NationStates Jolt Archive


For All You Football Fans Out There

Elrich
22-12-2005, 17:10
SOS - SAVE OUR SILKMEN

To everyone out there, please please help. I know many of you will have never heard of Macclesfield Town before, but we are a small community football club playing in League 2 (or old 3rd division) in the English Football League. On monday morning we were fined £300,000 to pay to the FA by the end of January, or else our club will cease to exist. The fine was technical, to do with the building of a new stand, all the mistakes being made by a past regime who have since left the club and in some cases the country, leaving the club they made a mess of in a huge dilema. We average 2000 fans a week - this fine is HUGE for a club of our size. Despite all the efforts of our loyal fans, we can not do this alone.

Please read this article, if only 1 of you chooses to "buy a pixel" through www.mtfc.info (http://www.mtfc.info), for only £1.25, then all this was worthwhile.

Thankyou


Dear Football Fans, Yes, I know - yet another football club is on the rocks, and of course it's up to all of you to bail us out. It's the way it goes these days, and I don't blame you for feeling a bit apathetic about Macclesfield Town's current plight.

But since you've made it this far, you might as well take a couple of minutes to hear our case, because what has happened to this club should raise fundamental concerns about the suitability of the Football Association to run the game, even if you decide that best wishes are all you can offer us.

Allow me to explain.

On Monday morning, Macc Town were a club with strong links to the community, who, despite a lowly League ranking and small attendances, had as bright a future as any other club in the League.

By 4pm, they became a club on the verge of extinction.

I won't bore you with the details, but Macc Town were charged by the FA of misusing a Football Foundation grant which paid for a new stand. At no point did the money go near the playing staff, and the club gained no competitive advantage (no points were docked).

Our current board (which bears no relation to the board of 4 years ago which committed the offences) plead guilty to those charges, and they were fully co-operative with the FA at every stage of the investigation.

Naturally, we were mainly optimistic about the outcome of the FA's enquiry. Of course no-one expected a pardon from the FA, but we did expect a substantial but even-handed fine that would see justice done without unnecessarily hampering the considerable efforts we've made in building a community club.

After all, the FA (according to their website) are about 'Promoting the development of the game amongst all ages, backgrounds and abilities in terms of participation and quality. This also involves promoting the availability of the sport to the greatest possible number of people.'

Perhaps I am being particularly short-sighted, but I am unsure how giving Macc a £300,000 levy to pay in six weeks quite ties in with this. Sadly it will almost certainly prevent us from helping the FA to achieve these laudable goals, due an imminent lack of existence on our part. Perhaps there is a clause in the FA's many regulations which exempts Macclesfield from this having to do any of this tedious 'promoting the availability of sport' stuff.

Essentially, the FA is serving a brand of justice with a much greater injustice. If you'd like a portrait of how the great minds at the FA work, I recommend Simon Jordan's article from The Observer, 'So Who Is Barry Bright?'. He talks about the sort of people running your game - people unconcerned about promoting the availability of football, but in expanding a relentlessly punitive bureaucracy.

Samuel Johnson is always good for a quote, and he once said 'An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.' And so it is the case here, because this is a punishment that will aid nobody. £195,000 will admittedly go to the Football Foundation, but the benefits of that will be entirely outweighed by the loss of a community football club.

By fining Macc so harshly, the FA are in fact failing in their fundamental obligation to promote football, which is a much higher injustice than the extinction of a tiny club in Cheshire.

Of course, I implore you to donate to this scheme because it will directly save my club. But I also offer this as a referendum against the damaging bureaucracy of the FA, and ask you to consider that by assuring the future of Macc Town, the goals of 'promoting the availability of sport' are upheld. If the FA can't do this, then we must.

Please click on the link below:

www.mtfc.info (http://www.mtfc.info)
I V Stalin
22-12-2005, 19:36
Hey. I hope enough is raised from this appeal, and others that have no doubt been set up by Macclesfield fans, to keep Macclesfield in existence. I've just added another £6.25 to the fund (5 pixels). It's not much, but as a student, I can't afford much. Once again, I hope Macclesfield raises the necessary money.
Fass
22-12-2005, 19:38
I do believe that charity spam is still spam.
I V Stalin
22-12-2005, 19:40
I do believe that charity spam is still spam.
How is it spam? It raises an important issue that many people on this forum wouldn't know about otherwise, in the same way that other threads do. If you don't want to contribute, fine, but in that case just leave it alone.
Fass
22-12-2005, 19:44
How is it spam? It raises an important issue that many people on this forum wouldn't know about otherwise, in the same way that other threads do. If you don't want to contribute, fine, but in that case just leave it alone.

"Please give us money out of the goodness of your heart" copy&paste job vs. "please give us money out of the consumerist gluttony of your debauched lifestyle" copy&paste job. Hmm.

:rolleyes:
I V Stalin
22-12-2005, 19:50
"Please give us money out of the goodness of your heart" copy&paste job vs. "please give us money out of the consumerist gluttony of your debauched lifestyle" copy&paste job. Hmm.

:rolleyes:
Let's see...
Article from other website, with relevant links for people to see for themselves. Poster's own view on the article.
So far, no spam.
So the article is asking people to donate money...would you prefer they emailed it direct to you, rather than putting it on a forum which you just happen to post on, so you might randomly stumble across it?
What other way to give to a good cause is there, apart from out of the goodness of your heart?
Fass
22-12-2005, 19:53
So the article is asking people to donate money...would you prefer they emailed it direct to you, rather than putting it on a forum which you just happen to post on, so you might randomly stumble across it?

And there you have your answer to if it's spam or not.

Psst: If it's spam in the form of an e-mail, it's spam here, too, you know.
I V Stalin
22-12-2005, 20:00
And there you have your answer to if it's spam or not.

Psst: If it's spam in the form of an e-mail, it's spam here, too, you know.
Hmmm...no, spam email is anything unsolicited, hence the proper term for it: UCE - Unsolicited Commercial Email.
If I got half the crap on this board via email, I'd block the sender, as I'd consider it spam. Yet half the crap on this board isn't spam.
Everything on this board is unsolicited, unless you want to claim it's a public access board, in which case, technically, everything is solicited. Commercial and charity are two very different things -
definition - commercial (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=commercial)
I think the bit we're looking at is #3 - 'having profit as a chief aim', which clearly doesn't apply to this.
definition - charity (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=charity)
Relevant bits - #1, 2, 4.
Benevolence, Fass. You know what that is?
Frisbeeteria
22-12-2005, 20:10
This is a discussion forum, not an advertising site for various worthwhile (or less than worthwhile) projects. Sorry, but I agree that this is spam. There's no discussion, just a cut-and-paste appeal for donations.

Closed.