MDCCCLXVI, on 13 October 2011 - 01:15 PM, said:
Funny how folk suddenly portray things differently when someone dies, isn't it.
I guess we should pay tribute to the fact Norton Lea's underwriting of our debts - i understand he never actually put his own money into CFC but instead guaranteed our overdraft - offered us a form of stability, whilst no one can deny the promotion, cup run, and respectable league standing we enjoyed during his tenure. However were they because of, or in spite of his parsimonious and autocratic approach? Certainly his intransigent, almost dismissive attitude towards those that disagreed with him cost the Club dearly in the longer term, something even he later admitted in a meeting with SIFA representatives.
Then there's the sale of CFC to Brown.
I'm convinced Lea knew exactly what he was doing when he accepted Brown's offer yet considered the deal a win-win for himself. If Brown did somehow manage to pay what he owed Lea - including the half a million the former Chairman loaned the new owner to buy CFC from him - then he'd made well in excess of three times what he'd actually paid for his shares. If not, then he'd return to rescue the situation as some sort of saviour whilst silencing all those that'd called for his exit. But what Lea hadn't bargained for was the sheer magnitude of Brown's criminal intent allied to just how loathed he was amongst many, perhaps most Town fans.
And let's not forget Lea's cynical attempts to undermine the CFSS's efforts to save our club, eventually leading to his spiteful purchase of the Steelers from under the nose of Cook when that individual handed CFC back to the fans.
The way i see it Lea took over a club playing fourth tier football, watched by two or three thousand fans, in an antique of a stadium. When he left it was plummeting back towards that level with embarrassing ease, with most of it's rapidly diminishing fanbase left alienated and angry, whilst playing in that same dilapidated ground. Sure the bank balance was in the black, but his choice of 'the right man to take Chesterfield forward' would soon sort that out. In my mind it could all have been so much different if Norton Lea had only listened to people from time to time.
But then he wasn't dubbed 'The Old Dictator' for nothing.
Our club was hardly an attractive proposition for any business man, given it's antique stadium and lack of interest from the council for us to move to a site that us fans would be happy with. Norton, probably knew this and it played as big part in why he wouldn't, or rather couldn't sell the club - there was no one decent to sell it to. Then the frustrations of the fans who could see we were never going to hit the big time finally resulted in Lea "selling" the club to a local err man, who seemingly had the same vision for our beloved club as the majority of us fans did, or at least that is how he described it at that meeting in the Winding Wheel.
I didn't agree with the red card protest. I could understand why people weren't happy - I recall us being well placed in the 3rd tier with a good team and successful manager and a chance to perhaps get into the 2nd tier - possibly our best chance in my years of watching CFC, all it needed was a bit of money throwing at things to improve our team while we were on a good run, a little investment so we didn't waste the chance. Norts didn't throw any money at it, he kept penny pinching in the way he'd always thought was best - he was a good man at keeping the club out of debt and reducing it's arrears as much as could be possible, but he was pretty useless when it came to taking the business forward. I think this may have been around the time of the cup run, we sold Davies and had money to invest, but he chose to leave it in the bank while our squad gradually got worse and the chance of the big time went away - for good, or at least until Dave Allen came along and told us of his visions.
I didn't join in the protest, I didn't see him being here as that much of a problem, I was too young to remember the good days in the early 80's, and only knew us as a small club that could barely compete in the 3rd tier. And I couldn't see why anyone would want to invest in CFC, given our fan base, stadium, and the fact that we'd already been looking to move somewhere else for many years and the council never seemed like they were going to help us, never mind give us the chance of gaining the land for free.
At the time of the sale to Brown it looked as though it was going to be a wonderful occurrence, we were finally going to have a young ambitious chairman with a modern approach, who would deliver a future that the majority of us fans wanted, there was just one small issue, DB needed to borrow money from the person he was buying the club from so he could afford to buy the club. Surely it's just a little issue though, Norts would had done his research and wouldn't knowingly sell the club to a crook would he???
Spinach chin, on 13 October 2011 - 02:08 PM, said:
I have always said I didnt think he was bad, that SIFA should not have protested and he sold to brown so he could return as the saviour to shut SIFA up.
I also maintain that if the council had been as helpful then as they were in our move to the B2net we would way ahead of where we are now. Why would JNL spend money on saltergate...there was nothing there worth developing and would have held the club back and been a waste of money.
I say the same now, which is why i said `i might be in a minority`
agree totally.