100 Years of Swansea City FC



Lorraine Corbett Transcript:(background noise, chatter) ....the huge amount of a thousand pounds....at the time I walked from Swansea to Newport to raise money for them....oh right.. MJ: So you were elected Chairman of the LC: Just before we went into receivership. I had a business in Union Street, and it meant that everybody who was collecting funds for the club, throughout the days and the weeks and the weekends would be able to bring the cheques etc. and the donations there, and I would transfer them to Peter Howard, and he would put it in the Save the Swans .....just to help them with the ....People thought they were going to have shares. They were given the option and they were all given a receipt, but if the share issue didn’t come out they could have their money back, because some people only wanted to donate money if they got some shares in the club. But of course Peter Howard and Mel Nurse went to the courts in London to get a stay of execution so to speak, but eventually Doug Sharpe took over and the club then changed its name, and he took the club forward. And all the moneys that were raised, some people did have refunds because they had only donated for shares, but all that money then had to be signed from the Consortium over to Doug Sharpe, because it wasn’t really donated to Doug Sharpe’s scheme. So not everybody signed their money over, so it was extra work again to get everybody’s signature which we did down the Vetch. And the fans themselves did raise about two hundred thousand pounds, which was a huge amount of money at the time. And of course it did help to get the club back on its feet. And that season, the first season that they came out after this had happened, it was just wonderful to watch and see come to fruition that the club was still playing professional football in West Wales. It could have been that we would never see a professional game here again, possibly we would have had to travel as far as Cardiff, or Bristol, to see a professional game. It was heartbreaking at the time, a lot of hard work was put in by FOSS ? and the supporters club, the VIPS and everybody really did a huge amount of work to raise as much money as they could, and the fans, I always think the fans saved the club, myself personally. The Council did what they could, but their hands were tied, because of course not everybody is a football supporter. And we were saved, the club was saved. Next time it was saving the club from Tony Petty, which most people now will remember. And I thought to myself, here we go again, you know it was like “Here we go again”. And that was a close call. I am so pleased that Mel (Nurse) has been recognised for the work he has done for the club, because his heart has always been there, and sometimes his pocket has been there as well.MJ: This must have taken over your life at the time?LC: Yes, I had a business in town, and I had a couple of staff working for me, and it came to a point after months and months of just fundraising, or having meetings or organising meetings, they came to me and said if I don’t spend more time in my job, it would just collapse. And it took them to tell me that I was spending too much time. Fortunately we were coming to the end of it then, but it did take over my life. And my husband just ran the home as well, because I was out at meetings every night gathering people together just raising money all the time.MJ: Was the club appreciative?LC: Well yes, because a certain amount of that money was raised in clubs and pubs and different venues, and they weren’t given a receipt people for their money they just put their money in a bucket. A receipt was given for the bucket of money to the club or whoever collected it, but no individuals were. So that cash was put into the hands of Peter Howard’s solicitor, who then for some reason or other suddenly deposited the money in the courts, because he didn’t want to keep it in his possession, and it was awful because it, I think it was 14 years to get that money back out again. So myself and John Button had to sign an affidavit to tell them exactly where the money was raised and how it was raised and why there were no receipts and it was cash money donated to the club. And I must say that those people who gave the money didn’t want shares, they just gave the cash, so it wasn’t a case of replacing it with shares. They did get it out eventually, but it took a long time. The club has a huge history of ups and downs – let’s hope that it’s just on a secure path, hopefully.MJ: so how did you end up getting so involved? Have you always been a supporter?LC: No, my husband was a supporter, so I thought if you can’t beat them join them, and then I started going down, and then my husband was on the supporters’ committee and I got roped into that, and then I got really involved in it, and then I absolutely loved the football. I used to go to work, I never used to go home if it was an evening match, I used to go straight to the football. And I used to sell raffle tickets, I used to sell