by Chris Harris
The club had clearly been completely unprepared for the beginning of the 3G era, and Greg had upset his best friend so badly that it dented his confidence to boot.
He had even sent a WhatsApp message to all his showroom managers at two o’clock on the Sunday morning, just checking in, making sure everything was alright. They were all highly competent and paid well over the odds, so it was more a validation exercise than a real concern.
At midday, he received a message from Catherine. She said she had some good news and asked if he would be going down for the fitness training session with Piotr. Good news, and a meeting with Catherine Brown, good news times two.
He arrived at the clubhouse at five o’clock, where what felt like the solution to all his problems was introduced.
Celina and Jeremy were both in their thirties and, had built reputations as reliable, hardworking people. They were more than happy to escape the doom of “Heaven is the Percolator” at the garden centre for the more industrious setting of Denham Phoenix Football Club. Let’s face it, Charlie Egham was a bit of a freak!
Catherine laid out the plan for the week. It was straightforward: get the everything set up for them and arrange a meeting with Lucy and Michael to liaise over a system for bookings and payments.
What was immediately obvious was how much both of them relished the opportunity. Yes, it came with cleaning showers and other drudgery, but Catherine was giving them licence to more or less shape things as they wanted, to take ownership of the place and see what they could build within parameters of course.
“I told you it would be okay, Greg.”
That being said, he still felt the weight of it all.
The week had been a return to better luck for Greg.
Following the gross incompetency of neighbouring Lewes Football Club, the shortest of transfer saga’s unravelled. Lewes striker John Marlow spent Monday contemplating his poor choice of joining the mess of Lewes Football Club, and by Tuesday was running out in a Wessex Division 3 South fixture against Canterbury Football Club. A division lower, but at a progressive club and not a shitshow.
Lewes Football Club were a basket case of a club. Having been given the precious right to fan ownership by the previous owner, over 15 years, various elected officials on the board had squandered that brilliant opportunity, believing they had cleverly signed up to a weaker fan-owned constitution. In reality, it became a vehicle for individuals to throw their weight around with crazy ideas. The upshot being that fan ownership, in this case, had failed.
By Wednesday, they were due in the High Court on the back of a £20,000 debt to HMRC, with the inevitable bankruptcy outcome looming. Being a grotesquely incompetent football club, they knew the only way to pay it was by selling their only asset, their striker, in a true to form mayhem transaction, ensuring they blew a good price. Despite interest from two London clubs, they managed to balls the whole thing up and lose both buyers, leaving themselves just days to find a solution.
Needless to say, Ed Stephens and Economical Tony were on the case and ready to strike at the right moment. £50,000 had been mooted for the transfer, so any rational club would have accepted £30,000 offered from the London sides—cleared the debt and had something left to play with. But this was no rational football club and holding out for £50,000 they held firm, when they had no ballast to do so with and ended up with £20,000 from the Phoenix.
Last knockings on Tuesday afternoon, Greg Lyons transferred £20,000 to the Lewes FC bank account.
This wasn’t just excellent business, it was opportunism at its finest. The inept directors at Lewes FC were given a masterclass in how to conduct a transfer kill. With Economical Tony’s economy and Greg’s business acumen, they had left Lewes FC for dead, although paradoxically the deal saved them from bankruptcy.
Lewes had enjoyed a purple patch in recent years, driven largely by one director injecting significant funds into the club. The result was predictable: attendances doubled. This happens throughout football, sudden investment brings sudden growth. Their average gates had risen from around 500 to 1,000.
But it was economic illusion. As the money went, so did the crowds.
Dean told the board as much at an impromptu meeting on the Monday night, while Piotr was running the fitness session. Lewes was a club in decline. With their star player leaving for Denham, and with Dean’s marketing nous, the club could realistically attract an extra 100, well known in the trade, groundhoppers. Groundhoppers are generally people who, through financial reasons or through loss of interest in mainstream football, switch to non-league. With no real affiliation, but just a footie gap to fill, they will switch allegiances to any non-league football club relatively local to them, but with no real affiliation, will drop them for the next up-and-coming thing.
