It’s 3:30 pm on my last day of year seven in July of 2013. The bell rings and I start to make my journey home from school, down Prittlewell Chase and onto Victoria Avenue. As I walk up the hill towards the town of Southend pass an old sun-bleached mural on my right depicting Southend United players celebrating better days in the early 90s.

 

Past the mural lies Roots Hall Stadium, the home ground of Southend United since 1955. Some 6 years prior in 2007, Ron Martin - the club’s director and majority shareholder - had finally secured planning permission to build a new stadium at Fossetts Farm, using the proceeds from selling the valuable land under which Roots Hall stood. At the time, it seemed imminent that Roots Hall would not be standing for long.

 

Today, the city of Southend-on-Sea is unrecognisable from the town it was a decade ago. Following the tragic murder of Conservative MP David Amess in 2021, Southend was granted city status, which made it the largest city in Essex overnight. Since then, investment has flown into the area, bringing with it the persistent cacophony of urban development. Ron Martin must have wished he waited a few years to sell Roots Hall.

 

Except, Roots Hall still is - just about - standing and operational, 11 years after I used to  walk home from school. So is the mural, which is now nothing more than a colourless silhouette; a memento of a time when the Shrimpers could syphon joy from floating around the lower leagues of the EFL. With each winding-up order and failed takeover, it is becoming increasingly clear that one of the UK's newest cities might lose its oldest pastime.

 

Financial crises have become increasingly frequent throughout the English footballing pyramid during the last couple of decades. As money has poured into the game, clubs have become more financially stable, yes, but also highly competitive and risk-loving, often prioritising sporting success over long term financial health. Now, more than ever, football clubs more closely resemble non-profit organisations than businesses, as was the case with Derby County F.C. Under the reign of Mel Morris, Derby broke their transfer record three years in a row in their quest for Premier League status but fell short in the playoffs several times. In doing so, they had spent so much that they no longer complied with the EFL's financial fair play regulations, resulting in a transfer embargo, relegation and eventually in  administration.

 

Languishing in the lower divisions of the EFL, Southend United has never had the benefit of an ultra-rich owner like Morris to fund their ambitions. Ron Martin’s Martin Dawn PLC purchased the club for £4 million in 1998. While discussions around moving to a new 22,000 seater stadium began almost immediately, the club operated well within its means for the following decade.

 

Under the management of ex-Southend midfielder Steve Tilson, the Shrimpers were promoted from League 2 to the Championship within two seasons between 2004 and 2006 and also managed to make two consecutive Football League Trophy finals against Blackpool and Wrexham. Despite only winning one out of 4 potential pieces of silverware - the League One title - in his 6 year reign, the Tilson era was arguably the most successful sporting period in Southend United’s history.

 

Nonetheless, fans were always perplexed as to why a lower-league club would need a new stadium with more capacity than Fratton Park or Vicarage Road. To some extent, the upgrade made sense; Matchday Revenues - especially in lower divisions - are key to providing clubs with the cash flow that they require to operate through the year. Roots Hall - even back then - was also in a state of disrepair. Tilson’s rapid promotion to the Championship also undoubtedly went some way in convincing Southend council to finally grant the club planning permission in 2007.

 

However, Southend were painfully relegated in the final weeks of their debut Championship season in a 3-0 loss against local Essex rivals and fellow Championship debutants Colchester United. While it was always a strong possibility that a club of Southend’s size would get relegated, losing the boost to broadcast and commercial revenue was still a significant financial hit to the club. Amongst the pain however, there was a glimpse of hope in their shock 1-0 victory over Manchester United in a League Cup tie in November 2007. Freddy Eastwood hammered a sensational direct free kick past Tomasz Kuszak to create perhaps the most exciting night in Southend’s history.

 

This, ultimately, was not enough. Southend soon regressed back to the fourth tier. In February 2010, despite not spending outside their means, with a squad of modest value,  the club failed to pay their players’ wages. Along with facing two winding-up orders from HMRC over unpaid taxes, their on-pitch performance dropped off and the club was relegated from League 1, with Tilson being shown the door. Despite settling the aforementioned dispute by the end of the 2009-10 season, they were also subjected to a transfer embargo at the start of the 2012-13 season and did not return to League One until 2015.

 

After yo-yo-ing between the third and fourth tiers, Southend’s financial woes came to an apex in the 2019-20 League One season. Another winding-up order over unpaid taxes meant that players were left unpaid yet again in both December 2019 and January 2020. This happened multiple times during the year, and the club even put “several staff and some players” on the UK Government’s furlough scheme during the Pandemic. 

 

Unsurprisingly, the clown show behind the scenes at Southend United dampened their on-pitch performance and they were soon relegated to League Two. Despite settling their tax debts, they were relegated out of the Football League in 2021; a double relegation to contrast Tilson’s double promotion over a decade prior. Since then, winding-up orders and Southend United have become synonymous. Every year, the squad becomes increasingly threadbare and it seems like a miracle that Roots Hall hasn’t burned to the ground (actually it nearly did, on multiple occasions). 

 

The club persisted in its plans to move to a new stadium despite its debts ballooning to above £17 million in 2019, and fans began to think that the board’s ambition was wildly misplaced. In the director’s report from each of their annual accounts, Fossetts Farm is often named as a “principal risk[s] and uncertainties,” yet it seems that they understood this risk more than ones of an existential nature such as their unpaid taxes or mounting debt.

 

Following years of anti-Martin protest, the club was officially put up for sale in March 2023. Following the unrelenting waves of orders, petitions and sanctions, it became clear that the purchase of Southend would have to be a rescue job of huge proportions. In their third season in the National League, the club could sometimes only field 14 players and non-payment of wages and contracts was more of a feature than a bug. The club even had its bank accounts frozen, then unfrozen again, just to pay their staff.

 

Despite the unattractiveness of the sale, the likes of Hollywood’s Ray Winstone and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson were tempted by the concept, likely inspired by the success of Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ acquisition of Wrexham AFC in 2020. However, their interest quickly dwayned when the magnitude of the project became clear.  Finally, on the 23rd of December 2023, the club was finally sold to a consortium led by Australian IT millionaire Justin Rees.

 

Ownership of the club is expected to be formally transferred in February 2024 - as this article is being published - so it is still yet to be seen how Rees will fare with a club that seemingly has already rang the death knell multiple times. However, it is clear that both the fans and city governance will do whatever it takes to bring the club back from the brink. In fact, in September 2023, Southend Council controversially planned to buy Roots Hall from Martin for £4.5 million using funds from the new Department for Levelling up. 

 

Regardless of what occurs on the pitch, reports now suggest that the new owners are committed to renovating and upgrading Roots Hall, and the 500 houses that were planned to be built in its place will now be transferred over to the Fossetts Farm site. The development of the new stadium was a perpetual crisis in itself, always falling short on promises and failing to pique the sustained interests of developers and retailers that it relied on. It was never going to lead to the construction of  a new school, attract jobs or  boost the local economy in the same way that projects like the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has, but it had the potential to do some good in the old town-turned fledgling city.

 

For Ron Martin, the new stadium - and seemingly the club as a whole - was an investment aimed at enriching himself and bolstering his prestige. Getting people in seats and attracting the corporate prawn sandwich lovers is all part of having a business prerogative, but the crisis at Southend United shows that the club’s ownership neglected to treat the club as the enriched social and cultural asset that it is.