by “So what are you looking to find out… you know, how much?” Michelle Harness asked the question out of duty, desperation and many other powerful emotions. Her beloved Scunthorpe United had moved to the brink of the abyss under the ownership of David Hilton; in limbo with more than £1.2m of debt, facing a winding-up petition from HMRC and eviction from its Glanford Park stadium, which remained in the hands of Hilton’s predecessor, Peter Swann. It was the subject of a bitter dispute between the two.
Now, as the club count down to a home game against Brackley Town on 7 October 2023 in the National League North – the sixth tier of English football and a level far behind where Scunthorpe have always seen themselves – there was a problem. there was another and it certainly put an end to the story. end. The players were about to go on strike.
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“They won’t play for him [Hilton] because he wasn’t paying them,” says Harness. “They prepared a statement saying they were not going to play. That was the end of the club that day. It was when I went back to him and said: “How much?”
Harness Scunthorpe, lifelong fans of the Iron, were born and bred, founded in 1899 and elected in 1950 to the Football League, where they remained until their relegation from League Two in 2022. They will go down again from National League in 2023.
Harness, a local businesswoman who worked as the club’s commercial manager from 2000 to 2015, joined the Hilton board in July 2023 and, as such, was grounded as it threatened to collapse. Hilton took over from Swann in January last year, although he would not be able to go through with a £3m purchase of Glanford Park during a period of exclusivity that lasted until May.
It was one red flag about Hilton’s ability to oversee the financial running of the club and there would be many more. His fever-dream period continues to grow so much, especially with the club drifting away from the countryside and their constant fight to survive. Even, to a lesser extent, the crucial home game against league leaders Tamworth on Saturday evening.
Manager Jimmy Dean’s side are in second place, eight points behind, having played a lesser game and it’s easy to feel the hope and optimism on the pitch, despite a blip in picking up a point only from the past it is available. Scunthorpe, whose players are still full-time professionals, are in the hunt for the sole promotion spot; The second club will be going up through playoffs.
When Swann was selling up, it looked like he would be doing so with Scunthorpe-born, London-based film producer Ian Sharp, who was partnered with former club director Simon Elliott. this. It didn’t happen but Sharp stayed in the background, developing relationships with Harness and other influential people, including director Roj Rahman and Tahina Akther, a lawyer who worked on the board. Then there was George Aitkenhead, another Scunthorpe fan and businessman, who was part of the original Sharp consortium. Harness brought them together; they were able to pay £100,000 and replace Hilton.
“We thought: ‘What choice do we have but to get involved?'” says Sharp. “Because there was no one else. Knowing that your club is about to go out of business is terrifying, because you know the impact it will have on the town. For me, it was more than football. How can this piece of our history be erased? I wouldn’t be able to live alone if I didn’t give everything to try to save him. I know Michelle felt the same way. We all did.”
When I came in as owner, bailiffs used to visit every day… they even collected the phone system
The buy-in was just the beginning, what immediately followed was a 24/7 shiver. October 11 was the deadline for Swann’s eviction from Glentan Park; The Harness consortium had to find £3m for the land and surrounding land – fast. But here’s the crux of the story: a community pulling in one direction to preserve something they treasure.
The Scunthorpe players would play against Brackley, with a crowd of over 5,000 facing them. Those who were there can still feel the sting. Meanwhile, Harness and his directors went into local businesses for donations; the council, too, and a word to the Conservative MP for Scunthorpe, Holly Mumby-Croft, who took a request to balance funds for the government and came back with £2.5m.
The consortium delivered the remaining £500,000 and exchanged contracts for Glanford Park in mid-November, after Swann slightly relaxed his deadline. It has been owned by a non-profit community interest company and there are “substantial plans afoot”, according to Sharp, to use it for non-profit football events.
The most uncomfortable part of last year is how Hilton was allowed to take over the club and drive it so close to ruin. On September 11, The Athletic reported that a man they believed to be Hilton was sentenced to two years in prison for 15 counts of fraud by false representation under the name David Anderson. Hilton never admitted to using the name Anderson. He said he had served a custodial sentence for fraud from 2015 and had passed the Football Association’s owners and directors test. He said he had repaid the value of the fraud, £68,000.
It was a strange day on September 30, shortly after Hilton announced that Scunthorpe funding was ending, they ran a United We Stand campaign for the home game against Buxton, raising over £50,000 to help cover unpaid wages . Basically they were the team that went against the owner.
When Harness talks about what she inherited from Hilton, the details are terrifying and terrifying – unpaid bills and invoices; non-payments to HMRC; shortfalls in the club’s pension scheme. “When I came in as owner, the bailiffs used to visit every day … they even collected the phone system.”
Creditors came out of the woodwork, apparently in exponential numbers – including on the football side. “Other clubs, players he got rid of and didn’t pay for, agents…” says Harness.
Should she be better across all? She was on the table. “One of the directors, Keith Waters, who is the CEO of the PGA European Tour, kept asking him. [Hilton] for a series of accounts,” she says. “Keith quit. Tins [Akther, another director] quit too.”
There are times when the rescue operation felt overwhelming. The club also has an EFL loan of around £1m to repay which, in the words of Harness, “comes out of our parachute money from National League relegation so I’ve parked it”. The wage bill was four times higher than the National League North average. The club is under a transfer embargo.
What stands out every day is Uam’s energy and personality. “She’s a rock star,” says Sharp. He plays on her working around the clock to put the club on a sustainable footing, which she has done, while trying to rely on someone else’s mountain of debt. But she reckons she is “60% of the way through” and that come next season, when the playing budget is reduced, there should be “happy days … we have to achieve”.
Harness’s can-do attitude inspires others. “I now have two volunteers full of emulsion to paint my office,” she says. “They would come to see me and it was so bad. An accounting company accepted the payroll for free. Someone else is putting the front corner of the stadium back for free, putting new letters on because we have a new sponsor – Atis Insurance.
“I’m going around to companies and I’m literally begging them. Sometimes I think I’m a pity. I am a woman who joined to try and save the club. If I were my old friend Charlie with a big checkbook or whatever, I don’t think I would get the same response. But if the town wants the club they will have to step up to fund it out of this mess.”
