Bob Garmory, the interim chairman of Dunfermline Athletic, has warned supporters that they will have to pay for the privilege of being the new owners after the Fife club emerged from administration.
That was achieved successfully yesterday after the fans group, Pars United, took control from the insolvency firm BDO.
The transition was given a sense of ceremony with a press conference at East End Park, with a temporary board of directors led by Garmory taking charge of the day to day running of the club until the end of the campaign. The board comprises honorary director Jim Leishman, Margaret Ross, chairperson of the Pars Supporters' Trust, Kip McBay, as well as Ian Hunter and Craig McWhirter.
The relief at having placed control into the hands of the fanbase after six painful months of administration has been tempered, though, by the necessity to increase revenue streams at the club. Amid a few quiet claims of wanting to lead Dunfermline back into the top flight, the board were careful to articulate a need for the fans to continue to back the regime financially to ensure its success.
"It's now down to the fans to determine the direction this club travels in," said Garmory. "In the next nine months the interim board will try to implement the right structure. The Centenary Club have fans paying a monthly a contribution to the club but we want to expand that and make it easier for people to donate [larger] sums.
"The Pars Trust has a membership of 800 yet when it started it was just 200; we need to harness that. It sounds an awful thing to say but, with the fans now owning the football club, they are going to have to pay for that privilege.
"But if you own something, you tend to look after it. I stayed in a council estate just two doors from big [Leishman] and sometimes you see properties which the tenants don't own and the garden's a bit unkempt. Or there's a fridge in the front and back garden. But when people buy a house, all of a sudden they start to take care of it, they invest in it. It might be the same with Dunfermline fans. It's their club and no one can blame Gavin Masterton [the club's former owner] any more. They have to believe in this set-up."
None would have had to suspend belief to understand how close their club came to extinction, with a dispute relating to the club's training base in Pitreavie threatening to derail the work done by Pars United. It was with no little relief that Leishman looked ahead to a new future for his club.
"The aim of Pars United was to give every Dunfermline fan of the future the chance to share what we have shared; those memories," he said. "Two young kids donated £5 of their paper round money to keep their club alive. It's humbling. These kids deserve to have a club to support."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article