Graham Kelly: Weston plan a fine example of regeneration game

Weston Spirit, a young people's charity set up by the Falklands veteran Simon Weston, is joining forces with Tranmere Rovers fans in a unique bid to buy the Second Division club from the owner, Peter Johnson. The chairman, Lorraine Rogers, put the club up for sale last summer.

Supporters became alarmed when they learned that an early bid of £5m had been made by the controversial chairman of Chester City, Stephen Vaughan, who left non-League Barrow in a dire position in 1999. Maybe a clue to their concern can be drawn from the fact that Rovers' ground, Prenton Park, and their training ground at Ingleborough Road are situated on prime real estate.

According to Lee Maloney, the general manager of Vaughan Promotions, there is no intention to merge Chester and Tranmere, but he has been quoted in the Liverpool Daily Post as saying: "It is inevitable that the real estate assets of Tranmere Rovers Football Club would have to be used for commercial development."

The supporters, who have set up a trust and are being advised by the government-sponsored Supporters Direct about gaining representation on a new board, do not accept the inevitability of relocation. Prenton Park, with its nine-acre site and 16,000 seats, is the envy of many clubs.

The community programme in professional football started in the 1980s when the game was reeling from the effects of hooliganism, especially the Heysel Stadium disaster. Initially set up as a pilot scheme at six clubs in the North-west by the Football League and the Professional Footballers' Association, this important tool in the regeneration of the game spread to all clubs through the 1990s.

However, if Weston Spirit can pull off its takeover with the Tranmere and Wirral Supporters Trust it might become the template for an entirely new concept in youth and community involvement at professional clubs. Success for the initiative could easily see 20 or so clubs following suit by establishing authentic youth and community centres.

The key to the success of the Tranmere plan is the backing of the local community and businesses in raising the money needed for the purchase of the club. Prenton Park would then be used for a variety of community activities, on 365 days a year, as a home not only for the football club, but also a centre for youth, arts, sports, a social club, a medical centre and a cinema.

All the businesses would be autonomous, yet sit under the umbrella of Tranmere Rovers. The five-year target is to have 375,000 people utilising the facilities for football and 375,000 using them for other community activities.

Why has Weston become involved? Eighty per cent of the club's fan base are under the age of 25 and the charity's experience gives it the expertise to bring in other partners. It already has centres for young people in nine cities and aims to set up a dedicated centre to support young people on the Wirral. Football would afford a means of reaching many youngsters at risk of social exclusion.

Although Birkenhead is famous for shipbuilding, the Tranmere fans do not want to go to a new riverfront stadium near Cammell Laird, as mooted by Vaughan. It is also famous for Birkenhead Park, which was funded by public subscription in the 1840s and was the inspiration for New York's Central Park.

A teenager who scored 27 goals in 33 appearances for Rovers in 1924 and 1925, before taking the Mersey Tunnel to break all scoring records with Everton, would have been proud that the club where he first made his mark was on the brink of such a pioneering initiative. William Ralph "Dixie" Dean kicked a ball against a Birkenhead chapel wall from dawn till dusk to hone his legendary skills.

Today Weston and his colleagues have developed a highly effective range of personal development programmes and projects for young people, not too dissimilar to the inspirational example provided by that fledgling striker all those years ago.

Anyone who has heard its protégés stand up and address a crowded reception in the House of Commons cannot fail to have been moved by the utter transformation the charity has encouraged them to make of their fractured lives, and will wish the initiative well. For the kids of the Wirral. And for football.

That is why Weston Spirit is pleading with Johnson to allow it time to complete a feasibility study into how this exciting new community action model can be constructed.

For football has entered a new era. The dream factor is receding. The small clubs await the results of the First Division chairmen's machinations knowing they cannot hope to compete in the big league until the typhoon of ego-induced inflation finally blows itself out.

They can build a sounder future. But it has to be based on economic realism and true community identity.

grahamkelly@btinternet.com