Monthly talk: Nick Hawker – Exeter City FC
Exeter City FC – a Part of the Community
At our May meeting, members welcomed Nick Hawker, Executive Chair of Exeter City FC Board of Directors, to talk about how the club is managed, and how it has a refreshingly distinctive ethos compared with all of the other clubs in the EFL and Premier League.
Mr Hawker gave a brief history of the club illustrating the precarious nature of its finances since its foundation in 1901. The club clearly enjoys the unlikely fact that they were the first English team to play the national team of Brazil in 1914. Other than that, even their greatest fans would have to admit that for most of their history they have been in the lower leagues and have rarely achieved glory on the national stage. A rare highlight was reaching the quarter finals of the FA Cup in 1931 when they faced (but lost) at home to Sunderland.
A major challenge came in 2003 when the club fell out of the Football League and was relegated to the Conference. This brought about the take over by the Exeter City Supporters Trust which gives all supporters ownership and control over their club. The uncertainty continued for a while but the club enjoyed a moment of remarkable good fortune in 2005 when it was drawn to face Manchester Utd in the FA Cup at Old Trafford. This gave the club a huge boost in revenue (over £650,000), further increased when they drew 0-0 away and were able to have a televised replay at St James Park. This enabled them to stabilise and invest in the club in a way which would have been impossible otherwise. They finally achieved promotion to the Football League in 2008, and was promoted to League One in 2022.
There are a number of distinctive, if not unique, features to the club’s philosophy. It will not go into debt to fund its activities, which means that it is frequently outbid in the transfer market and has to be very skilful in its recruitment strategy. It also places a great reliance on developing and caring for its own young players. The upside to this is that it was better placed to weather the storm of the pandemic than many other ‘richer’ clubs. It will not take any money from gambling organisations – although it has no choice but to accept the Sky logo and gambling sponsorship on its shirt. The club is committed to inclusion in all its activities, so there are active women’s teams, disabled teams, walking football teams and much else.
The Trust has a substantial commitment to working with the community in ways which go far beyond purely sporting activities. The trust claims their programmes reach more than 45,000 members of the community each year and around 48% of its work is not football related. This includes housing, foodbanks and education projects and much else.
As someone whose football interests lie elsewhere, I will follow the fortunes of Exeter City FC with greater interest and enthusiasm – and respect. Even for those who have little interest in sport, and especially professional sport, the story of this club is an interesting and important one, and one which should give us an alternative to the prevailing narrative which focuses all too often on politics, vast sums of money and ego.
John Vick