It’s tough to envision too many other teams where the manager can easily walk home from games, regardless of the outcome, or where a fan has given him a custom-made oak coffee table. Even better, the table in Gary Caldwell’s office at Exeter’s renovated Cliff Hill training site was provided to him by a supporter who is a carpenter, and the pitch measurements are to the scale of the surface at their St James Park home. “The supporters go over and above in terms of what they give to this club,” says Caldwell.
However, Exeter are rather unique due to their status as a fan-owned club, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this month, a reason for celebration and a decision that has since spurred fascination and appreciation in their model from competitors and the government.
The Exeter City Supporters’ Trust has around 3,600 members who each pay a minimum of £24 each year. “You always hear players at clubs say: ‘It’s a family club,’ but we’re owned by the family,” explains club president Julian.
Tagg, a lifetime Exeter fan who was an Under-11s coach, a reserve player manager, and a ball boy. “It takes us a long time to do anything, an inordinate amount of time, but when we do it, we do it right.”
It’s a remarkable and endearing story of community, steel, and plain hard work. Andy Gillard, the long-serving club secretary, was among the army of volunteers who dug Exeter out of the mud after they were relegated from the Football League in 2003. “It was basically hand to mouth.”
“You would divide the tasks, and if you needed to stick your hand down a drain, you did so,” he explains. “You had to survive a day, a week, a month or two and, back then, to get to the first game of the season was a huge achievement.”
The new training facility, which is considered a quantum leap, also entails a new office. “The great thing about it is in the cold weather I won’t get chilblains,” explains Gillard. “It was a temporary one from the 1970s, so we got 50 years.”
Leave a Reply