Lowestoft learn their lessons well

A chill air that mixed desperation and determination hung over Crown Meadow when Lowestoft Town played in the fourth round of the FA Vase in January. Such was the plight of the Trawlermen that the match, against Ipswich Wanderers, was billed as possibly being their last. The outlook when Lowestoft line up for a fourth-round tie in this season’s competition next month will be considerably brighter.

The Ridgeons League club had faced closure in the face of a demand for £11,000 by Revenue and Customs by the end of January. They have now sorted out their financial problems, acquired a new chairman and recruited a marketing manager who used to work for Norwich City. The lessons learnt from the dark days at the start of the year have been taken to heart.

“The best thing we did was going public with our problems,” Terry Lynes, who has been with the club since 1985 and is at present the club secretary, said. “We contacted the local papers and radio station, and held a public meeting in the social club. It received tremendous support and we raised £2,500 in cash donations at that meeting alone.”

The response showed that the people of the Suffolk port cared about their club, but if the past year has had one hero it is Gary Bennett. Bennett, who runs a driving school in the town, was the rallying point for the club. His energy ensured that the immediate crisis was met and he stepped into the vacant chairman’s seat. “The problems really came when the football club took over the social club attached to it about 18 months ago,” Lynes said. “First we lost the rental income that we received from it and then we had to cope with its debts and the fact it was running at a loss. It was a traumatic time for the club but we have turned things round. The debts that we haven’t paid, we have come to an arrangement to pay and everything is back on a firm financial footing.”

At the end of October Bennett handed over the chairman’s role to Geoff Price, who owns a local kitchen company, and has been a lifelong supporter of Norwich City. It was from his backing of Norwich that Price knows Jenny Gillette, who had worked in the Coca-Cola Championship club’s commercial department. She was eager to return to the area after leaving a job in Bolton. She takes up a six-month contract on January 1.

“Within a week of taking over, Geoff had produced a business plan,” Lynes said. “It’s not a question of his putting money into the club but organising a proper corporate presence, bringing in sponsors and advertisers, getting match-ball sponsors and matchday mascots. We’re getting out into the community. Gary, who is now vice-chairman and director of football, has been going into schools and holding coaching classes.”

Lynes hopes that the new stability off the pitch will soon herald an upturn in playing fortunes. He is able to take a broad historical perspective. “When I first joined the club, the ground was in a terrible condition,” he said. “You could poke your finger through the changing-room wall the wood was so rotten. You had to fill up the baths with a hose or buckets. The focus at the time was getting the place up to standard.

“When we’d done that were able to put some money into the team, which culminated in us winning the league title for the first time for 28 years in 2006.”

The present team is wildly inconsistent. They prepared for their Vase tie last Saturday by losing 7-0 away to Mildenhall Town in the league. Yet earlier in the season, they had gained the notable scalp of Ipswich Town Reserves in the Suffolk Premier Cup. Ipswich had re-entered the competition last season. “They ran away with it,” Lynes said. “They hammered teams 7-0 or 8-0. We beat a team that fielded seven players with first-team experience 3-2. It was a great result.”

Lowestoft dispatched Rye United, the Sussex County League side, 4-2 in vile conditions in the Vase. Mildenhall, incidentally, crashed 5-0 at home to Stanway Rovers, another Ridgeons League club, in their tie. In the fourth round, Lowestoft will play either Coleshill Town or Blackstones - and this year their preparations will be unclouded by worry.