Kevin Keegan was back in Scunthorpe last month and, predictably, there was the usual enthusiasm to greet the town’s most famous footballing son.
It all began here for Keegan as a teenage Scunthorpe United apprentice in the late 1960s. Pride in the former England and Liverpool forward, two-time Ballon d’Or winner, ex-Newcastle United and -England manager and top-10 recording artist never diminishes.
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At a function held in his name, Keegan was also eager to meet someone from the audience.
“Kevin came up to me — he knew me,” Michelle Harness, Scunthorpe’s unassuming current owner, says with a shake of the head. “He told me he’d been reading about me. I’m a grandmother of seven. And all this got shoved on me, like an unwanted Christmas present.”
This, as Harness says, has been the challenge of reviving a football club some of their employees had begun to fear was past saving.
Scunthorpe were in a parlous state back in the autumn, unable to pay staff wages and facing eviction from their home stadium, Glanford Park. Debts had climbed to more than £1.5million ($1.9m), with crippling losses running close to £100,000 a month in National League North, the sixth tier of English football. They stood on the cliff edge… and they tottered.
A club dying in plain sight begged for a saviour and, against her better judgment, that turned out to be Harness.
In October, the 62-year-old lifelong Scunthorpe fan agreed a £100,000 deal to end the tumultuous reign of David Hilton, and six weeks later, she had secured further funding of £3million to buy Glanford Park from another of the club’s former owners, Peter Swann.
Harness squirms at the suggestion she has been responsible for saving Scunthorpe. She points to the hefty donations of backers, volunteers and well-wishers, as well as the increased revenues driven by a long-suffering fanbase stirring to action. That it is uncomfortable for the club to imagine life without her intervention, though, illustrates her importance.
“I don’t like it being about me,” Harness says. “It could’ve been anyone. If you’re put on that spot, you have to do it. If we failed, then at least we tried. It was about not wanting to close the doors, not wanting to turn the lights off.”
Scunthorpe have unwittingly become one of the season’s most uplifting stories, a financially crippled club saved by the goodwill of their hometown.
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They had hoped the final chapter of 2023-24 would be a rousing promotion back to the National League, but that was not to be. Scunthorpe lost, on penalties after a goalless draw, to Boston United in the play-off semi-finals on Saturday. It was a full stop nobody wanted.
Instead, simply being in operation, attracting close to a sell-out crowd, illustrated they were a club who refused to go under.
Last Tuesday morning. Two dozen people queueing at the ticket office. The stream of supporters has been constant ever since the first had arrived at 8am the day before. The eventual result was a crowd of 8,036 for Saturday’s all-Lincolnshire play-off against Boston. Not since hosting a Manchester United side including Rio Ferdinand and Michael Owen in a League Cup tie in September 2010 have so many been packed in for a Scunthorpe home fixture.
Supporters have rallied around Harness, with an average attendance of 4,012 bettering the crowds seen at Glanford Park during the club’s last season in the English Football League (EFL, the second, third and fourth tiers of English football) in 2021-22 — when the average dipped below 3,000. The National League North is not their natural home.
“It’s been two days non-stop,” says Glyn Sparks, the club’s head of partnerships — and formerly the person who played their fuzzy-suit mascot Scunny Bunny — pointing out towards the queue. “Michelle took the players down there earlier to thank the fans.
“There’s such a buzz around the place again. You look in the office and there’s smiles. Actual laughter. That’s the best thing. Everyone is pulling together and looking forward. We can see tomorrow.”
That was not always a given in 2023, when the walls threatened to fall in. The cupboards were bare at the end of Swann’s reign in the January and empty again by the time Hilton’s grand plans collapsed in late September. The relegation from the National League that was confirmed in between, a year after dropping out of the EFL, almost became incidental.
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Swann’s wasteful tenure had started the slide but Hilton was the man who took Scunthorpe to the brink.
An investigation by The Athletic had questioned his suitability to own the club after discovering a man believed to be Hilton was sentenced to two years in prison for 15 counts of fraud by false representation under the name of David Anderson in late 2014. The now-46-year-old had also previously gone by David White and David Mellors. An investigation into Hilton by the Football Association, which oversees the owners’ and directors’ test (OADT) at non-League level, is ongoing.
Hilton would eventually admit to supporters and staff that he had served a custodial sentence but in those closing weeks as owner, the fault lines were gaping. Scunthorpe had run out of money less than two months into this season and Hilton, in putting the club up for sale, announced he was withdrawing funding.
The final week of September brought the height of the crisis. A GoFundMe set up by fans raised £76,000 to help cover the unpaid wages of players and staff, some of whom had gone two months without being paid their salary. A 3-0 home defeat against Buxton on September 30 had volunteers shaking collection buckets at the turnstiles. All the gate receipts went to Hilton.
