A Brief History of Donford Football Club

A Web exclusive short story tied to The Yank Striker series.

Worldbuilding, as I have mentioned previously here, is never an easy process. It’s not likely that you have the entire world your fiction will reside totally sketched out before you begin writing. It’s usually in the revision part of your writing process - or, if you are writing a series, maybe not until you get the first one or few books under your belt before you start seeing the entire iceberg rather than just what’s visible above the waves.

I never realized how true this was until I found myself in this same situation recently with The Yank Striker series. As part of the first book in the series, The Yank Striker: A Footballer’s Beginning, I developed what I thought was a relatively detailed look at Donford Football Club, a soccer club located in the East End of London that offers my main and title character DJ Ryan the opportunity of a tryout.

In my continuing efforts to provide some interesting writing content for this page, and to find a new way to help tell the story of The Yank Striker, I considered the possibility of putting down the whole history of this fictional club. I thought it might be a bit of a diverting challenge to lay out the story of this club that becomes an important part of the broader story I’m about to tell.

Well, six days, probably several hours of research, and more than 7,000 words later, I now know what it’s been like for George Lucas to see his Star Wars universe grow and how George R.R. Martin could get distracted with something like Fire & Blood when everyone is asking where The Winds of Winter is at.

If you do so choose to go forward with a paid subscription to The Writing Life With (Me), you will be able to check out this exclusive look at the club available nowhere else. Although it will feature some people you might run across in the series (not DJ), this particular story is staying right here.

Besides all of the above, I have to say this has been a very helpful and fascinating writing exercise. If Donford FC could be compared to a house, I would have to say the only things I knew about it were the front exterior and what the living room and breakfast nook looked like. But now, I feel like I’ve at least taken the Realtor’s tour of the place if nothing else. I’ve found new characters and learned new things about this club I didn’t know until now. And I am certain the story of The Yank Striker is going to be richer for me writing this.

So, come on down to the old Rodman Park and learn about the history of the Sea Dragons of the East End. Enjoy.

[NOTE: The following short story should be considered a piece of historical fiction. Actual events will blend with fictional ones in a way hopefully true to the times and locations they describe.]

We Together: A History of Donford Football Club

Introduction

The history of football in London hardly starts and stops with the mega-clubs of Arsenal, Cheslea, and Tottenham. Many others have fought for glory or, lacking that, at least respectability in the cutthroat world of English football.

One club long rated as neither a giant of football or a minnow is East London’s Donford Football Club. For more than a century, the Sea Dragons of the East End have played the role of a sleeping giant – a modest club which always has fight but only rarely great success. The generations of fans that have packed Rodman Park, Donford’s home ground for nearly the entirety of its history, always knew their team might lose, but they would always lose hard even against the strongest of their opponents. It’s a team of the East End, of the working-class residents and representatives of different successive waves of immigration to England, all coming together to form the Donford community. Its attitude is expressed in the club’s official motto: Nos Simul – We Together.

Origins (1910-1939)

Donford crest, 1912-1948

The beginnings of Donford FC were in the workshops of Mansfield Works in 1910, one of the few shipbuilding firms still active in London at the end of the Edwardian Era. A group of workers at Mansfield, led by Roger Edwardson (1887-1952), decided to form a new football club. In honor of the neighborhood where Edwardson and many of the workers lived, they named themselves Donford Football Club, with the founding documents signed by Edwardson and 12 other workers on 1 May 1910, and affiliation with the Football Association followed shortly thereafter.

Unlike many football clubs founded in the second half of the 19^th century, the progression of Donford from an amateur to a professional club was relatively rapid. Edward Mansfield (1878-1937), the second son of Mansfield Works owner William Mansfield, quickly became the first major investor in the team, with an initial capital infusion of 2,000 pounds, immediately making him the largest shareholder in the newly incorporated Donford FC. While smaller investors have continued to help fund the club throughout its history, Edward Mansfield and his family would remain the primary owners of the club for more than six decades, despite profound changes to the company’s fortunes and priorities¹.

Within two years, the club’s transformation from amateur to professional side was more or less complete. By 1912, after some ground shares in its first two seasons, the club acquired land needed for a new stadium. Rodman Park was opened and ready for play by the 1913 season. Before the Great War suspended play, nearly all the initial players on the team would leave and be replaced with professional players, except for Edwardson, a box-to-box midfielder with a nose for goal. He would become the club’s first legendary player, scoring 103 goals in 376 appearances for the club². Additionally, in time he would earn ten caps and score three goals for the English national team.

