It’s a sad day once again for me to have to do this. Once again I am spending time I'll never get back defending mine and other people's honour against lies, lies by omission and quite frankly defamatory stuff being published about me and my colleagues at Widnes FC, leading to a threat posted online against people connected to the operating of the club and ‘anyone related to them.'

I feel really strongly about what has gone on over the last week or so with Widnes Football Club and the new junior club AFC Widnes so I am going to go into as much detail as I can, so you can all grasp a full understanding and make your own minds up. There is so much to say and I’ve decided it’s easier if I try to go in chronological order where I can. I’m not a journalist so please bear with me if it’s a bit all over the place, you’ll 100% get the picture.

Widnes Football Club was set up as Limited Company - Widnes Football Club Limited - in March 2014. It consisted of one team, and adult team plying its trade in the West Cheshire League. I, along with another handful of investors/directors joined the club in May 2016 with the club then in the NWCFL, so I’ll start briefly from there.

The following summer of 2017, the club set up its own junior section. Our first mistake was here. Not many clubs are all under one roof so to speak and we should have set up a separate entity for the juniors but I loved the idea of one club. However, such was my paranoia around the transparency of juniors' money, we set up a separate bank account just for the junior funds.

The junior section was instigated by me as my Child at under 9 was not enjoying his football at his current club and I thought why moan about it when we can just set up our own at Widnes FC.

The vision was for us to be an inclusive club, where kids weren’t streamed due to ability or indeed the perceived lack of. People who have known me over the years will testify that I held that mantra to the point of teams leaving our club because they wanted to make a team of Galacticos at under 7 and leaving lesser abilities team mates to form a technically lesser side, on paper. Rightly or wrongly, that was our make-up. How can lesser children learn if they don’t play with better players?

We provided the kids with what they needed and we tried not allow teams with better off parents have new shiny things, a club where the teams with less disposable income at home could feel as proud as the next player as they all were equal in our club.

It was me who stood up in the Warrington Junior AGM and was character assassinated by a person from a rival club who didn’t want us to have a Junior team. We eventually started with three teams in the Warrington Junior League and for the know-alls and trolls, this was before any Men’s first team ground move was ever in discussion. It was not to prop up any application, or any other reasons you can dream of, it was to provide football for children.

Over the years it was me who managed personalities between people at the burgeoning club to try and keep things together, not an easy job given the complexities of some personalities involved. I have had to manage resignations, tantrums and worse over the years from senior people within the Junior section.

When you grow a club to 40+ teams, on the one hand you must be doing something right. But, with 40+ teams comes 100+ coaches, team admins, and many more interested and invested parents, carers and players. Within all of those numbers experience tells you that some you will love, some you will be ok with, some you wont like, and some you can’t stand, it's nature.

But, as a club official, you have to accept that broad church of people and try your best to encourage everyone to stay the course because at the end of the day ‘if its for the kids’ as some have just claimed from AFC, is it actually for all of the kids or just the ones who’s team coach or parents you can live with?

Many people who have left the club over the years can and may testify to the treatment by certain individuals during and after leaving the club.

During December 2023 the club eventually began consultation with Liverpool County FA surrounding the splitting of the two entities and ultimately exploring how we can best manage this change seamlessly. Initially, there was little appetite from Leaders in the Junior section to set up separately with the support of us for a few reasons and it was understandable that they also couldn’t or wouldn’t take any financial risk on themselves.

That said in the summer of 2024 the club engaged again with key members of the junior section about the difficulties both sections were having. The junior section then formed a separate junior committee to take over the day to day running of the junior section with the agreement that the financials remained within the existing club. Separate email addresses were created for posts within the new junior committee to facilitate this.

It became clear that the juniors had overspent and admittedly I had taken my eye off the ball with how heavy the overspending was.

To fix this, we stopped paying for presentation venues (you may remember recently accusations of kids money being spent on the first team), we organised a new and cheaper kit deal with the help of Sarah, cancelled summer training at the stadium, trimmed down the needless summer training at OCA and stopped the pitch hire where coaches were able to have a weekly kick around on the 3G.

Last year’s financial year ended with HBC still owed £12800.00 from the junior section, this was cleared in full over two payments this season but basically that was our starting point.
I have attached a spreadsheet of the current seasons’ junior accounts so your can see for yourself.

