21 years ago today...

[Melksham Red]

If memory serves, Forest too.

This thread has brought back a lot of anger for me, even 21 years on! I 100% believe we would have established ourselves as a top flight club for at least a few years had our promotion stood. Cunting football league!!

[Peter Venkman]

I believe West Ham also had a similar thing that was effectively let off.

[Bewster]

I 100% believe we would have established ourselves as a top flight club for at least a few years had our promotion stood.

The only thing I'd say to this would be remember the season after - we were dreadful, unfit & disorganised.

I do believe that Ossie inherited a very fit side from Macari, which he taught to play football. Would we have stayed up having invested and bought wisely ? Who knows ?? However I do think we would have had a better chance than we had in 93/94.

[Batch]

I remember the Chesterfield trust guy doing a talk on the day the STFC trust kicked off. They were in the brown stuff with the league shortly before, not quite the same but under reporting of gates and transfer dodgyness were part of it. I think the payment to players was not proven.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chesterfield/1270117.stm

They got off the points deduction.

To paraphrase his words from my memory was "perhaps the difference between our case and yours was we had good lawyers".

What makes me a little sick was we seemed to roll over and take it up the arse. Maybe times were different back then. Maybe it was different because IIRC we had a whistleblower from within. Probably wrong.

[tans]

Who was the whistleblower?

[Posh Red]

Who was the whistleblower?

If I remember correctly there were a group trying to take over the club & oust Brian Hillier.
One of the group (can't remember her name) got hold of documented evidence of the illegal payments & threatened to go to the press if the current board didn't step down.

They didn't believe that someone would actually fuck up the club they were trying to take over and refused. The info was sent to the press & the rest is history.

I remember not going to work the following day because I was so fucking angry. Didn't help that I was working in Brizzle at the time.

[Reg Smeeton]

Who was the whistleblower?

There was a lady from Calne....Carol Embrey, who fell out with Brian Hillier, and a director, Somerset farmer Lionel Smart, who was also on the FA Council, a typical old fart.

Seems like a life time ago to me.  I had been told by a very good sauce that the result of the Sunderland match wouldn't stand, and always felt Sunderland knew too as they were so shit on the day.

Remember going down my local about 6 or soon hearing the news to be greeted by some Town fans already drowning their sorrows....these fellas still go. Everyone just seemed to have their heads in their hands and chins on the bar. 

 

[tans]

Did this embrey cunt ever get near the club after?

[tans]

She has a suite named after her at forest green

[Kinky Tom]

The only thing I'd say to this would be remember the season after - we were dreadful, unfit & disorganised.

I do believe that Ossie inherited a very fit side from Macari, which he taught to play football. Would we have stayed up having invested and bought wisely ? Who knows ?? However I do think we would have had a better chance than we had in 93/94.

after the summer of up, then down, then back to parity the squad were deflated and robbed of their right to play 1st division football, without the upheaval I have little doubt that we'd have been ok.

[Ardiles]

Carol Embrey died in 2002, aged 55.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-14214146.html

[Benzel]

I was only 4 at the time. Had already been to some games. Although Dad said I was always more interested in playing with the seats!

[Nick Bamosomi]

In the clubs history? That was one of the biggest injustices in English footballing history.

Similar things have happened since, to bigger other clubs and nothing like that has happened.

This.
They wanted to "make an example" of a club, and who better to choose than little old Swindon?

[Summerof69]

I had my 1st year A level mock Accounts exam the following day. I was still in shock that when the exam got marked the first couple of questions I only got about 10 out of 50, but got my head together by getting 45 out of 50 on the last two questions.

I was told some years later by an ex colleague of mine that he didn't go to Wembley as a friend of his knew some press who knew that we were going to be demoted, and couldn't see the point in wasting money.

I found out the other day that the reporter who spilled the beans on us in The People newspaper, Bill Bradshaw, supports...Sunderland !!

[Costanza]

Pah! Missed out?
Steve McMahon, Maurice Malpas, Paul Hart.
2 relegations from League 1, Championship relegation
I've seen the wonder years.

You were born after 1990 and count the Steve McMahon era as something you experience? You would have been 4/5 when it started and not even 10 when it finished!

I was too young back in '90 to understand... Tell that to my dad though. I was living in Germany back then and my dad called me up on this day to tell me and explain... I would have been 6! I think he needed someone to talk to