The club’s identity was also solidified before the start of World War I. Having started wearing football kits with a shirt sporting black and white vertical stripes, like Newcastle United and Juventus, Edward Mansfield suggested a royal purple kit in a nod to the newly crowned King George V. By its second season of operation (1911-1912), the kit included a royal purple shirt and socks with white shorts. The team did not settle on an all-royal purple kit until the club’s return to action after World War I. This design has remained in place ever since, with periodic variations. In addition, the nickname of Donford as the Sea Dragons, a nod to the club’s maritime heritage, had been established as early as 1911. By the next year, a crest for the club debuted on their shirts, with the dragon design inspired by but not directly copying the Mansfield Works crest.

Donford was profoundly affected by World War I beyond the stoppage of play. No fewer than five active players among the seniors, reserves, and in one especially sad circumstance, youth teams eventually lost their lives in the conflict. Also, six others from Donford’s various sides were so profoundly wounded they were officially listed as disabled. Edwardson, a sergeant and winner of the Distinguished Conduct Medal, was wounded twice on the Western Front, including a gas attack which many observers suggested may have affected his conditioning during the latter stages of his footballing career, and consequently his selection for international duty. Mansfield, who rose to lieutenant colonel and commanded an infantry battalion of troops primarily from the East End of London, would survive the war physically intact, winning the Distinguished Service Cross. However, his battalion would suffer a staggering 80 percent casualty rate during its two years of active service, and no fewer than four of Mansfield’s close friends from his Oxford University days fell in separate actions. It was the death of his elder brother Albert in the Third Battle of Ypres that deeply troubled Edward, as this made him the heir to and eventual chairman of Mansfield Works, a latter duty he assumed in 1922. While he would be increasingly occupied with the company’s financial stability and prosperity, he continued to serve as club chairman.

After the war, Edwardson returned to the pitch, even though it took him a couple of seasons to return to form, a return some football writers said was never complete. However, he continued to star for Donford until 1922, the last two years serving as player-manager.

After retiring as a player, Edwardson continued to manage Donford for the next sixteen seasons, marking him as the longest-serving club manager to date. While never considered an innovative manager, especially in football tactics, he was widely credited with impressive man-management skills. A tough but warm-hearted disciplinarian to his squad, he was also seen as conscientious of his team’s physical conditioning.

Finding talent was also a strong point for the Donford gaffer. Eschewing big-money transfers, Edwardson was confident he could build his club through young talent already in the East End, much less London. Edward Mansfield soon developed enough trust in his past star turned manager that he turned all day-to-day football operations over to Edwardson’s control. He would soon repay his chairman’s trust by leading Donford into its debut in the First Division in 1928.

In the years following, the club would remain a modest but challenging side to all opponents. Although Donford and their boss Edwardson would rely more on team play rather than individual skill, some standouts between the world wars included stalwart center half Nicky Barnes (1898-1975), whose 578 appearances for the club between 1919 and 1937 would set a mark not equaled for decades; left winger Lenny Peters (1897-1991), who scored 45 goals in 382 appearances for Donford; and Billy O’Donnell (1903-1980), the first Republic of Ireland player to represent the club, who earned 127 goals in 354 appearances as a striker.

The end of the first “golden era” of Donford FC is generally credited as 1938, when persistent financial difficulties with Mansfield Works stemming as far back as the 1929 Crash led the Football League to deduct points from Donford due to financial irregularities. Donford, which had dropped into the Second Division the year prior, now dropped down to the Third Division, with which the club would be very familiar in the years to come.

Despite this trouble, it was a stunning blow to the Donford fandom when they received the news that Edward Mansfield had taken his own life on 30 May 1938, a month after the Football League’s decision. Whether he made his decision due to his feelings regarding the club’s troubles, his company’s financial position, or lingering ghosts from his service in World War I was never clear.

In the aftermath, Edward’s will dictated that Donford FC would be owned jointly by his second son, Richard (1906-1978), and the only child of his brother Albert, daughter Victoria Mansfield-Richards (1899-1971). (His eldest son, Daniel (1903-1985) would become chairman of Mansfield Works.)

The newly widowed Victoria and football-mad Richard were an odd pair, yet the two cousins were prepared to move forward with serving as joint chairmen of Donford, especially with Edwardson continuing to serve as manager. However, 1939 would see the beginning of all football suspended throughout the country as a result of the outbreak of World War II. Edwardson took the opportunity to retire from football management and indeed public life, although he was active in the Home Guard throughout the war. Afterwards, he would live life as a pensioner in the Donford home he and his family had occupied since the start of his playing days, passing away of lung cancer and complications from his war injuries in 1952.

