Which is reproduced here at the specific request of its author, mindful that it may well disappear from other websites where it may have been posted:
Hi Robin, you probably don't remember me (one of the little people I'm afraid) but I remember you very well. You personally pretty much ended my proud and deep involvement with FC in one rude and arrogant swoop.
If the rest of you can cast your mind back, try and remember Youth United Day when it added a raucous few thousand to the gate each year. This was not an accident. Vinny, Gally, Lucy, Maureen P, myself and others worked deep into the night after work to make it happen. We created the artwork, leaflets and emails. We approached everyone we could think of and organised the whole shebang ourselves with the good natured help of each and every other member we roped in. If you poke around the photo archives you'll see pictures of grinning young kids from Old Trafford mosques with self-made red, white and black banners proclaiming "Kill Them FC" (bullying and intimidating to the New FC, no doubt), you'll see kids from housing estate youth clubs that no other organisation would touch with a bargepole due to their, well founded, reputations for lawlessness, we had mini-vans from schools across the city turning up. If it was young Mancunian and unloved we signed them up. They came in droves and left with smiles on their faces.
How were we able to drag all this to Bury and ignite young people’s imaginations? We were different. We were not the same old axis of charities, local government employees and the church. We were outside all that. We were them and they were us. They knew that instinctively. That made our task easy as we were knocking at an open door. The house was full of people sick and tired of the old and bankrupt charity/government/church axis that had failed the young and disenfranchised for as long as we could remember.
Man, was I proud of that. We all were. It was glorious, new, revolutionary and worked. You'd call it 'social cohesion'. We’d call it a giant fuck off to an uncaring world "don't worry about us, we're all right, There's the door mate" to the traditional failures.
Jump forward a couple of years and we hear that there's a new guy in charge of FC's community efforts. Who the fuck was Robin Pye? No idea but he's an Old Mate of Andy's so he must be alright.
YUD comes around and overtures are made. I was asked by Robin for a list of contacts from previous years. Now, this list had been built up by myself. I'd spent hours collating names and contact details of church groups, synagogues, junior football clubs, school heads, college heads, athletic clubs...you get the picture. This was not just a list, most of them had replied and we were forming relationships with them. I sent them over to you Robin.
Robin, you sent me a curt email asking if they could be re-ordered in Excel format and re-submitted to you otherwise they'd be useless. I never heard from you again. Not one fucking word. Like I could afford MS Office at the time anyway?
So, all thrown in the sea.
And what were we left with? A few middle class kids who were unfortunate enough to be dragged along by Robins god bothering mates marching 'round our ground with a rainbow flag (ok, a bit more than that but tragic compared with what it was).
From the point of view of us it was a laughable disaster. However, from the point of view of the new professional community team it was a rip roaring success.
Why? Money.
Robin is a grant magnet. He knows the old charity/local government/church junta inside out. In a blink we had become everything we were meant to be against. Old, money grubbing, self-satisfied and sanctimonious hypocrites. We'd lost it. We were no longer of the people but rather just another arm of charity. Parachuting into communities to patronise and ‘improve’ them in our image.
So, Mr "Actually, it is a club built on democracy” who the fuck are you? Just another of Andy's Old Mates who nobody asked for. Another of Andy’s Old Mates who takes the applause and then sends in his invoice. Just another of Andy's Old pay check taking Mates like Walker, Frampton et al who never understood who we are. We are not here to suck on the tits of charity. That’s your addiction.
Believe it or not I can see the good in you lot but your time has gone. Go now. Leave us to try and be what we wanted to be. Proud, defiant Mancunians who want to build something counter to what you lot are. Not a pale imitation of the premierships 'Foundations' but a new way of bonding our community together without all your old shit.
I could ask why you were training to be a fucking Priest while being paid for us but that's for another day Robin.
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