Misery in Merthyr.

As is mentioned in one of the threads in the Bath City forum, Merthyr had a torrid day yesterday when  they were forced to field a team of kids due to a financial crisis and got beaten 13-1. There is some interesting background here. Not only is it a salutary lesson that just becoming a community owned club is not the silver bullet and that supporters have a duty to hold their representatives to account if they want their club to survive and stay healthy but, also, I understand that their 3/4G pitch turned out to very expensive to run and, therefore, rent so did't bring in the expected revenue.

Got to admit that I have a bit of a prejudice against them as I met some dickhead supporters of them once and, also, didn't they cause a bit of trouble at Twerton once? Anyway, whatever I think, it is terrible to see any club especially a community owned club in such troubles.

We have had a very good rivalry with Merthyr over the years and there were times when things got a little passionate off the pitch - at different times both sets of supporters were probably to blame.

Sorry to hear about their problems, especially as we met a few of them at a Supporters Direct event last year and they were clearly very passionate about their club being community owned.

I realise that I may be conflating trouble with Merthyr with the lad who got beaten up at Newport which probably exacerbates my prejudice somewhat. Bloody taffs. Anyway, I am sure most of their supporters, like any, are fine and certainly don't deserve to have this happen to their club - again.

You make a good point about community ownership. We need to find out what exactly has gone wrong. They were one of the sides held up as a beacon of community ownership when we were considering it and I would hope we can learn from their mistakes.

Shows you cannot afford to take your eye off the ball and we all have responsibility for that.

Well said, Ben. I think there is still a bit of an "us and them" attitude amongst supporters even those ones who have invested. Perhaps it is the fault of those involved in the Supporters Society Committee and the Bid but people need to realise that they can really be involved in the running of the club at many different level whether it be volunteering on matchdays, being on the Supporters Society committee or being a director.

They appear to have an outstanding tax bill of 25k and crowd funding to pay it !!!