The War Years and Rebuilding (1940-1948)

The Battle of Britain in 1940 would see considerable damage to Rodman Park due to German bombs. Why the damage occurred is still up for conjecture: some have theorized German bombers were attempting to damage the Port of London and some of the surrounding factories and industrial concerns but missed, or some theorize a squadron of Junker 88 bombers had intended to strike St. Paul’s Cathedral but were surprised by a squadron of Spitfires and compelled to dump their bombs and escape. Regardless of the reason, the damage left Rodman Park unusable.

When Donford returned to play in 1946, they relied on two different ground shares to fulfill their fixtures. Despite a lack of financial and material resources stemming from the after-effects of the war and financial difficulties with the club and Mansfield Works, builders repaired the damage and made nominal improvements to the ground, including covering all four stands with roofs.

There was a flood of gratitude and emotion among the Donford faithful as the Sea Dragons returned to Rodman Park at the start of the 1948 season, complete with a slightly refined club badge above their left breasts. It was this response from the fans that would bring forth what would become the club’s anthem.

To this day, no one person has received or even made a serious claim to have created the song. However, what is known is that during the 1948-49 season, fans in the western Mansfield Road Stand began singing a song set to the tune of the old Cockney music hall song “Down at the Old Bull and Bush.” That itself was adapted from “Under the Anheuser Busch,” a drinking song commissioned by the Anheuser-Busch Company in 1903. Although there have been different variations on the song throughout the years, the most commonly accepted verses of the song eventually known as “The Old Rodman Park” read as follows:

Come, come, come and see the Dragons

Down at the Old Rodman Park

Come, come, come have a drink or two

Down at the Old Rodman Park

See the Donford FC play

See the Donford score a goal

Just let the boys play and win

Do, do, come on down with all your mates

Down at the Old Rodman Park

Although originally confined to the Mansfield Road stand, throughout the season the singing spread throughout the stadium until it was reported by football writers at the time that the entire stadium would always sing the song just before kickoff and often after wins. The club would de facto endorse the use of “The Old Rodman Park” by the 1951-1952 season, when it helped finance the recording of a version of the song by veteran dance hall performer Stewie Osborne and began playing the tune on the public address system before every kickoff³. Either Osborne’s or other performances of the song (recorded or sometimes live) have been part of pre-match festivities ever since.

The Wilderness Years (1948-1969)

Donford crest, 1948-1970

By the 1948 season, Adam Ransome (1887-1968), who had been part of Edwardson’s staff since 1935, had served as manager of Donford for the past two years. His focus was on restoring Edwardson’s coaching philosophy to the club and continuing it moving forward along with his veteran backroom staff. After he led Donford’s successful promotion into the Second Division, co-chairmen Victoria Mansfield-Richards and Richard Mansfield trusted Ransome to oversee all football operations.

However, after Ransome retired from football management in 1957, his successors would attempt to implement the old “Donford Way” with diminishing returns. Charlie Daniels managed the club from 1957-1962, Samuel Roberts from 1962-1965, and Jamie Ellis from 1965-1970. All had either played for Donford and/or served on its coaching staff before taking on the manager’s job, and except for Ellis, a Welshman, all were English.

During this time, Donford yo-yoed between the Second, Third, and during the 1966-1967 season, the Fourth Division, continuing to coast on past glories, and fading into just another local club. There were few players of particular note from the post-war years, although two standouts who traded the team captaincy between them included Barry Gascoinge⁴ (1922-1989), a veteran of the British Eighth Army who was the first-choice keeper for Donford from 1946 to 1962, and midfielder John Major⁵ (1924-1995), who scored 98 goals in 431 appearances for Donford between 1946 and 1960. The latter was nicknamed “Sad-Eyed Johnny” by the fans for his dark eyes and often hang-dog expression after tough losses or frustrating draws⁶.

The Glory Years of the Madhouse Crew (1970-1978)

Donford crest, 1970-2002

Two events upended the ennui at the increasingly run-down and outdated Rodman Park. The first of these was the shock decision in 1970 of Mansfield-Richards to step down as co-chairman of Donford and ask her co-chair and cousin Richard to buy her out of her shares in the club, citing ill health. In fact, she would die of complications from Parkinson’s Disease, which she had been privately diagnosed as having in 1963, within a year of her resignation.

In addition, there were the persistent reports Richard received from his brother Daniel about the slow decline in fortunes of Mansfield Works. (Richard still owned shares in Mansfield Works. Conversely, Daniel had also given loans to the club during the past two decades). Now well into his 60’s, Richard admitted in a letter to his brother shortly after assuming the sole chairmanship that he sensed both his own end and the likely end of a family firm of more than 100 years of operation⁷. “Now’s the time or never’s the time,” he said of finding success with Donford, a saying he would often repeat in public during the next several years.

