By Vince Rugari
Three years ago, Sydney businessman Clem Morfuni was being hailed as a saviour. He became owner of English soccer club Swindon Town just before the 2021-22 season kicked off. Had he not, the club may have died. He endeared himself to supporters, promising to restore their team to its former glory. Long-suffering diehards dared to dream again.
Today, Morfuni is almost a pariah in Swindon, a drab railway town two hours’ drive west of London, where there is little else to do but follow the fortunes of the cherished local soccer team.
From hero to zero: Clem Morfuni.Credit: Rob Noyes
Things haven’t been going well. And everyone is blaming him. To the point where he’s effectively being chased out of town.
“Welcome to English football,” Morfuni, a former plumber who founded the Axis Services Group and is worth a reported $200 million, tells this masthead.
“It’s not for the faint-hearted, I’ll tell you.”
Since losing on penalties in League Two’s promotion play-off semi-finals at the end of his first season as owner and chairman, and the high of hosting Manchester City at home in the third round of the FA Cup in that same campaign, Swindon Town has been trapped in a grim downward spiral, churning through players and coaches at an alarming rate.
Swindon Town fans show a banner calling for Clem Morfuni’s departure.Credit: X
This week’s 4-0 defeat to Colchester United has bumped them down to last place in League Two; relegation, which some fans believe is a certainty if Morfuni remains in charge, would end their 104-year spell in the Football League and condemn them to semi-professional competition.
Six months ago, the Swindon Town Supporters’ Trust called for Morfuni to step aside, declaring they had lost all confidence and faith in his leadership. The anger and tension has built since then. Last week, a separate fan protest group formed, committing to rolling “non-obstructive” action with the sole purpose of pressuring Morfuni into selling the club, saying they “will not rest” until it happens.
English media typically doesn’t cover the ins and outs of fourth-tier football, but Swindon’s ongoing plight has captured national attention – helped somewhat by the presence of inimitable lower-league quote machine Ian Holloway, who became the sixth permanent manager during Morfuni’s reign as chairman when he was appointed two months ago. Working his first job in four years, Holloway is still yet to record a league victory, and recently suggested their struggles could be because Swindon’s training ground, located near an ancient burial site, is haunted.
According to Sam Morshead, founder and editor of The Moonraker, an independent website that covers Swindon Town, the relationship between the community and the owner has been strained by the team’s on-field decline – and then snapped entirely when, last year, the club was fined £10,000 ($19,900) by the Football Association because Morfuni failed to disclose that he had sold shares to another party.
“It’s that sort of issue, when you come in on a mandate of transparency, where things have fallen down. Basically, trust has been broken between the fanbase and him,” Morshead says.
“I don’t think he has really clocked that, and he probably feels quite personally affronted by what’s going on at the moment. I can sort of understand that because he has put a considerable amount of cash into the business – but there’s more to running a football club than there is to running a construction business. And I think the clash of cultures between how he does business to make the money that he has, and how you need to do business to maintain a football community in a lower league club in the UK, has just been incompatible.”
Morfuni only got into club ownership out of a longstanding love for the game, and says he’s still in it for the same reasons. And while he understands where fans are coming from when they say they want him gone, he reckons the reality isn’t so simple.
If he was accused of impropriety, of taking money out of the club or not investing enough in it, he says he could understand. But their budget was doubled this season.
He insists he can still fix things.
“Like I’ve said in the media, show me a proof of funds, a letter of offer, and someone who can do this a lot better than me, and by all means, I’ll sit down with them, and I’ll go through it. And if I believe it’s best for the club, I’ll go,” Morfuni says.
“But where are they? Show me. I’ve had a lot of people come to me and go, ‘Clem, we want to buy the club.’ And I go, ‘Yeah, all right. Have you got a proof of funds?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll send you a proof of funds.’ Guess what? No proof of funds.
“So you’re looking for a billionaire who’s going to put millions of pounds into a club, go to an advisory board meeting once a month with the supporters, and if it doesn’t go well, you’re going to get battered. You’re going to get abuse on social media, you and your family.
“I said, if you find that person, can you let me know? Because I want to meet this guy.”
Morfuni is a season ticket holder at Tottenham Hotspur, and points to the treatment of Ange Postecoglou as another example of how fickle fans in England can be.
“If next season, we stay up we get promoted ... mate, they’ll build a statue,” Morfuni says.
“I don’t know what Ange thinks, but at least he’s making four or five million quid a year. If I was making four or five million quid a year out of the club, I’d say, ‘You know what? I can cop it.’ But when you’re copping it, and it’s costing you money? Trust me, it’s not a pleasant place to be at all.
“The English are brutal. It’s their religion, football. But listen, I’ve been in construction for 30 years. I can fight with the best of them.”