Hello, fans....
Let me tell you a story.
SWAG was started by myself (shock horror), TRB, Prince Buster and Jinjer on the 8th Nov 2004 according to my records. Although we independently got the ball rolling it was an invitation from Dianne Richardson to meet them at BV to discuss the setting up of a pressure group that was the catalyst. They had been thinking along the same lines but had no idea how to kick it off without compromising its independence. Those last bits are crucial to what happened next.
Ted Richardson was in charge then and has become much vilified, some of it justified, most of it not. Ted was just one in a long line of owners who had managed to run the club into the ground since the seventies, maybe even earlier.
Whatever his faults he had enough nouse to realise that WTRLFC had absolutely no currency with the local community it was supposed to serve, both fans, politicians and businesses - we were basically stuffed when looking for support - we had burned every bridge by then.
That being the case SWAG had to appear to be totally independent of the club, it wasn’t but it had to appear to be, which it did. This helped us greatly at the start, helping us open doors and minds in a way the club never could.
Now fast forward 15 years and a lot has changed. SWAG technically no longer exists and the way things have turned out is nothing like what we had hoped and fought for as a group, That has hurt and troubled people like TRB, however, he’s a fairly pragmatic bloke and realises that although what’s happening now is nothing like what he wanted, it is not without merit. Hence I suspect the reason why people like him, IA and Sandal have not made any comments in public either way.
They do look to have been sidelined IMHO though I may be wrong, though so far I see no massive rift between them and the club has yet appeared, I hope it stays that way but who knows.
What really matters here I suppose is not which plan is the right one, it's the amazing fact that WTRLFC now has enough status in the Wakefield community to take the lead, totally impossible in 2004.
In our SWAG days, we soon found out that we had very little support from either business or local sports or the community at large. SWAG vastly improved that, followed by the Trust and both are the main reasons along with the clubs now sound management that Trinity is now a respected brand locally.
As I say I really don’t know the politics that have lead to the club leading the charge to upgrade BV but to me it does make a lot of sense. This is especially obvious to me by that fact that sports and other organisations are now truly getting on board with the club as a community club and not an RL club that treats everyone it comes into contact with badly, very badly in some cases. Again this was impossible to achieve in 2004.
I sincerely hope that the current BOD is able to re-develop BV. I know it's not what we fought for but I think its a compromise most will happily accept. But as the OP suggests those three contributors, in particular, deserve total recognition as do all involved however small their contributions. The club should also continue to include those three in future events wherever possible, they have a great deal of knowledge between them! As without the consistent efforts of the above, it wouldn’t have taken 5 years for MC to regain the trust of the Wakefield people it would have taken 20 or more.
Thanks, Vasty x