Richard soon began reasserting himself at Rodman Park. The old club crest was improved with a fresher, cleaner one, and the first-choice kits now sported a white stripe down the left side of the chest and down the center of the kit’s socks, a look many said suggested a classic design of the fictional Melchester Rovers of the Roy of the Rovers comics (although Melchester’s colors were red and yellow). The stripes were gone after a few years, but the badge stayed for much longer.

The second and more important change was the dismissal of Ellis and the hiring of a club outsider, Michael “Mac” Buchanan (1933-2004). Donford’s chairman had learned of how Buchanan, a former Scotland international at youth levels, had led Falkirk Albion to two successive promotions in the Scottish Football League with an exciting style of play that matched well against the big boys of Scotland, even the Old Firm⁸. Richard hoped the brash and innovative Scot was the necessary ingredient to success on the pitch.

Buchanan quickly demonstrated he had plenty of energy, confidence, and ideas. Gone were old-fashioned training techniques aimed solely at general fitness, with a few five-a-side matches thrown in. Each exercise and practice had the intent of improving players’ technical abilities and match-related fitness. He often varied his tactics and formations, from 4-4-2, 4-2-4, or even 3-5-2 at times, depending on his available personnel.

Finally, as all good managers need, he recruited quality players. With his contacts in Scotland, Buchanan brought four top level Scottish players for free transfers or nominal transfer fees. They were center half Eddie MacLeish (1950-2019), who scored a dozen goals in 340 appearances; Kenneth McDonald (1949- ), central midfielder who was immediately named captain when he arrived in 1971 and scored 58 goals in 239 appearances for Donford; Duncan “Dunc” MacColl (1951- ) right winger with 40 goals in 259 appearances, and Bobby Chisum (1950-2013), the hard-drinking and partying striker who would eventually score an eye-popping 120 goals in 186 appearances. They would join existing stars Danny Slade (1942- ), the Donford academy product who had inherited the #1 shirt from Gascoinge and would make 598 appearances between the sticks, and Geoff Carter (1945-2005), a wild man from Yorkshire who scored 143 goals in 438 appearances for Donford. They and Mac Buchanan developed a culture which celebrated working hard, winning hard, and celebrating hard. The Madhouse Crew was born.

The new playing staff started paying dividends as they were blooded into the first team. In 1972, two years after Buchanan’s hiring, Donford won promotion to the Second Division. During the following season (1973-1974), the team would go on a fantastic run in the FA Cup, ending on a bright day in May at Wembley Stadium, when Donford beat cross-town foes West Ham United in a 2-0 match for the ages. And during the next season, the Sea Dragons earned promotion back to the First Division after a four-decade absence.

Another tradition was established in the wake of Donford’s FA Cup win. Donford had been designated as being the away team in the cup final. After years of various change kits used by the club, including its old black and white vertical striped design, black and yellow hoops, and at one point an all-pink kit, Richard Mansfield had suggested using a sea green color as another reminder of the football club’s origins. Donford first used an all-sea green kit during the 1973-1974 season, and it was that kit Donford wore in their Wembley Stadium triumph. The combination of fans’ sentimental attachment to the FA Cup win and its association with the sea made it a wildly popular kit for the replica market, and the all sea-green kit has been the primary change strip of Donford FC ever since⁹.

However, Richard Mansfield knew the ride would soon be over. He’d suffered his first heart attack soon after a 1973 FA Cup semifinal match and once again in February 1974. Even though he managed to keep those incidents out of the media, he sensed his health was entering a significant decline. In addition, he continued to hear the difficulties from his brother Danny regarding Manfield Works, still a significant if non-controlling shareholder in Donford. It was caught in a pincer between the continuing decline of industry in general and the shipping industry in particular in the East End, and the firm’s mounting debt load. Finally, Mac Buchanan continued to inform his chairman of a growing interest in securing the services of members of the Madhouse Crew from larger British clubs and even continental clubs as well. Time was running out.

Mansfield now rushed to do what he could to sustain his club’s long-term health. In one of his final projects as chairman, he busted out his own checkbook and invited outside investors to contribute funds to the club for one purpose: a long-overdue refurbishment of Rodman Park, whose disrepair and obsolescence had crossed over from shambolic to worrisome. Between 1975-1978, all four stands at the ground in turn would all be fully refurbished: the western Mansfield Road Stand, the northern Centennial Stand (then known as the Landward Stand), the eastern Roger Edwardson Memorial Stand, and the southern Main Stand. Concrete would be repaired or replaced, and all remaining wooden structures replaced with concrete and/or steel. The roofs for the stands were replaced with steel structures and modern supports, doing away with the old supports and struts that obscured sightlines. The number and quality of both public restrooms and concession areas were increased. The club’s offices, dressing rooms, and other team facilities, mostly located in the Main Stand, also received long-overdue updates. The design of Mansfield Road, the oldest current stand at Rodman Park, dates from this renovation.

