D3D4 Morecambe Correspondent Roger Fitton looks back on 2017 from a Shrimps perspective…
For our glorious club, 2017 has been a perfect year. The Chairman under whose brilliant and foresighted leadership we all moved from former home Christie Park to a bright new future at the Globe Arena has not attempted to sell the club. The hotel, shops and other developments which he promised at the new site have all seamlessly appeared to increase the income of the team who play at it.
Its outstandingly best player – Tom Barkhuizen – was not sold-off for peanuts to local Championship team Preston North End just to pay the bills. The team, management and staff who work for the club have all been paid on-time throughout the year with no fears about the next payments being missed or involvement by the Professional Footballers’ Association at any juncture simply to bail the team out.
No foreign owners from Brazil who turn-out to have been less than straightforward about their own commitment to or ability to support the club have been responsible for this situation at any time. The club has not been held up to ridicule on the local TV news complete with unfavourable comparisons being made between it and Rio de Janeiro.
No cheap jokes about its arena as opposed to the Maracana or such things as the Copacabana beach and the local promenade were made during this feature. There have been no High Court injunctions concerning who actually owns the club or rival claims about the ownership of the ground the new arena is actually built on.
This picture of a scoreboard and Security block in complete darkness taken on Boxing Day, for example, was due to a localised power cut which just affected that part of the town but nowhere else.
Rumours that it has been like this for months because the club no longer has the right to use either of the things pictured because they don’t technically own them anymore are completely unfounded. And the club is in no fear whatsoever of being relegated from the EFL.
If only… Seriously though folks: I suggest that the club’s New Year Resolution is simply not to have a year like last one. The one positive thing throughout the lamentable last twelve months is that Jim Bentley has stayed with the club and kept it in League Two. If he does it again, he deserves canonisation, never mind a mere knighthood. Slogan for 2018?: In Jim we trust: Credo In Unum Jimbo!