I’m not an accountant, and our accounts are not due until 30/06 but this is a really good indicator of the Junior P&L. There are obviously other things that the first team account has paid for that we could attribute a share to with the juniors, ie accountancy fees, bookkeeping software, club insurance, etc and there may be some smaller things to tidy up at y/e but it’s not far away.

• Thus far the Junior P&L account for this season alone is in credit by £8500. There is £6900 in the Junior bank account as of today.
• We still owe out £4300 to our Kit supplier – subject to some smaller discrepancies we’re working through.
• We owe St PnP school £6900 for pitch & hall hire at the school, again subject to further invoices not yet received and some overcharging discrepancies possibly in our favour.
• There are still some cash payments due to the club account from Wildcats, although we don’t know how much as we are never provided records.

But although they’re not finalised accounts, there is no missing money from the juniors account.

Now, let me fast forward to May 2025. The first team had won the league and been promoted for the 3rd time in 8 seasons to Step 3 of the football pyramid. The team were fantastic and I’m sure everyone who went to watch and indeed set a record crowd of 882 on the final day when that victory won us the league, could see something special was happening. I get football’s not for everyone in a rugby town with such heritage, but for those involved it was a brilliant time. But, behind the smiles we had troubles.

The shareholders of the club have between them so far put almost £700,000 between them, with 3 shareholders into 6 figures each, the other 5 figures. We always had one aim, to leave the club a home that generations within the town can enjoy after were gone.

It might sound corny, but football grabs you in a strange way. Successful businessmen in our own right making a decision to lease a dilapidated building and pitches on a 36 year protected in law lease from the local council and committing hundreds of thousands of pounds to bring it back to life and provide facilities for a vibrant football club, a place to call home. Is it a vanity project as some claim? I don’t know maybe they’re right, maybe it’s insanity.

The demise of the Corpy Club application was always in the background during this time. I spoke to Ello (the then manager) with around six weeks to go of the season and told him of the issues we were having and it not looking likely to improve. He asked me to keep that information away from the team while we were so well placed and I did.

• We had tried to buy the Birchfield Club but it went for housing.
• We tried the Corpy but we couldn’t overcome the parking issues there.
• In one final throw of the dice, we tried to buy the Fords Club (now Jaguar), but again we were outbid despite promising to keep it open for sport & leisure and that has now gone for housing.
• All this was going on while had to endure a near 300% increase in our match day rental costs at the stadium.

At this point, two of the remaining shareholders have decided that as there is no sustainable future for the first team on the horizon, that they have withdrawn their financial support. I totally agree with them. They have been brilliant for the club in every way but there is no way any club can sustain playing this level of football with the level of support we enjoy at the stadium, notwithstanding the fact that The FA financial fair play will be at our level of football shortly and we would likely fail to obtain a licence based on shareholders propping up the team with loans.

Two of us shareholders remain, along with all of the brilliant existing and new committee as we search for a way forward for the first team. Our honesty with the old manager led to him leaving and although nothing is done and dusted, he felt the right time to go – go out on a high so to speak. He was the best manager we’ve ever had in terms of our promotion but also in terms of the working relationship we had, it was a massive loss.

Going back to the now uncertain future surrounding the Limited Company, this led me to arrange a meeting with the leaders of the Junior section. I was open and honest as always and explained that if the first team folded the Juniors being linked to that company could not continue in its current format.

I asked again about setting up a separate junior section but this time there was a palpable need. They went away and thought about it, met with other junior section members and decide they would have a go.

We were delighted at this news, because this new direction we sought, was from a good place.

They were concerned about the finances understandably. They asked for some idea of costs v expenditure not long before their meeting and I explained that I would get them some info, but as the financial year is still running, those records are not yet complete.

I explained that I had projected there would be nothing left in the Juniors pot from Widnes Football Club Limited, but I also offered to personally lend the new team money if they struggled initially.

We agreed the club would be linked to Widnes FC and in the hope that the main club could find a future, affiliate with us and the only notable difference to the outside world would be a change in subs payment, from old co to new co, but still using Go Cardless.

I answered everything I could from everyone who asked, there was no malice at all.

Everything seemed to be going to well and looking back I did notice a change in the questioning, and maybe even the tone that I should have picked up on.

That’s on me.

They then refused to tell me the new club name on the Sunday before the arranged Monday meeting.

I was really shocked and annoyed as what I seen was a total lack of respect towards me for such a seemingly trivial thing, or so I thought.

I really knew something wasn’t right at that point.