In addition to the comfort provided for the team and its fans, there was an important safety consideration for the improvements. In a 1990 architectural study of Rodman Park undertaken as part of plans to convert it to an all-seater stadium, it was stated if the 1975-1978 renovations had not been completed, the deteriorating conditions of Rodman Park’s wooden stands might have presented the same type of fire hazard that eventually affected Bradford City AFC in 1985¹⁰.

At Buchanan’s strong suggestion, Richard finally invested in a dedicated training ground located three miles east from Rodman Park in a former industrial estate. Known simply as Donford Training Ground, the facilities consisted of a converted former factory and warehouse, as well as barely enough land for a half dozen full-size pitches. Although the facilities were hardly adequate, if that, for a 20^th century football club, it was a massive improvement over training sessions at random waste grounds or nearby universities for the club’s history.

 Mansfield cut the ribbon on the completed Donford Training Ground and the final improvements to the Mansfield Road Stand in the second week of June 1978. Within a fortnight, he had suffered his fourth and fifth heart attack in the space of 48 hours and died 25 June 1978. The evening prior to that fourth attack, Mansfield Works had announced it was going into receivership, the beginning of the liquidation of a company first founded in 1805.

As for Donford, the club’s ownership fell to Richard’s only son, Dr. Thomas Mansfield, (1943- ). A respected oceanographer and faculty member of Southampton University, he had no interest in business or football other than as a fan. After considering the outstanding club debts and the personal debts of his father, Dr. Mansfield began a search for new ownership for Donford FC and authorized a clear-out of the first-team side to raise funds¹¹.

Donford fans later called 1978 “The Year Football Died,” but there were in fact several gloomy dates during 1978 and beyond which seemed to fit the gloomy start to the Thatcher¹² Era. Dunc MacColl had been sold to Hearts in Edinburgh before the previous season. By the end of the summer, Geoff Carter had been transferred to Stoke City. By August, after several meetings with Dr. Manfield regarding the direction of the club, Buchanan resigned his position to become manager of the Minnesota franchise of the North American Soccer League, the first stop in a peripatetic career that would see him manage seven different clubs in Turkey and four east Asian nations. By the end of the 1978-1979 season, the entire starting 11 of the 1974 FA Cup Final squad had either been transferred or retired, apart from Danny Slade, who would remain in goal until his retirement at the conclusion of the 1981-1982 season.

Up and Down and Nearly Out (1979-2002)

From 1979 to 2001, there would be no fewer that four separate owners of Donford FC, from industrialist Ned Stapelton, who owned the club from 1979-1986, financier Jonathan Randall-Smyth from 1986-90, record company executive Andrew Bannerman from 1990-1997, and hedge fund owner Mike Davies from 1997-2002.

Two significant additions to the Donford senior side occurred in the 1979-1980 season. With the decision by the European Union on 23 February 1978 that player nationality should not be an issue for football leagues in EU nations, and the Football League’s related decision in summer 1978 to lift its ban on non-British players, then manager Andy Taylor arranged for the transfer of 21-year-old Dutch international winger Matthias de Jong to Donford. He would score 31 goals in 108 games before transferring to Udinese in Italy’s Serie A three seasons later.

A more permanent part of the Donford first team was the addition of its first Black player, Cecil Eliot (1959- ). A striker in the traditional target man role, Eliot was born in Donford to Jamaican-immigrant parents. Unlike de Jong, Eliot would become a club hero to the Sea Dragons faithful, scoring 298 goals in 622 appearances, both club records, from 1979-1995. He would represent Jamaica internationally, scoring 14 goals in 30 appearances.

Little was done to add to the 1975-1978 improvements to Rodman Park or improvements to Donford Training Ground. One exception to this rule was in 1991, when the club made renovations to Rodman Park to convert it into an all-seater stadium after the Taylor Report reported on the dangers of standing stadiums in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster of 1989.

Glory, Pain (2002-2009)

Donford crest, 2002-Present

A totally new era began with the majority purchase of Donford FC by Mark Anderson (1949- ), owner and founder of the Angroup grocery chain in 2002. Bold, brash, and often quoted in the Tory newspapers regarding the work ethics of Generation X, Millennials, and all generations of recent immigrants, Anderson made three notable moves immediately upon his ascension to the chairmanship of Donford.