Harness was a board member then, after signing up as a director in last summer. “Things had started creeping,” she says. “You wanted to know what was going on. You didn’t get answers. But I felt I could do more, and help, if I stayed than if I went.”
Fans pre-match (Scunthorpe United/Luke Broughton)
A local consortium that had included Harness, once Scunthorpe’s commercial manager, had initially proposed taking the club off Hilton’s hands. But by October 4, she had agreed to take on the 90.12 per cent majority shareholding alone.
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Ridding the club of Hilton, though, only marked the start of the battle. Every day would bring winding-up orders and county court judgements (CCJs) seeking money the club did not have.
Bailiffs arrived regularly, one taking the leased hand driers from the toilets and another removing the club’s telephone system. Kit supplier Kelme had stopped sending fresh supplies to the club shop after previous orders had not been paid for. Outstanding utility bills ran to six figures. Taxes owed to the Inland Revenue stood at £220,000.
The efforts of Harness and her fellow directors offered no guarantees Scunthorpe would come out on the other side of all that as an operational football club.
“The first three or four months weren’t very good,” she said. “I had advice from an administrator in the first two weeks, because I thought I’d done everything I could. I didn’t have a cash flow and I was going home every day asking how I’d pay this or that.
“I could’ve been here for two or three weeks and said I couldn’t do it but the only thing stopping me was that these people were looking for £150,000 to £200,000 to liquidate a football club. That was the wages, so I thought I’d give it another month, and then another.”
Harness could not have done it alone. She credits the ongoing support of directors Roj Rahman and George Aitkenhead, who helped find the initial funding requirements, as well as Ian Sharp, Tahina Akther and Simon Elliott, three more of her crutches on a long road.
Harness points to two donations of £100,000 that helped clear debts and another of £20,000 from Julie Taylor, a lifelong fan and volunteer member of staff. Taylor says the money was part of her inheritance from her late father, another dedicated Scunthorpe supporter.
“I just wanted to do everything I could to help the club,” says Taylor, who was volunteering again in Scunthorpe’s offices last week. “You could see it gradually fading away. We were just trying to cling on, but it was being taken away.
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“I wouldn’t have given the money to previous owners. I’ve known Michelle and I could see what was trying to be done, so I knew it would be in safe hands. It feels totally different now. You can’t compare.”
Scunthorpe’s comeback has illustrated the enduring power of English football’s pyramid. A working-class town in the north of England has rallied around its club, with local money plugging some big holes.
“One of the first people who helped us was Jason Threadgold, a funeral director in the town,” says Sparks, who sold off naming rights for the club’s training pitches. “We’re dying on our a**e and it’s a funeral company that helped save us.”
Harness has kept the historic invoices she has cleared stacked in a pile which must be close to six inches high. There are more to be paid yet, with some placed across her desk, but Scunthorpe are slowly getting there. Harness, a self-confessed micromanager who always leaves her office door open, obsesses over cash flow and spreadsheets.
She says: “James (Moody, the club’s long-serving media and ticketing manager) would bring a load of envelopes in every day once the post had been. One day, a bailiff came knocking and at last, I was able to say, ‘I’ve already paid it, mate’. I was so pleased that I’d paid one before they’d come to collect. We also owed 20 clubs, 30 players, agents, former managers.
“It was a big burden to carry, but there was also an expectation of having to save the club. It was wages, back debt, how I was going to pay it all. I look at some of the deals we’ve inherited and wonder how on earth this club was ever going to pay it. But I haven’t got time to look at former owners and say what they did wrong. We know it wasn’t perfect but we’re getting back to being sustainable.”
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A victory that offers even greater pride was bringing Glanford Park, Scunthorpe’s home since 1989, back under their ownership. Swann had sold the ground to another of his companies, Coolsilk Property and Investment, in 2021 then leased it back to the club.
Hilton’s pledge to buy the stadium from Swann shortly after purchasing the football club in January last year led only to legal squabbles and an eviction notice. The visit of Brackley Town on October 7, three days after Harness’ takeover, threatened to be the club’s final game at Glanford Park. More than 5,000 spectators were in attendance. A groundshare with seventh-tier Gainsborough Trinity, 17 miles away, had already been lined up by Hilton.
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A short-term extension bought Harness time to negotiate with Swann and, on December 1, a £3million deal was struck that ensured Scunthorpe would not be moved. A community interest company (CIC) set up by the club received £2.5m of UK government funding and will avert the threat of Scunthorpe’s home ever being sold again.
“Now that’s into a CIC, which means nobody can come and take the stadium away again,” says Harness. “That’s what we wanted.”
