This is unfair on both counts.
Precisely which club Andy Holt grew up watching and/or supporting is a moot point. He is now our owner and one of our highest-profile supporters because he got involved at the margins and in so doing realised the uniqueness of Stanley and what would be lost if it went out of business.
Given that Stanley were playing in front of 300 diehards when Andy was a kid, it suggests to me that the majority of the 1500 or so who now turn up at the Crown on a regular basis have had a similar realisation.
As for being bankrolled into the League, this just isn’t the case given the usual meaning of the term in this context. Stanley did receive two windfalls, but both were football-related. One was the money from the Brett Ormerod transfer to Southampton, and the other was the 2003 FA Cup run, the latter enabling them to go full-time. From thereon in, the club was always struggling to meet the costs of a full-time operation, even before promotion to the League.
Unlike the typical bankrolled operation from the grass roots (Rushden & Diamonds, Crawley, Fleetwood, Forest Green, AFC Fylde, Eastleigh, Salford) reaching the Football League was never the raison d’etre for Stanley. Eric’s stated ambition of reaching the Conference and playing at Wembley seemed to suggest a businessman’s calculation as to what level of football the club could sustain given its support. The Conference win of 2006 wasn’t expected and the club simply wasn’t ready. The celebration of reaching ten years in the League is testament to how difficult it has been. So a long way from a bankrolled operation.
