets by offering a
higher standard of football – at a cheaper price. Thousands of child season tickets
were sold.
The club also showed an understanding of what
motivates supporters when it came to the question of shirt sponsorship. When a new deal
wasn’t done, we faced last season unsponsored. The club made a virtue of this,
announcing that the shirt would not be undersold. Kilby said, "The famous claret and
blue is sacrosanct and worth a fair price." This was stirring stuff. Sales were huge.
Of course, while these examples demonstrate a
willingness to engage with supporters and reach out to new ones, they also have a
grounding in commercial considerations. Perhaps there isn't anything wrong with this. If
good relations are shown to be good for business, all the better. But among some
supporters there's unease that the relationship between club and supporters is becoming
increasingly commercialised: sure, they want to talk to us, but only so they can sell us
their phones and credit cards.
At least we can say that the new regime has made
an effort, and this at a club once notorious for its aloofness. And there are some things
they do where it's hard to see a commercial benefit. The supporters' clubs get privileged
access to tickets, while the club's website is eager to tell us about the community
programme, which has done a ton of work in schools.
Clearly, they don't need to do this, especially
in a time of success. But it all feels rather paternalistic, top down, and there are times
when you get the impression that the club expects gratitude for 'all we've done for you'.
It's also hard to escape the feeling that these things mattered more when we were
struggling. As we've grown bigger, and become more professional, it seems the club has
found criticism harder to take. It will be interesting to see if Burnley can aspire to the
premier league while keeping a foot in the grassroots.
There's a significant section of the town’s
community that still has little involvement in the club. Burnley is no longer known just
for its football team. This summer, we had the racist riots.
The club adopted a policy of silence over these.
They had their reasons, but it still feels like an evasion not to have taken a stance.
Burnley isn't like most places. Here, more than elsewhere, the football club matters.
Burnley FC is the town's major social institution, the biggest thing around. This status
confers responsibility. If the club represents the town, it can and should also lead it.
To some extent, it's trying. Before the riots,
the club appointed an Ethnic Minorities Development Officer, Nourrendine Maamria. His job
is to talk about racism at schools and coach kids of Asian origin. This is important step,
although a recent Independent article revealed that his part-time wage comes
courtesy of a grant, and his employers are the separate, and self-financing, community
programme.
It's a start, even if success will be judged in
years rather than months. Meanwhile, you won't see many non-white faces at Turf Moor.
Racism is society's problem, and Burnley are not the only club to struggle with it, but
not many clubs represent towns that got such a large BNP vote. The riots made work against
racism harder - the town's more polarised - but ever more vital. The impression left by
the riots, albeit simplistic, is of two separate communities living apart from each other.
A visit to the match will do nothing to correct this impression.
The club needs to make Turf Moor a welcoming
place for all the community by doing everything possible to stop racism at matches. Here,
the evidence is unpromising. Before the riots, the club issued a strong statement against
racism, but condemned 'foul language' in the same terms. The statement wasn't backed by
action. Apparently only one person was thrown out for racism last season. The club would
suggest this proves there isn't a problem; I'd say it shows their methods aren't
effective. My impression is that Burnley keep quiet about racism because they want to play
down the problem. Recently, and perhaps in response to publicity elsewhere, the club has
started to become more vocal about its efforts, even if some of these sound tokenistic. It
takes more than a sign and a poster.
The biggest problem, still, is that supporters
cannot complain about racism in the ground. The club's view that people should ask
stewards to intervene shows almost touching naivety, although anyone who's ever tried this
won't be amused.
So the story of Burnley’s relations with
its supporters and the community is a story of yes… but. Yes, we have cheap child
season tickets, but high adult prices may explain some low gates. Yes, we had the
unadorned shirt, but when two TV games came up, the club stuck their web address on it.
And yes, much more seriously, the club has made small efforts towards reducing racism and
bringing in the town’s Asian community - but in this important area, it isn’t
doing nearly enough. In a club that's doing many things right, racism seems to be a blind
spot.
Firmo
17 September 2001
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