It is now called the Attis Arena, after naming rights were sold to a local insurance firm in January. New cladding has been fitted to its frontage by another Lincolnshire firm and solar panels will be added to the roof over the summer. There is also the potential for social housing to be built on nearby land.
Seven months after fears of being uprooted, Scunthorpe are firmly dug in.
The next generation is showing Harness gratitude in different ways.
“I’ve got six grandsons and only one granddaughter but she said to me, ‘When you die, Nanna, can I have the football club?’. They’re vicious, honestly. But they love it.”
There is a determination not to look back as Scunthorpe aim to build a brighter future, but the trauma of the past 18 months ought to deliver stark warnings to others in English football. This was very nearly another Bury or Macclesfield Town, two northern clubs lost to ruinous mismanagement in recent years.
Swann had aimed for the second-tier Championship, incurring heavy losses he was prepared to swallow until his tenure ended with two relegations in four seasons to leave Scunthorpe in the National League. At least one of the former managers employed by Swann remains on the club’s payroll.
Hilton promised ambitious revival plans but only dragged the club further into the mire. Utility bills went unpaid for months and historic debts were ignored, with any money gathered put towards building a squad with a budget four times that of most clubs in the National League North. Winning promotion this season would have seen Harness having to fulfil in the region of £100,000 in bonuses.
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The club’s academy was also wound down last summer by Hilton, who remains a deeply unpopular figure with staff. Those who lived through that nightmare cannot forget what came before the harmony of Harness.
Just how dark were the dark days?
“Coming into work when you’d not been paid wasn’t nice,” says Lee Turnbull, the club’s chief executive, who has been associated with Scunthorpe in many roles across 25 years. “The wife’s questioning why you go to work every day, staff are leaving regularly because they have to feed the family and pay the mortgages.
“You go a week or two without wages and it starts to bite. You’re dipping into a little bit of savings and you’re trying to get through it. But you’ve got to come in here and look people in the eye every day too, people that genuinely couldn’t pay the mortgage. That was tough.”
Player wages were prioritised in the months when reserves fell short but strike action was discussed when their salaries were not forthcoming. Manager Jimmy Dean kept the squad together, with a transfer embargo in place until February, which warranted credit.
“We had a pretty frank meeting,” says Turnbull. “There was a point where the players were in a position of being paid late and initially they discussed not training.
“Me and Jimmy addressed the players and said, ‘Listen, you know it’s tough not getting paid, but we’ve got to be respectful to the badge, the club and the fans’. So we said we would stand shoulder to shoulder together and fight the battles we had to fight together.
“There was a stark reality that we might have to lock the gates. I don’t think we quite got to the eleventh hour. But it was 10-plus. We were very, very close to the edge.”
Not that it felt that way on Saturday.
Scunthorpe were back to being a club feeling good about themselves in the hours that led to kick-off. Young fans wore masks showing the faces of Dean and his players, and the buzz of a play-offs fixture was unmistakable. There were wigs in the club’s claret and blue colours, flags and optimism.
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Boston, though, were not in town to make up the numbers. Scunthorpe’s Lincolnshire rivals had brought 1,400 fans on the 90-minute road trip north — among them Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, formerly the deputy chief medical officer for England and one of the UK’s most recognisable faces during the COVID-19 pandemic because of his regular TV appearances.
Play-offs bring a uniquely nervous energy and it was evident throughout the single-leg tie. “It makes me feel sick watching,” says Harness, who abandons her seat up in the directors’ box to pace the Glanford Park corridors.
She was not alone.
It was a game with the tightness to induce nausea; one slip or miss offered the potential to decide a season’s fate. Both sides had their chances to squeeze out a victory in normal time but the contest felt destined for penalties long before it got to them.
Boston, just as they had when beating Alfreton Town on penalties in their eliminator the previous Tuesday, held their nerve. Cameron Gregory saved down low to deny Liam McAlinden to seal a 5-4 shootout win and a meeting with Brackley Town to decide promotion. The visitors had spoiled the party, condemning Scunthorpe to another season in National League North.
“It’s very tough to take,” said Dean. “I’ve been out with the fans and I feel their pain.
“The progress the club has made off the pitch has been fantastic. It’s been an honour to be part of that. I’m just truly gutted we couldn’t give the season a happy ending. The fans were paying our wages at one point, so I’m just devastated we couldn’t get over the line in the play-offs.”
A big summer now begins. The majority of Dean’s squad, expensively assembled by Hilton, are about to reach the end of contracts and budgets will need to be trimmed.
“Every extra penny that comes in, I’m clearing the debt,” says Harness. “What I want to do is be clear of debt before next season starts.
“I’m not saying I can afford to run this football club but I am saying the town can. I went out begging for support to save this club for this town. That’s what it’s been about — and we’re nearly there.”
(Top photo: Scunthorpe United/Luke Broughton)