First, he commissioned the creation of a refurbished and simplified badge for the club. Some fans were slightly off put with the circular design as opposed to the traditional shield and other changes, but with time they accepted the new crest. Secondly, after much considerable lobbying of previous owners by women’s advocacy groups, Donford fan groups, and others, Anderson announced the founding of Donford Ladies FC for the 2002-2003 season. Although the Lady Sea Dragons, as the side is nicknamed, have not won any significant trophies since its founding, they have seen an ever-growing attendance at their matches.

The third and more momentous decision was to hire the first manager of Donford born beyond the British Isles. Pierre Lamont (1962- ) had found success in the top two professional leagues in France. A (possibly apocryphal) story was Anderson had learned of Lamont after his 19-year-old mistress had seen a match between Lamont’s Strasbourg FC and AS Monaco during an extended weekend in Monaco. Regardless of the reason, Anderson saw in the young manager ambition and innovation, two qualities he treasured in his own company’s employees.

Upon his ascension to the managerial role, Lamont was immediately compared to his countryman Arsene Wenger, then in charge of Arsenal FC of north London. He protested these comparisons, but he had actually been coached by Wenger in Strasbourg’s youth side in the late 1970’s, at the beginning of the older man’s coaching career. And despite these protestations, Lamont also shared many beliefs with Wenger regarding the importance of diet and nutrition for players, a reverence for the importance of statistics, all but ignored in English football for years, and the importance of both a strong scouting organization and a conservative but well-thought transfer policy.

Lamont would have an immediate impact on Donford’s fortunes. In his first season (2002-2003), Lamont would lead Donford from the Football League Second Division (the old Third Division) into promotion to the Football League First Division (the former Second Division), and win its second major trophy, the English Football League Trophy, with a 2-0 win over Carlisle United in Millenium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. Two years later in 2004, they would win promotion to the Premier League, Donford’s first stint in the league since its 1992 creation and its first run in the topflight for two decades.

The new manager built his squad with a mix of careful scouting and the utilization of Donford’s once-moribund academy system. Among Lamont’s more careful purchases on the transfer market were the Senegalese international defensive midfielder Freddie Diange (1981- ), Carlos Lopez Hernandez (1979- ) the Paraguayan whose speed and passing skills at left back were displayed in Lamont’s specialized 4-3-3 system, and Lionnel Danon (1983- ) the prickly French striker who scored 135 goals in just 204 appearances for Donford. Among the bright lights of the existing squad was tough center half Barry Blake (1975- ) an academy product who stabilized Donford’s back four along with Lopez Hernandez and served as team captain under Lamont.

However, Lamont and his new chairman, Anderson, were soon at loggerheads. In his desire to improve the club revenues and fill his bank accounts, Anderson made more efforts to increase Donford’s corporate and marketing activities. Lamont made frequent pleas for more transfer funds and improvements to Rodman Park. Both requests went unanswered, although Anderson did undertake a 35 million Euro improvement and expansion of Rodman Park’s executive boxes. He also invested five million Euro into the Donford Training Center in 2006 after years of lobbying by Lamont, yet the latter publicly claimed the facility was wholly inadequate for a club with ambitions to stay in the Premier League. In a 2010 Sports Illustrated profile of the club, writer Stephen Coates would compare the relationship between Lamont and Anderson to that of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and his frequently fired manager, Billy Martin.

The end of their working relationship came after a long (and allegedly liquid) weekend spent, at Anderson’s invitation, at his seaside vacation home in Provence, France. Lamont left for Versailles to extend his vacation, and on 1 August 2007, announced to the British press he had resigned as Donford manager with immediate effect. “I can no longer pretend to support a sporting project I completely oppose on philosophical grounds,” Lamont concluded. He would soon leave for Olympique Lyonnais, where he would secure a Ligue 1 title.

Later, Donford fans would name the remainder of Anderson’s stint as owner The Thousand Day Chaos¹³. Donford would be relegated to the Championship after the 2007-2008 season. There would be five different managers over that and the next two seasons, and there was yet another clear out of senior players. The Great Recession, beginning in 2008, had a negative effect on both Angroup’s financial books and Anderson’s personal finances, the result of overextended loans used to finance expanded grocery locations and real estate investments collapsing. Fans and media began to voice concerns about the financial stability of Donford, and protesters with banners declaring ANDERSON OUT grew the longer the impasse remained.

The matter literally exploded into public view during a home match on 26 December 2009 (Boxing Day) against West Bromwich Albion. A fortnight before, Anderson had announced he was seeking a sponsorship deal that would include a name change for Rodman Park. He was present in the director’s box when chants of “Fuck off Anderson” rang out after the typical singing of “The Old Rodman Park” at the beginning of the game, and matters deteriorated from there. Both the chants, songs, banners, and eventually smoke bombs (both of white and purple smoke) began to fill the stands.

