Friday 26 March 2010

Fans cast their vote for new club

Well here we go, a brand new blog, and one in which I hope keeps everyone up to date with what's going on at what will be - thanks to the fans - Chester Football Club.

I don't know what it is, but it certainly has a romantic sound to it saying Chester Football Club, and I'm sure the same goes for many fans who grew up supporting Chester, rather than Chester City FC.

I used to have a scarf which simply had "Chester" on it, and that was one of my prized possessions, sadly I gave it - along with many other Chester goodies - to a pub in Chester a few years back, as it was run by fans, but sadly they moved on and all my stuff was gone forever, but you have to move on and not look back moping around.

The same can be said for our situation, as when Chester City FC went under, the fans group City Fans United were accused of being "ellbent on destroying the club" when the reality is the club had already been destroyed thanks to the actions of one family, and all we wanted was to remove that side of it, but sadly it seems we couldn't have one without the other.

The family have always had the chance to hand the club over to the supporters for a realistic amount, but this was never offered by the regime, aside from the chance to buy it for a pound, but with £750,000 to clear in debt, so that was never going to happen.

The best thing was that City Fans United had prepared for the day when the club would be liquidated, we all knew it was going to happen, it was just a case of when and not if.

So, on March 10th, the club was officially liquidated with no defence being made by the Vaughan family at the High Court, which mirrored the lack of defence at the Conference hearing where the club were kicked out by their fellow members.

Here we are then, as CFU continue to make strides towards achieving their aim of ensuring football in Chester continues, the fans have recently had the chance to name the club, and Chester Football Club turned out to be the winning name, with 70% of the vote, which attracted over 1250 supporters.

The next step is to hopefully receive the lease to the Deva Stadium from the Council, and then the job of bringing the football club back to life officially begins, but for now, it's a bit of a witing game, although the CFU are firming up their business plan which will hopefully prove to be key to winning the right to the lease.

April 19th is the deadline for all lease applications to be received by the Council, but the fact that only one Reformation application will be dealt with by the FA - and that was made by CFU - means that the strongest bid appears to be with City Fans United at this point.

Keep tuning into this blog as time goes along, as it will be updated constantly, with latest news from the Deva.