Football Chairman Who Nearly Wrecked Club Gets Four Years - 25/09/2005

A former British Gas showroom trainee who nearly bankrupted Chesterfield, the fourth oldest league club in England, has received two concurrent gaol terms of four years at Nottingham Crown Court. Darren Brown pleaded guilty to two charges of fraudulent trading last November, but it has not been possible to report the case until now because of a court order. Brown was 29 when he posed as an ambitious entrepreneur to seize control of the Spireites in 2000. In just one year the former photocopier salesman had left the club, which can trace its history back to 1866, saddled with debts of almost £2 million after he had used its funds to prop up his other ailing businesses. Fans had to intervene to save the club from extinction after Brown was forced out. Brown began building his sports empire by buying Sheffield Steelers amd Hull Thunder ice hockey clubs and Sheffield Sharks baseball team. He then put just £27,000 of his own money into an £850,000 deal to buy the Derbyshire club. The rest of the money came from loans made by his UK Sporting Group. When he joined the club, it had £300,000 in the bank. For the prosecution Nicholas Dean said 'Brown used Chesterfield as his own personal piggy-bank. It was a sustained fraud and left the club facing financial disaster.' Shortly before resigning, he drew up a business plan to sell the club's Saltergate ground to raise yet more funds. It was this move that finally prompted the FA to get its act together and begin an inquiry. When his business empire finally collapsed, it emerged that Chesterfield FC owed £750,000 to preferred creditors and £12 million to other investors. The club went into administration and had to be rescued by a consortium of supporters who scraped together £120,000 to keep it afloat. It was also discovered that Brown had spent the club's cash on a Range Rover for his wife, a £2,500 lawnmower (which must have been some lawnmower) and a £55,000 deposit on a house. In mitigation, Philip Hackett QC said 'He had no idea how to run businesses as big and complex as this.' Maybe so, but how was he able to build up such a house of cards in the first place with the football authorities only taking a belated interest?

It seems that people who appear to have money can easily walk into football and take control of clubs without any investigation by the football authorities into whether they are a fit and proper person for such a role. Unfortunately, the community based football trust is not an easy alternative. Rushden and Diamonds, in their first year in such a format, are talking of laying off non-playing staff. Attendances at the Irthlingborough club are around the 2,700/2,800 mark when sources think they would need 3,100/3,200 to break even.