How Morecambe FC faces possible EXTINCTION amid financial mess as fans despair with just 11 days left to find new owner
BRING BACK THE SUNSHINE How Morecambe FC faces possible EXTINCTION amid financial mess as fans despair with just 11 days left to find new owner
STARING at the giant Morecambe FC flag bearing the legend Bring Me Sunshine, tears fill club worker Colette Davies' eyes.
'There's no sunshine right now,' weeps the mum of three. 'It's more like dark, black clouds.'
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Morecambe have missed the final deadline and are on the brink of being kicked out the National League
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Bring Me Sunshine — the signature tune of the town's most famous son, Eric Morecambe isn't likely to echo around the stadium any time soon
Credit: Alamy
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Colette, whose job is 'housekeeper' for the players, says she and other fans are experiencing 'absolute heartbreak'
Belted out by fans on match day, Bring Me Sunshine — the signature tune of the town's most famous son, Eric Morecambe — is unlikely to echo around the Shrimps' stadium any time soon.
Mired in a financial mess, the club has been suspended by the National League for its first three games this season.
If the Lancs club is not sold by August 20, they may be kicked out of the league altogether.
Possible extinction of this 105-year-old institution would be a devastating blow for a seaside resort that has seen its tourism industry decimated by cheap package holidays abroad.
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Standing next to the club's well-manicured pitch, Colette, whose job is 'housekeeper' for the players, says she and other fans are experiencing 'absolute heartbreak'.
For Colette and many who pack the Halo home stand on match days, the Shrimps are a family affair.
Her dad Les Dewhirst has been the club's kit man for the last 30 years and her three children are all Morecambe mad.
Les told me he is too upset to be interviewed, saying: 'It's hurting so much and my head won't settle.'
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Ghostly sadness
As seagulls wheel overhead, Colette adds: 'There's been lots of tears and anger. When I have to go home and tell my boys that I don't know what's going on at the club, there's absolute heartbreak. They're 14 and 15. This club is their life.'
Like other staff at the club, Colette has not been paid since May.
With tears rolling down her cheeks, she tells me that new school uniforms for her children are 'on hold'.
Tyson Fury opens up on relationship with Joseph Parker and claims he's now his 'part-time manager and financial advisor'
'It's the school holidays, so there's been no fun activities really for my kids because we just can't afford it,' she adds.
The giant Bring Me Sunshine flag — complete with a silhouette of a skipping Eric Morecambe, a shrimp and the red rose of Lancashire — stands limp in the sunshine at the back of the Halo stand.
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Despite being born in the resort. the comic genius was famously a Luton Town fan and club director.
As with a closed-down pub, a ghostly sadness haunts a shuttered football ground where laughter and emotion once reverberated.
Planned weddings, wakes and school proms booked at the 6,241- capacity Mazuma Stadium this summer have all been cancelled.
One corner of the stadium is occupied by local hero Tyson Fury's gym. Many in the town are hoping the former heavyweight boxing world champ will step in as a white knight to save the club.
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As yet, there has been no word on a possible takeover from the big man.
Colette shows me the empty changing rooms where everything is neat and tidy for when the players should be preparing to face Brackley Town next Saturday.
Like today's away fixture at Boston United, it has been postponed.
Playing in England's third tier as recently as 2021, only a world war has stopped the Shrimps fulfilling their fixtures until now.
Fans blame the demise on Essex-based owner Jason Whittingham for not fulfilling his promise to sell the crisis-hit club.
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On Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer said he was 'very concerned' about the plight of Morecambe FC and urged everyone involved with the club 'to do the right thing'.
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.Season ticket holder Helen Coates, 56, buying a replica shirt for her grandson Coby, 5
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Railway worker Russ Horrocks, 38, and son Noah, 11
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Official kit supplier Terrace's director Carl Sewell says cash from the merchandise will not reach owner Whittingham's pockets
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Supporters have this week been queuing at a pop-up shop on the promenade to buy this season's shirts, even though their team may never get to wear them.
There was a forlorn sense of despondency along the usually jaunty seafront as hundreds waited for hours to make their purchase.
Railway worker Russ Horrocks, 38, snapped up the away shirt for son Noah, 11, saying: 'Morecambe's a great atmosphere on match days.
'There's 4,000 on a good day, but the noise makes it sound like more. It's as much about meeting your mates as the result.'