Then the AFC Widnes statement came out and I was shocked and really upset, along with many, many other people who didn’t see it coming.

There was no mention of Widnes FC, there was no thanks for those people within Widnes FC who have put hundreds and hundreds of man hours and no doubt money into the Junior section over the years. It’s like we didn’t exist.

It was disrespectful on a massive scale and to be honest it shown a real lack of class from everyone at AFC Widnes that OK’d it.

Then followed the social media posts from the well-informed experts about us dumping the kids and that point I set about fixing it. There has been no mention from the club so far, and it’s been difficult at time over the last week as I’ve asked everybody to keep their counsel while I worked through it.

I don’t understand how they all thought I would quietly walk away after they’ve known me for all of these years, it’s an incredible misjudgement by them.

Obviously, being in the club for so long, I have many friends still within the club and those who have been in touch are equally disgusted and started to share with me what's really gone on.

How stupid and self-centred can you be to think that nobody else has relationships with and won’t share the crap you write, imply or lie by omission about them? Its mind boggling.

I have shared screenshots (click HERE or the link at bottom of the article) which is correspondence with the chair of AFC Widnes on Friday 6th June where I state the intention of the clubs remaining from the outside as one.

It was agreed that nothing will change with kits training pitches etc, even confirming that the new juniors can still attend the first team games for free and be mascots etc... this was three days before the new clubs inaugural meeting!

I asked Ian Lawrence who I respected to ring me. Ian Lawrence was a great asset to the club and had taken over the youth subs last season. He got involved in the new club and it gave me comfort.

He rang me on Wednesday 11th June, the day after their announcement and I just asked does he stand by the statement that AFC have made? He said he didn’t have anything to do with it and had been busy and not really read it. I thought that was a cop out to be honest.

I told him members of the existing club and their relations had been threatened by a member of the public based on what he was hearing from AFC, and that unbelievably AFC had not sought to fix this on their own social media platform. This all occurred all while their new chair is a serving police officer.

He went on to tell me that he ‘was sat in his car the night before thinking I need to ring Ian, because what's being done and said isn’t right’. He didn’t ring of his own accord, only on my request.

I explained that I simply cannot understand why AFC would want to make an enemy of Widnes FC? It made no sense. He went from not knowing many things to ‘oh well ya know personality clashes blah blah blah’. I still don’t know the motivation for the change of heart. Despite this he asked how it can be fixed and by way of an olive branch I asked that he relay to the leaders of AFC to do what was agreed, link to Widnes FC and put a stop to the misinformation, its wrong and uncalled for.

He promised to come back to me but I never got another call or message. Since then they have used this time to double down on the situation, a blatant attempt to finish the club off.

I honestly don’t know if he lied to me and is part of it, hasn’t got the balls to stand up for whats right to the ladies running the show or he just can’t be bothered with the headache challenging them brings. That’s on him but it’s now made me question my own judgement of people.

That said, I’m actually glad now because the whole truth would not have come out.

I heard of a young volunteer coach being sacked by text and teams being warned of ‘merging.'

This is what they will do. They will ‘constructively dismiss’ teams that don’t comply and I think this process has well and truly started.

The days went on and rumours reached me that the club had been accused of impropriety surrounding the Juniors money (again). I thought it was just Chinese whispers where people were filling in the gaps because of our silence.

But no.

There has been information, misinformation and opinion shared within that new club which is actually disgusting and defamatory from some of the newly officers elected.

If you will bear with me I’m going to quote some of the bile:

• ‘Allegedly the junior outgoings are more than they bring in – however financial transparency hasn’t been forthcoming yet’
• ‘And as for Widnes FC ditching the juniors they will say they aren’t as they have offered to link with us, but there is no benefit to us as a club we don’t think (we’ve asked the question) in doing that.’
• ‘They are putting no money into the juniors as there is none and we are 100% separate so why the link, mainly as they will keep their FA 2 star accreditation on the back of our hard work’
• ‘To fill you in from Monday - Widnes FC have binned the Juniors section. Sarah and Linzi found out last month. 5 of us got together to discuss, rather than sorting ourselves out and picking our teams up and moving clubs before everyone else found out, we decided to try and save as many teams as possible under our own steam. We have formed AFC Widnes and are nearly affiliated to carry on for the 25/26 season.’
• ‘Sorry its not great news, but its none of our own making. We either try this and fail, or 600 kids lost their teams effective immediately. My 2 pence worth, the JFC propped up the application to put a stadium on Dundalk. Now that’s failed, they've f****d us off. C***s.’