During the 60^th minute of the match, Anderson appeared on the balcony of the director’s box (in the Main Stand of Rodman Park) and appeared to gesture to the crowd to quiet down. The response of the crowd was a shower of plastic bottles, trash, smoke bombs, random debris and even seats from the stands, and there was a group of spectators who surged toward the opening to the box to try and enter it. Stadium security made the effort to try and remove Anderson and his party from the box, but there were fans outside the rear exits of the box blocking their path. There were ugly scenes as security all but ignored the game activities and relied on police reinforcements to help subdue fans. Television viewers could barely see the field from the smoke and chaos, and the Baggies fans in the visiting section of the Landward Stand were left in shock at the scene. While the police and security were concentrating on trying to protect Anderson and his party, some masked assailants made use of the confusion to enter the VIP car park and firebomb Anderson’s stretch Land Rover limousine. The vehicle, which Anderson had allegedly spent a quarter million pounds to customize, was later declared a total loss, and police were obliged to transport Anderson and his guests away from Rodman Park in police vehicles.

It would be the final Donford match the chairman would attend. More than 150 fans were arrested in the aftermath, although no arrests would be made in the matter of the limo firebombing. There were reports of 69 fans, stadium staff and law enforcement taken to hospital after the match, which was finally ended one second after the 90th minute with nine minutes of extra time left to play¹⁴.

Although publicly Anderson appeared undaunted by the displeasure of his club’s supporters, sources close to the grocery store mogul said he was profoundly shaken by the event. Plans for the stadium naming rights sponsorship were shelved (as it turned out, permanently) and a search was started for a new buyer for Donford FC.

The Yanks are Coming (2010-Present)

Donford fans spent the spring of 2010 more concerned about the financial future and ownership of their club than its status in the Championship, and it was much more of a nail-biter than any relegation battle the club had faced in its history. There were weekly news stories about the dubious financial status of the club, how much revenue Anderson was taking from it, and what deliberations the Football League and the Football Association were taking on whether they would be penalized by relegation from the Championship or even expulsion from the Football League. Various ownership groups were rumored to have interest in Donford, from as far-flung locations as Qatar, Singapore, Malaysia, and at least one member of European royalty living in tax exile in Monaco.

However, as spring turned to summer, an American firm, the Gerber Sporting Group (GSG), owner of football clubs in the United States, Austria, and Australia, and a minority investor in several NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball teams, started to become a contender. On 4 July 2010, 48 hours before loans guaranteed by both Donford and Angroup were about to be due, Anderson and GSG announced the sale of the club for 175 million Euros. INDEPENDENCE DAY was the more popular headline of those appearing in the British papers.

Anderson’s pettiness manifested itself in the day before, later called The Night of The Butcher’s Knives. In the 24 hours before the sale was approved, Anderson sacked the entire coaching staff and senior business administration and cleared the executive suites and offices at Rodman Park of everything, it was alleged, except the landline phones and filing cabinets¹⁵.

Although fans and media observers were wary of the first foreign owner of Donford FC, he was not quite as foreign as he seemed. Hank Gerber (1976- ) was the son of a Jewish-American father and English mother, both of whom worked in investment banking. Gerber himself was a top earner for Goldman Sachs soon after graduating from Columbia University, but the New York-native soon was interested in making his own path in sports business. His interest in Donford was not entirely professional, either – it soon came out his mother had been a longtime season ticket holder at the club, one of several fans with a small amount of shares in the club.

Gerber and GSG quickly worked to prove their sincere intent and interest in the club. Left without a coaching staff and few available and willing candidates with the 2010-2011 season fast approaching, they offered the caretaker manager’s role to Barry Blake, then in the last stages of his playing career at Donford. Blake agreed, assembling a mixed bag of coaches and former Donford players for his staff, and managed to keep them out of relegation danger that season.

The 2011-2012 season saw the return of Pierre Lamont to the managership of Donford at Gerber’s personal request. Lamont brought with him some longtime staff members with him to England, although he was persuaded to retain Blake and some of his staff as a reward for their service.

The next season would see Donford win promotion back to the Premier League. As before, Lamont would build his team from a variety of sources, including the keeper and academy product George “Red” Redmond, striker Gerve Baptiste from France, and at the tail end of his stint at Donford, he approved the then-club record 35-million-pound transfer for central defender Jerry Davis from Aston Villa, later to become team captain.