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Retired Alan McGinley, 62, whose brother John played for the club, revealed: 'The club is everything for this town now the tourism has been hit. My brother used to get a pork pie for playing and £1 if he scored.'
A banner reading, 'Bring back the sunshine' was strapped to railings at the store run by official kit supplier Terrace. Its director, Carl Sewell, says cash from the merchandise will not reach owner Whittingham's pockets, adding: 'We sold around 1,500 shirts in just four hours.'
Of the club's slip towards possible exclusion from the league, he said: 'It's horrendous. It will suck the blood out of the town and hit local businesses.'
Season ticket holder Helen Coates, 56, buying a replica shirt for her grandson Coby, five, added: 'I don't know what I'm going to do with my Saturdays now.
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'I took my sons to watch Morecambe, I now take my grandsons. It was only £3 for little ones. It makes me want to weep.'
With stunning views of the Lake District fells, Morecambe became a seaside destination for Yorkshire factory workers when a connecting rail line was built around 1850.
The club is everything for this town now the tourism has been hit. My brother used to get a pork pie for playing and £1 if he scored.
Alan McGinley
The resort boomed in the 20th Century — with Scottish holidaymakers also being drawn to it — before no- frills flights to the Med dented its popularity.
It had been home to the country's largest Pontins holiday camp, but the last Bluecoats left in 1994.
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Morecambe's once iconic pair of piers are long gone, as is its famous Bubbles swimming pool and the Frontierland fairground.
Hope is offered by an £80million scheme to construct a northern version of the Eden Project botanical garden on the seafront.
Shrimps season ticket holder David Lambert, 63, points down the promenade and tells me: 'This town used to be packed out at this time of year.
'You couldn't walk along that prom for people. At least on Saturdays the football would give this place a buzz. Away fans would come and walk along the prom, go to the pubs and have fish and chips. That might all be gone now.'
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'Used to be packed out'
Morecambe's once mighty fleet of shrimp fishing boats has also been in steep decline.
Ray Edmondson still stocks his little fishmongers with shrimps caught from his boat, the Bernadette.
The fisherman says there were 30 shrimp boats when he started out. Now there are just two.
He blames 'too many rules and regulations'.
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Ray, who has run his business for 47 years, adds: 'Away fans come in here to buy a few pots of shrimps and take them home with them.'
Nearby, staff at Atkinson's Fish & Chips are worried they could lose a decent slice of trade if the football club goes under.
The football helps many hospitality businesses through the lean winter months.
Bernie Harkin, 52, who has grafted in the shop for 26 years, tells me: 'Fans love our chips with a bit of haddock. The football club is such an important part of the town.
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'We have our Christmas parties at the stadium.'
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The club has been suspended by the National League for its first three games this season
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One corner of the stadium is occupied by local hero Tyson Fury's gym
Credit: Getty
Barman Zac Rossall, 19, serving pints at the Eric Bartholomew — a Wetherspoon pub bearing Eric Morecambe's real name — says: 'It gets packed here on match day.
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'I'm not a football fan, but I'm a fan of what it brings to Morecambe.
'If the club closes, it will mean less footfall in the town.'
So why is Morecambe in such a financial mess?
In 2023, Jason Whittingham's Bond Group Investments announced it was selling the club to investment firm Panjab Warriors. The company loaned £6million to the Shrimps as the club descended into financial turmoil with unpaid bills, sackings and resignations.
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Panjab Warriors are ready to take Morecambe off his hands, but Whittingham says he has an alternative buyer.
'Club is held hostage'
Last month, Whittingham sacked the Shrimps' board of directors after they threatened to place the club into administration.
Morecambe MP Lizzi Collinge has raised the issue in Parliament and said: 'Morecambe FC is being held hostage and it breaks my heart.'
In June the Shrimps' players were only paid a third of their salaries.
Many have now chosen to leave the club to pay their mortgages.
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One player forced to quit, midfielder Tom White, 28, said: 'Morecambe Football Club is special. This institution needs to survive, and I'm praying.'
A town that followed its football club to Wembley three times since 1974 now may lose its cornerstone.
While a new Morecambe could rise from the ashes if the club is booted out of the league, it would then likely have to take its place at the bottom of the football pyramid.
Bury FC, who were expelled from the Football League for financial difficulties in 2019, have invited Shrimps fans to watch their match free today 'in solidarity'.
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Dozens are planning on making the journey.
And they will be supporting another club that understands how football binds a community together.
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