One of the country’s youngest and most courageous club owners last night accused the FA of wrecking his dream by snatching away promotion.
Nothing will ever match the pain George Dowell suffered in an
horrendous car accident a decade ago that changed his life forever and
left him paralysed from the chest down and confined to a wheelchair.
But
the anguish of seeing his beloved Worthing denied the chance to play in
Conference South next season after dominating the Isthmian League has
left the 27-year-old devastated after virtually saving the Sussex club
from extinction.
Last week’s ruling to declare the entire
non-league pyramid below the National League null and void, while
allowing the top two divisions to potentially complete their seasons
along with the Premier League and Football League, has caused a wave of
anger across the grass-roots game.
Not least at Worthing who
were poised for their second promotion in five years under Dowell, who
is no ordinary owner having ploughed some £800,000 – including his
entire compensation from his accident in 2010 – into the club.
‘I
didn’t just want to sit around doing nothing with the rest of my life,’
Dowell told the Mail on Sunday. ‘I just wanted to keep busy and what
better way than to buy your hometown club.’
‘But I’m
obviously gutted right now. Everyone appreciates that tough decisions
have to be made in the current climate and that the priority is to stay
safe but you have to treat everyone the same way. This ruling is
completely unfair, it’s really harsh.’
Shortly before he bought Worthing for whom he played as a teenager with dreams of competing at a far higher level, the club were on the brink of going bust with around £200,000 of debt. The squad were told that they wouldn’t be paid any longer. It seemed as if over 100 years of history could come to end.
But Dowell’s rescue act turned him into an instant local hero with
attendances that dwarfed that of every other team in Worthing’s league,
three steps below League Two, and were even higher than many National
League north and south crowds.
When the Covid-19 virus wiped
football off the map, Worthing were seven points clear and on the verge
of going up. Now their hopes have been shattered.
‘Why we
haven’t been allowed to finish our season like the professional game may
do I just don’t know,’ said Dowell. ‘Whenever football is allowed to
resume, we could have completed our league in four weeks.
‘Everyone
at the club has worked so hard. Money, time, effort. National South
would have been the highest the club’s ever been. It’s heartbreaking.’
Given
the trauma he suffered as a 17-year-old, when he neck was broken and
his spinal cord severed, Dowell realises more than anyone that life is
more important than football and understands fully why coronavirus has
kicked football into touch.
It’s just the way Worthing and others have been treated that upsets him so much.
‘Promotion
was my dream and it’s been pulled from under us. I don’t understand how
the National League have been allowed to carry on. It’s not just
affected us but everyone at our level. There should have been the same
rule for all of us together. I don’t know why this has been allowed.
Maybe because there’s more money involved higher up.’
‘If we
are not allowed to win our league, why should Liverpool be allowed to
win theirs? And if teams are promoted and relegated higher up the scale,
why has a line been drawn at our level when money is even tighter,
every penny counts and everyone is living on a shoestring?’
‘Our
best players thought they were going to play at a higher level.
Everything had fallen into place. It was like the perfect storm. Now we
are going to have to start all over again.’
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