I can imagine there is plenty more where that came from too.

Then the real darkness arrives. Junior teams were given a list of outstanding subs for each team. Each coach was instructed to collect them and send them to a personal account of one of the new junior committee.

‘In addition to the above, Widnes FC have cast us off with zero funds, and no bank account. We cancelled the DD payments that were due to stop them getting money that should be going to the Juniors, rather than disappearing into the first team. This is the money that’s being collected, (REDACTED NAME) believe REDACTED NAME) has sent a list of debtors and the bank details to you. She said no U11 decision on who stays to be made until the owed money is in'.

‘Outstanding subs for your team. As all standing orders shut down end May. You can see pay date would have been 2nd for most. If you are able to collect and then send as one off payment with ref U11 OS to ***** bank account.’

To be clear this is subs from 2024-2025 season due to Widnes Football Club Limited.

I know exactly who said what here and obviously I have saved proof of all of these conversations freely shared in their groups, it’s not conjecture.

But to basically sum it up from the outside it appears that:

• Three or more officers of the new AFC Club have instructed that Widnes Football Club Limited Monies be diverted away from Widnes Football Club Limited.
• One officer has cancelled the outstanding subs due to Widnes Football Club on Go Cardless – Audit Trail.
• Another officer has and is in the process of having these moneys placed into their own personal bank account. A ‘holding account’
• Unbelievably, there is now evidence that they have already lost track of who has paid what into this bank account.

Now, I have to be clear I’m not accusing anybody of anything yet. I know what it looks like but officers of AFC may be intending to deposit it all back into Widnes Junior bank account with a full record of transactions very shortly. I know it seems unlikely but it could happen.

I’m also not going to report any suspicions to any law enforcement, I’m not that person.

It’s not me that’s a Police officer or lawyer but from the outside this could look like embezzlement of company funds and further a conspiracy to defraud Widnes Football Club Limited given the number of people involved.

I’m absolutely gobsmacked that this is in the new club hierarchy’s thinking at the same time as starting and inflaming rumours of bad practice at Widnes FC. People in glass houses and all that.

I urge the new club to clear this confusion up and reach a resolution with me without delay.

Failing that, I will under my role as company director be forced to look after the Company I represent.

I would like to say that all involved at one time worked their backsides off for Widnes FC and their time here would have been revered at the club for what they did. But, all of those complicit in this stitch up have ruined any legacy they may have had.

For the future, we are working behind the scenes with LCFA & WJFL to be able to provide some solution for the Juniors that don’t want to leave. We are warmed by the information that we should be able to set up a separate Junior section as was originally planned by AFC. We are however weeks behind the curve and may struggle for pitches.

I would urge others who wish to join the teams who already have reached out to contact the club sec at secretary@widnesfootballclub.co.uk as a matter of urgency to assist.

Training and pitch hire has been paid for until the 30th June by Widnes FC so please everyone go and get the minutes in. we have been locked out of the clubs Edulink to book further but are liaising with them and all of the providers to find space.

There is room for both clubs to thrive but we will insist that this new club change its name and remove all history, photos of Widnes FC kits and especially our disappearing logo they use. There can be no link whatsoever with our club and these individuals moving forward.

The future of the first team is still really uncertain.

We are engaged with Halton BC in regards to our short term and longer term needs and goals that can enable the club to thrive. We have some exciting plans that rest on these discussions, but we really are in their hands at the moment and as soon as we get some clarity we will share it, good or bad.

To all that have been duped, I’m really sorry it came to this and I’ll accept my share of the blame for letting it get this far.

I want to extend a massive thanks to all of the people who have helped and supported me in particular at this really awful time for me and my family, and the others seriously affected by this sorry episode. Your encouragement, and restraint has been such a help.

Everyone should realise that some people put a lot of time, effort and sometimes money into local projects and good causes. When s**t like this happens you are just driving good people away from doing good things in the community just so you can point score, often from the sanctuary of your computer screen. I’m not the only person to feel like this at Widnes FC right now and I guess this will ring true for many volunteers.

I, or the club will not be commenting any further on this matter until a resolution from LCFA has been agreed.

Thanks,

Ian Ross
Chairman
Widnes FC

LINK TO REFERENCED DOCUMENTS