The work off the field was even more of note. In 2012, GSG undertook a four-year reconstruction of the Main and Edwardson stands, as well as the now renamed Centennial Stand (in honor of Donford’s 100^th anniversary in another popular move for fans). Seating was increased from 25,000 to 45,000. Also added were improved spectator facilities, highly upgraded technological features (including video displays and wifi access), and improved dressing rooms and club facilities in the Main Stand. Plans are currently underway for the second phase of the Rodman Park improvements, expanding and refurbishing the Mansfield Road Stand and adding enough seats to all stands to expand capacity to 60,000 spectators.

In 2015, Donford dedicated the first-team facilities for the new Standwood Training Center, located just inside the eastern portion of the M25 motorway. Lamont declared Donford finally had a training facility worthy of a top-flight club. The old Donford Training Ground was wound up and the land sold, and the first-team, reserves, ladies’ team, and academy players soon flocked to Standwood. The first two buildings were joined in time by two more, and eventually the club would move most of their executive offices to Standwood, freeing up more usable space at Rodman Park.

The following year, however, Lamont announced he was stepping down a second time as Donford boss. At first, he credited the decision to leave due to a disagreement over the need for the club to have a dedicated director of football (he opposed the move, saying he could manage all football operations on his own). However, he later admitted the grind of management had worn him down. He would continue to serve as a consultant to the club for three years, before returning to France to accept a similar part-time consulting role with the Saudi Arabian Football Federation, as well as to focus on writing¹⁶. Barry Blake was named Lamont’s permanent replacement.

As Donford FC enters the second century of its existence, it is unclear how or if it will grow or progress under its current circumstances. Fans are hopeful that soon, the Sea Dragons will no longer be simply a sleeping giant of English football. As Cecil Eliot said recently regarding his former club, “Eventually, a sleeping giant wakes up.”

1. Mansfield would phase out shipbuilding activities by 1915 but continue to concentrate on ship repair and servicing and diversified into other industrial sectors.

2. Although Clarence “Nobby” Wheeler is listed as “Trainer-Manager” for the club from 1911 to 1920, several Donford players from the time said that Edwardson, who served as team captain from the club’s founding until 1922, also served as the de facto manager of the club (making team selections, etc.) at least by 1918 and perhaps as early as 1914.

3. The song, released on 3 June 1951, was one of the final charted singles for Osborne (1903-1966), who would soon retire from performing with the decline of music halls (much less music hall tunes) and the growth of jazz, blues, and eventually rock and roll in the UK and Ireland.

4. No relation to Paul Gascoinge, the buccaneering attacking midfielder for Newcastle United, Spurs, Rangers, and other clubs during the 1980’s and 90’s.

5. No relation to the UK Prime Minister of the same name.

6. “Not sure why everyone thought all the losses got to me,” Major once said after receiving the last of his four Donford Player of the Year awards. “I made it through Dunkirk and Sword Beach [at Normandy], I can manage getting beat in a match. Nobody died.”

7. In this letter, Richard referred to the fact he had been diagnosed with high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis, which were the beginning of his own health problems.

8. The Old Firm refers collectively to Glasgow Rangers and Celtic FC, two Glasgow clubs and bitter rivals who have dominated Scottish football for much of its history.

9. Donford has used various third option strips from the 1940’s onward. In recent years since the Gerber Sporting Group takeover of Donford, the club has alternated between a kit with an all-white shirt with royal purple trim and lettering with black shorts, or various black and grey designs.

10. On 11 May 1985, during the final match of the season for Bradford, the main stand, which had been officially condemned and scheduled for demolition, caught fire. The fire would kill 56 spectators and injure 256 and led to a strengthening of safety standards in football stadiums throughout the UK.

11. Although this search for funds would involve exploring the idea of corporate sponsorship on club shirts, this was not implemented until the start of the 1979-1980 season. It is a common misconception that Mansfield Works was an early shirt sponsor of Donford, but this was impossible due to the company’s liquidation. This misconception has been aided by the frequent appearance of bootleg Donford shirts on sale complete with the Mansfield Works logo.

12. Margaret Thatcher (1928-2013), Prime Minister of the UK from 1979 to 1990.

13. It would, in fact, extend 1,070 days.

14. The result was a 1-1 draw.

15. In 2021, Angroup went into administration over outstanding debts. Publicly, Anderson blamed the unwillingness of banks and the Government to help supply emergency funds, although a report from the company admitted extensive export issues stemming from Brexit had created a large drop in revenues. Anderson had been a strong supporter of the Leave vote in 2016 and continued to support Brexit in the following years.

16. In 2020, Lamont released A Deceptively Simple Game, the first of a planned three-volume history regarding the evolution of football tactics and training. It quickly made the New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists.