Meet Our President

IT’S A FUNNY OLD GAME

When I retired from my position as Chamber Chairman and Chief Executive about 15 years ago, and having agreed to carry on as President, little did I realise that I would also soon be moving into another voluntary role that would at times become more like a full time job.

I had received a number of offers to join various Boards and Committees when one day I had a call from Charles Grant (now Chairman of Crewe Alexandra) asking if I would be interested in joining the Board of Nantwich Town Football Club.

Football has always been my passion and although I was an Alex season ticket holder at the time, I used to go occasionally to watch Nantwich and must admit that I was impressed with the facilities, the standard of football, the people and the general feel about the place.

I should come clean here and say that my team is West Bromwich Albion – “The Baggies” who I have followed from an early age when my uncle who was a policeman there, used to take me to games, and although they have fallen from grace over recent years I still follow them closely.

After carefully considering Charles’s approach and after doing nowhere near enough due diligence my heart ruled my head and I decided to go for it. I learned very quickly that running a semi-professional football club is quite a challenge.

Not only does the Board have to operate within the rules of company law and legislation like everyone else, but also has to deal with the added plethora of rules and regulations from FIFA, the FA, Cheshire County FA and the Northern Premier League. The club is also part of the local entertainment sector, running its own busy function suite.

In essence, there is not a great deal of difference between running Nantwich Town than running a professional league club except that they have more 0’s on the end of their figures and lots of paid staff to do the work.

Most importantly however, I soon realised that Nantwich Town was not all about the First Team and that there was lots of activity going on behind the scenes to ensure that it was a fully inclusive “Community Club.”  It also became clear that the future sustainability of the club would depend to a large extent on further developing and expanding its community football activity.

Great work had already been done in establishing a good number of community teams and developing links with schools and other local organisations which had enabled the club to be one of the first in the country to achieve FA Charter Standard status.

A few years ago the club was invited to be one of a handful in the country to join the FA’s Accredited Club Programme which identified clubs with the greatest potential for growth. Involvement in this programme has been a key factor in the massive expansion that has taken place in recent years and there are now over 75 teams from school age upwards.

One of the by-products of being on the FA Club Programme is that it produces an Impact Calculator which assesses the social and economic value of the club to the local community.

The current figure for Nantwich Town stands at £4.2m which is an amazing amount.

It was great therefore to see the club’s efforts fully recognised at the recent Chamber Business Awards when it won the Contribution to the Community Award which was independently judged by Bentley Motors and Cheshire Connect.

See South Cheshire Chamber Business Magazine page 10

For more on Nantwich Town Football Club community teams go to www.nantwichtownfc.co.uk.

- Extract from South Cheshire Chamber Business magazine Q3 2025. Read it here.