them before the game. Every game, I used to sell raffle tickets for an hour and a half before the game. We used to run, the supporters’ club used to run, a raffle for every home game, and raise money that way; we used to have an end of season dance for the players to get their awards at the end of the season. It used to be well attended by the fans, the fans loved it you know. And I am glad it’s still going on in some way with the Trust, because the Trust hold a bowling night which the players come to and mix with the fans and the players really enjoy it. And they have a couple of dinners in the stadium now, and I am sure the players enjoy that, and it gives a chance for the fans not to be too distant from them. Occasionally it’s nice to be able to talk to one of the players who you have supported all season. You know I was asked to join the Trust, but I am getting a bit old for that now, I just don’t have the energy to do it any more. But I am glad that they are doing well. You know, more or less taken over from the supporters’ club, and FOSS etc, and taken the club forward with the fans as it should be. And I am a great believer in the Trust keeping the fans happy down at Liberty stadium.MJ: Before you got married were you a football fan?LC: No, no, I had my job, I had two children to bring up, I didn’t have time to go to football. And there wasn’t a lot of football on television then, so you couldn’t really follow any team on TV. Not that I disliked it, I just didn’t have any enthusiasm for it.MJ: So it’s quite a story coming from not being a supporter to doing all that work to save the club!LC: From 1978 - having a season ticket every season since then. If I can’t afford anything else, I always can afford a season ticket, got to! It’s our social life as well as supporting the club. And there’s a lot of people that give a lot of their spare time to supporting the club, and I don’t think they get enough recognition myself, because it takes over their lives; they are unpaid and they do it for the love of the football club, and I think they should get more recognition than what they do have.MJ: So is it a big family thing for you, supporting the Swans?LC: No. Both of my children are rugby supporters, and both my grandsons play rugby. It’s just myself and my husband.MJ: are you from Swansea?LC: No, I’m from Tonypandy. But I went to live in London when I was two. That’s where I met my husband, he was in the Welsh Guards, stationed in London. And we met and married up there. When we moved back, he used to slope off to the football on a Saturday afternoon, I just thought it was a bit of a man thing, you know. But it just took one game to get me hooked, one game, an away match, to get me hooked.MJ: Can you remember your first game?LC: My first away match was in the south west of England, in....Exeter was it? (Asks husband?) He says Plymouth, but I can’t remember, I knew it was one of those towns, but I do remember getting squashed through the turnstile. And funnily enough, one of the chaps I used to deal with with my job, he was standing next to me on the bank, and I said to him “I thought you were ill, off sick?”. He said “Well I am really”. He was supposed to be in work, but he was standing next to me! And that was my first away game, and we went to a lot then. LC: I remember running the bus to Liverpool, that was a day, because most of the people on the bus had supporters club cards. We bought tickets, and in order to go to Liverpool, and most of the people on the bus had tickets, and I hadn’t run many buses before that, there was so many that went that day. We started off on the wrong foot, we went past a pick up point and had to go back to pick up the people. So we were a bit late going up the motorway. We got into Liverpool and the bus hit a car in the traffic in Liverpool, not a bad accident, and everybody got off the bus and went straight into the ground. But a lot of our fans got trapped outside the ground, they didn’t really allow enough room in the away end for our supporters. And we had rung the previous week and told the police how many were coming up, how many tickets had been sold, you know, for them to plan and to give us plenty of room. And many of the people that were outside didn’t have tickets, but most of them did. And they couldn’t get in, they wouldn’t let them in.LC: There was a two-minute silence for Shankly that day, and Toshack took off his jacket, and he had a Liverpool shirt on underneath, but there was a lot of noise during the two-minute silence coming from outside. People thought it was from our supporters but there were people outside who didn’t even know there was a two-minute silence going on, and they were angry because they couldn’t get in to the game, and eventually got back onto the bus. Half of my bus couldn’t get in and they all had tickets. It was a really awful day, one of the worst trips I’ve ever been on. Because they were so upset coming back that they hadn’t seen the game, because in those days you couldn’t nip into the pub to watch it. So that was a game