Club stories
The clubs behind the numbers
A distribution table is an abstraction. A committee deciding whether it can afford the physio is not. These are stories about what a season actually costs at a level nobody negotiates for.
They are not misery stories. Most of them are about clubs that coped, because most clubs do cope — and what it took to cope is the argument.
All three of these are worked examples
The clubs below are invented. They exist to show a volunteer the shape of a real story: the length, the sidebar, the pull quote, the register.
We do not publish invented facts about real clubs, and we do not put words in a real person's mouth. A story goes live only when someone at the club has said it, checked it and agreed to it being published. That is slower and it is the only way a campaign about honesty can do this.
- Step 4 North West Worked example Marsh Lane Rovers The roof that nearly finished us The stand was condemned in the October. The grading deadline was the following May. Nobody at the club had ever applied for a grant before.
- Step 2 North East Worked example Hallowgate Athletic Promoted, and worse off Promotion brought a longer coach journey, a higher ground grade and the same crowd. The trophy is in the bar. The invoices were in the post.
- Step 5 South West Worked example St Eran's Town Four hundred miles for a point The nearest away game is ninety minutes each way. The furthest is a day off work. The travel budget is a raffle.
Write your club's story
You do not need to be a writer. The most useful stories are the least dramatic ones: what came in, what went out, and what nearly did not get paid.
- Ask the club first. Someone on the committee has to be willing to be quoted and to check the facts. Without that, we will not publish it.
- Get the numbers from the club, not from us. Annual expenditure, average attendance, capacity, the year it was founded. Anything the club would rather not publish, leave out — the template omits empty fields rather than showing a dash.
- Find the one specific thing. Every club has a number that explains it: a roof, a coach fare, an electricity bill, a grading deadline.
- Send it to us. Give us the facts, the numbers and the name of whoever at the club has agreed to be quoted, and we will build the page. You do not need to write any code.