Morecambe FC fans tell us their thoughts about the state of their troubled club, after hundreds of fans queued to buy the new season club kit in the pop-up shop in Morecambe.
00:00I've got my season ticket at home. Can't go into the ground because we can't get any insurance and Jason Whittingham is just messing us about. No end. More than likely he'll either sign on the 19th or dinner time on the 20th or just let us go under.
00:16He did it with Rugby Club so I can't see why. I think the government should have stepped in a lot earlier than what they are going to do which is next year because Sheffield Wednesdays are in the same predicament as us and you're looking at one of the founder members of the Football League could be going out of business like us.
00:37It's just not on. It's the northernish teams that are going under. You don't see them doing the southern teams. And also the FBA, Football League and the EFL should be able to step in because they've vetted these people and they should be able to turn around and say to them,
01:01we've vetted you. You're not doing what you said you were going to do. We're going to take the club off you. You've got a buyer there. We're going to sell it to him. And what you do with your money, it's up to you.
01:14Because come down Bory, they're sat there waiting. You know, they've already paid some of them of our debts. So, you know, why do you not sell it to them?
01:25It seems to get older for 20 years. But I actually, one of the reasons I moved up here from Watford was because of the club and all the people that I met.
01:35As I say, I moved up in 2004 permanently and I've stayed here basically.
01:41And did, went home and away for a number of years on the minibuses in the conference days and then the first few years in the Football League and still go to all the home games and I'll probably go to 10 or 12 away games a season as well.
01:59As I say, to stop being a ground hopper, to follow one club and then to follow that club home and away for over 20 years with all of the friends that I've made, there's a hole.
02:12And whereas I've got friends and people that I know at other football clubs that I could go and see, I've found particularly over the last 20 years, it just isn't the same.
02:25The attachment isn't there. So to lose that attachment for every weekend where you're sort of living and breathing it and it kind of makes or breaks your mood to a certain extent, it is a horrible prospect to face basically.
02:47I bought my season ticket in the expectation that we play. I won't make any attempt to reclaim the money until it's definite that we won't be playing.
03:00And again, I mean, to have gone through the whole COVID situation and missed out on an entire year and then to come back and to be in League One was just ridiculous, to be honest.
03:15We couldn't have made it up, to be honest. And then to think that less than three years later, we're potentially not playing ever again as this incarnation of the club is...
03:28Well, it's not a day I think any football fan thinks they're ever going to live through, to be honest. So for it to happen now is horrendous, basically.
03:39We provide all the playing kit, technical wear for the players, staff, which obviously then knocked through to our retail operations with the club.
03:45And yeah, we brought in obviously the first team's club order, our retail stock, and that all arrived around 12 weeks ago.
03:56And it's been sat in my warehouse for the last 12 weeks, with obviously a bit of an unknown situation.
04:03And there was calls from the fans of, because it was, if you rewind 12 weeks ago, there was, it was starting to happen, but fans were still in that mode of, when's the kit coming out?
04:15When's the kit coming out? And then when everything happened and staff started not being paid, we were put in a position where fans wanted the kit.
04:22We'd invested a lot of money in the kit, so we have to obviously front the club's order to bring it into the country and purchase it from factories.
04:30And for us, it was a little bit like, releasing a kit isn't fair on staff that haven't been paid, because we're ensuring we're covered.
04:43We're asking them to face the pressures of a kit launch, and they're not being paid. It just didn't sit right with us.
04:49So we sat in solidarity with them and didn't release, but then you fast forward to maybe a week ago, and we hit a point where we've now got factories to pay,
04:58which knocks on to, you know, if we don't pay our factory for the Morecambe order, none of our other club stuff gets made.
05:04And then it knocks on to, across the football pyramid, knocks on to our staff getting paid.
05:09So we consulted with fans of the Shrimps Trust, the club, and obviously the doors to the stadium have been locked.
05:16We can't really use our club shop. So we went rogue and made a pop-up shop.
05:22And that, I mean, we owe a lot of it to Lancaster City Council. They contacted us to offer us a location.
05:28They've given us a free of charge, and it's just been the most perfect location to do it, really.
05:35It couldn't have gone any better, as it turns out last night.
05:39So the sales far above what you might have been expecting, do you think?
05:42Above and beyond. So we brought in, the way we run the retail operations is we will bring in the first five months of stock prediction,
05:49based on the previous season sales.
05:51So the retail stock we were holding would have survived, would have lasted the shop until probably October,
05:58and we near enough sold out last night in four hours.
06:03So that's four to five months' worth of stock in four hours.
06:06And now we've just launched all the replica shirts online for pre-order,
06:12because there's just so many fans that didn't get the shirt they wanted because of it selling out.
06:16You know, it's really humbling.
06:18But they've been buying shirts, one, because it's their club.
06:21They still want the shirt.
06:23It means everything to them.
06:25And I think it means everything to them, regardless of the outcome on the 20th.
06:29It's, you know, this is the shirt they want to remember.
06:33They know how much time and effort we put into the shirts,
06:36and the nature of the designs and the pattern work that goes into them.
06:42And it's just been real.
06:43Last night was a little bit, let's still lost for words.
06:47What the fans were saying to us, and the support they were giving us,
06:51and a lot of them saying they're here because they see Terrace as part of the Morgan family,
06:55and they don't want us to lose hundreds of thousands of pounds for what's going on.
07:00So, yeah, it was, you know, when we looked out the window at half past five last night
07:03and the queue was down the prom, three, four, five hundred deep,
07:06it was, that's when it set in.
07:09It's going to be a busy night, and I think we ended up showing about half ten in the end instead of nine
07:13because we just saw the queue out, basically.
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