I wanted to forget, I didn’t enjoy that day at all.MJ: That’s some great stories, and an important part of the history of the club, because without what people did then in the mid-eighties, there wouldn’t be a club.LC: No, oh no, even more than in the Tony Petty era. We already had the receiver in. And another thing that time, Malcolm Struel had agreed with the Supporters club that we could have a supporters’ club next to the Vetch, which was the Initial Towel Supply at the time. We had started to put some money into that account, I don’t think it was a huge amount, I think it was about ?16,000 for which the club had bought that bit of land, and they were going to give it to us and build a supporters’ club there. We were sort of, about a third into the payment to buy that when the club went bust, so we never ever got a supporters’ club after that, we never did have, which was something I always wanted to have, somewhere that the fans could go not just on a match day but every day of the week. So that they could go and talk about the game previously, or the one coming up, or you know, and money could be raised in those places, in the supporters’ club to, you know, help the club, whatever it was. But it still hasn’t managed to come, the stadium is not ours, it belongs to the Council, so we still haven’t got a supporters’ club after all these years. You know there’s money to be raised with quiz nights, and meetings, etc., something that I think is still missing from today’s game for us, as supporters then. You know, I feel quite strongly about that, it’s just a shame that it has not come about. MJ: Do you find the Liberty better than the Vetch? Generally better experience?LC: It is, but we’ve lost that family club atmosphere I think a bit, not just because of the size of the Liberty, but because there are so many health and safety issues and rules and regulations that you know people can’t mix in..., there are bars for this and bars for that, where only certain people can go, if you haven’t got a lanyard you can’t go there or you can’t do this. I find that the family club atmosphere has gone, which I expected anyway when we moved to a bigger stadium. I do miss that, whereas you can’t meet people you’ve met every home game for the last 30 years, you can’t see them any more because they are in different places and they go to different places after the game.LC: At the Vetch, the supporters’ club could have the....they could go from every stand all the way round except the away stand, selling raffle tickets or giving out flyers or whatever we were doing at the time, and you could have freedom of the whole Vetch. You would never be able do that at the Liberty, you would have to stick to one area maybe, or get permission, you know, things like that. So that family club atmosphere has gone, which in a way is sad. But I think to progress we probably do have to be more professional the way we work things, that’s the way it is, we are not 4th division any more. There isn’t not such a thing now, but we were at one time.MJ: It all seems a bit surreal, just the way it has changed, the profile of the club, and it all seems so fast to me.LC: Well, I remember, I don’t know if you are old enough, I remember when we did it before, when we went fast through the divisions, it seemed faster to me then than it did this time. But nothing much changed when we went into the First Division, nothing much changed in the stadium. A few things, but nothing big like it has now since you’ve gone into the Premiership. There’s a lot of things in the Premiership, you can’t walk along the concourse after the game now, you are not allowed to, you’ve got to go straight down and out, those sort of things that confine you a bit. But it was fast. I think as a football supporter, as a Swansea City supporter, we expect every season to be better, don’t we? We expect everything to be better. We don’t expect it to be worse, or going down. That is when everybody stays home. and only the dyed in the wool supporters still going down there, when we are playing awful and down in the divisions there’s only a couple of thousand of us down the stadium. Hopefully those days are gone forever, and hopefully we’ll stay in the position we are or near the position we are for the future. And you have always got to look to the future. This is great, going back 100 years, and the club’s history, etc. and you can’t have a future without it, without a past. People say well you can’t keep looking back, but we’ve learned I think from the mistakes we’ve made in the past for the future. If you haven’t got any past, the future’s not really....there isn’t much to talk about, you know what I mean. We’ve made all the mistakes in the past, hopefully we won’t make them again. Hopefully, with the board we have now, all of the people on the board have been supporters in the bad times, they know what it’s like, and how much it hurts, and they are very careful that it’s not going to happen to us again.. ................
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