Combined with Denham’s own investment and rising attendances, the signing was the perfect set of circumstances to trigger a shift in support for existing Lewes groundhoppers to Den Park.
And indeed, on the Tuesday night fixture, where Marlow grabbed a brace, there was a noticeable spike. Around 700 people turned up to what, on paper, looked like an unspectacular game, but the arrival brought a large contingent of groundhoppers and normal Lewes fans keen to watch a game of football where their team actually wins, for once.
As the season drifted on, it soon became clear the signing was a masterstroke as the end of the season they calculated the signing realistically brought in more like 150 new supporters. By now it was rare an attendance was under 500. From the Sussex Prem to the best supported team in tier 5 of the non league pyramid in six months.
The ease of the rise was no cause of logistical concern.
The new eco stand was well and truly on course for completion for next season.
The first month has all been groundwork, the site carefully stripped and graded rather than aggressively dug out, topsoil set aside for reuse rather than discarded. Instead of deep concrete foundations throughout, the engineers opted for a series of reduced-impact pad footings and ground screws where possible, minimising excavation and cement use.
Trenches were cut narrowly and precisely for drainage, lined with permeable aggregates and recycled materials to allow natural water absorption rather than forcing everything into pipe systems.
Deliveries arrived in irritatingly uneven loads of reclaimed timber, reused steel and compacted hardcore, much of it second-life material that had to be sorted, measured and adapted on site. Economical Tony, overseeing proceedings was used to units arriving and being craned off lorries, not flat bed lorries full of scrap and bonfire scraps, and at least twice the price of standard materials.
There was a constant balancing act between progress and principle, less brute force, more adjustment, more checking. Hence the increased costs of the eco option. The base was built up in layers. It was slower, more deliberate work, slightly messier in execution, but underneath it all the stand was being anchored with a lighter footprint, the structure beginning to emerge not just as a place for 800 people to stand, but as something that had been thought through from the ground up.
As each week progressed, the salvage yard gradually began to morph into the silhouette of a stand. The reticence of every board member, except it’s greatest advocate, Catherine Brown, began to shift from cynicism to approval and alignment with her excitement.
Meanwhile, Celina and Jeremy had begun adding some light Heaven’s a Percolator touches to the clubhouse. A mid-morning and lunchtime menu, simple but light and tasty, flowers on tables, but more importantly, a sense of energy and the ability to whip away with ease any sign of a progressive coffee shop on matchday. It was seamless.
Luckily, it was an away fixture on the Saturday, 0-0 with Gravesend, so they had a clear run all weekend to have the new café open and systems up and running for Monday and the first bookings for the 3g.
Greg felt a bit hopeless. He knew there was a lot to do over the weekend and also knew his contribution would probably be to just get in the way. But nonetheless he hung around like a lemming trying to be helpful, failing, but the intent was there.
Catherine and her new staff, along with Lucy and Michael, were a hive of activity, not just sorting out the rotas and paperwork, but organising the general administration. Catherine was also busy making sure the new kitchen appliances, rooted out from the garden centre, were safely added and complied with safety standards and cleanliness.
Big Mal, in his new role as chairman, continued energetically where he had left off, helping out wherever necessary. He kept telling Greg not to worry, to stop over-fussing, and that although he appreciated what he was trying to do, he was getting in the way—all delivered with good humour.
In fact, Greg found himself happier just watching.
The new 3G arrangements evolved from nothing on Saturday morning into a well-oiled machine by Sunday afternoon. It was pure discipline. Being relaxed around Catherine, he felt able to just be himself—positive, forward-thinking, talking about her as much as he could, and not about himself.
Life carried on. What had looked like it might be chaos a week ago, turned out look like it would run smoothly, and they managed to cope with the tasks in hand without any real problems. By the end of the weekend, Catherine felt they were ready to go to full capacity as the systems bedded in.
The pitches looked pristine, the showers and café pristine and everyone felt justifiably confident.
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Welcome to Denham nr Lewes 