Mad As A Hatter: The Power Of The “12th Man” in Sustainability & Purpose

A Luton Town FC Success story

Who’d have believed it??!?!??

Luton Town FC have done it! Winning one of the biggest prizes in world football, ￡170m+ promotion to the?#PremierLeague !?

More important is HOW they’ve done it!

With Leadership #values , community and #purpose most?regenerative?and?sustainability?transformations would be proud of!?

As a teenager I sold burgers rolling a trolly, tunnel to pitch-side, at Kenilworth Road now the smallest Premier League ground (10,400 capacity) and nurtured a love through family and my late-great Nan, Olive.?

From administrations, relegations and the brink of financial liquidation to?“The greatest climb ever”.?Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu making history as the only player to go from the Conference non-league to Premier League with a single club!?

Here’s the “Remarkable” story…

Following a controversial, arguably greedy, 2003 takeover from businessman John Gurney with profiteering plans to turn Luton FC into London-Luton FC with a Formular-1 track around a 70,000 seater stadium shared with NFL and NBA franchises, the staunch capitalised might well have praised progressive plans. To others more humble it raised serious eye-brows.

When the first act was to sack manager Joe Kinnear and assistant (former player) Mick Harford, popular figures with Luton supporters, and propose plans for merging with Wimbledon 40 miles away it threatened the destruction of the club’s history and culture.?It ignited a bottom-up movement the town can now be proud of.

A group of supporters launched ‘Trust in Luton’, a registered Trust that successfully convinced supporters and local sponsors to vote with their feet and wallets by refusing to buy season tickets or invest in the club, instead pledge towards the Trust. The club suffered, but the plan was steadfast despite staff and players going unpaid for 2 months. Everyone felt the strain. Television sponsorship money was withheld due to the uncertainty and the club came?close to bankruptcy. It was a real painful period, with many fans feeling their demise but importantly sticking to their morals.

A real battle played-out over the following years, with the Trust gaining in structure, size and shareholdings until the club was found to have made illegal payments to player agents and was docked 10 points falling into administration. The very values that the Trust was against came materially to the forefront. The club rejected the Trust from the board, and the club was sold in Feb 2008 to a fan backed consortium headed by former Trust director Gary Sweet with the purpose of?greater levels of fan ownership?and involvement. A bold new dawn beckoned.?

From Rock?Bottom

The damage had been done. After 3 administrations and 2 consecutive relegations Luton started 2008 grieved with the biggest point deduction ever (30!!!) due to the previous owners.?

The club was hurt. Stunned. Doomed before a ball was even kicked. They dropping out of the football leagues entirely, but despite this still won a cup that year in front of 40,000 Hatters at Wembley!?Their spirit remained!

Three successive playoffs ended in painful loss with a semi-final, penalties, and a final to York at Wembley.

“Heartbreak for the Hatters!”

Many players talk of the hard pain of picking yourself up after a playoff loss. Luton had suffered 3 in a row. The turmoil meant the following year was a disaster season.?

But then…?

Following a bad start to the season captain Ronny Henry got into a confrontation with fan Mark Baldwin exiting the pitch from a loss. Manager John Still and Henry hunted down and invited Mark to the training ground to engage the fan base, bridge understanding, align interests, and show how important their support was to the club. The Power of the “12th Man”.

“We are only here for the same reason”.?

Pivotal in the teams rise up the leagues, it united fans, community and players together. Inviting a different fan into a huddle after each game, the games got easier, with 27 unbeaten games, 100 goals, and winning League 2 by 19 points!?

“What John did that year will never be forgotten. He bought a sense of honesty we’d all been missing”.

Humanity, and community togetherness had been injected back into the club with the same values the Trust had battled the greedy corporates with.?

Following lastminute playoff heartbreak to Blackpool, 3–1 up and suffering an equaliser in the last minute, manager Nathan Jones (a former player who never played a game) steers a remarkable rise with automatic promotion. Then sat 2nd in League 1 manger Jones left the club for Stoke. Fans were heartbroken, hurt and bitter. Jones collected the ‘manager of the month’ award won with Luton while wearing a stoke shirt, further insulting the Hatters!?

Regardless, caretaker Mick Hartford, previously sacked by the former owners, steps up and by uniting fans with community spirit steers the team to League 1 Champions!?

“You couldn’t write it”?

After 60 painful years, planning permission is finally granted for a new Stadium.?"Momentous, a long time coming” — Chariman Wilkinson in tears.

Covid-19 strikes, and Luton find themselves 2nd from bottom and then SHOCK! The board boldly return Nathan Jones (failed at Stoke) despite his ‘lack of integrity and respect’ on leaving. Jones helps Luton survive last game of the season with a 3–2 win vs Blackburn.?

“An absolute miracle we’re staying up”.?

Then despite the lowest budget by a margin, Luton reach the Playoffs! They are the better team but suffer a narrow painful loss to Huddersfield. Re-battling for playoffs the following year manager Nathan Jones leaves again for Premier League Southampton, but relationships have been healed and he leaves with Luton’s blessing.

With another bold move from the board, Rob Edwards is hired recently sacked from bitter rivals Watford. It leads to a 14 game unbeaten run to the playoffs, suffering a 2–1 loss to Sunderland in 1st leg of the semi’s BUT turning it around to win 2–0 at Kennilworth Road!

“A great example. They should make a film about this, if it happens”?

It happened.?

Luton Town founding members of the premier league but relegated just before it started beat the team who stayed in their place, Coventry on penalties this weekend at Wembley!?

The story is remarkable.?

“The ONLY club ever promoted from non league to premier league. The greatest climb ever”?

Lessons For Sustainability on Integrity and?Purpose:

1.)?Despite the feeling of injustice with a 30 point deduction (much larger than other clubs with comparative misdemeanours) and the inevitable relegation, the supporters consortium re-established themselves built on community, purpose and values. Luton Town FC went on to win a cup at Wembley that same season.?They kept their spirit!?Did they realise how instrumental that moment would be to contributing to their long term success and allow us this greater victory today?

2.)?Local fans and sponsors did the hard work and voted with their feet and wallets. They suffered the short term pain to?build from something greater?that they could be proud of.

3.)?The club is now?owned and ran by lifelong fans.?They have retained their identity, history and culture. Charman Wilkinson is a lifelong Hatter and was a founding member of Luton Town 2020, the consortium of supporters who led the club out of administration in 2008.?

4.)?The New owners built a?purposeful Board of Directors?and injected new Values into the very essence of the organisation. They turned their weakness and failure into their greatest strength, and now stood for something greater than themselves.?

• Despite the huge financial pressures, but cautious of the societal impact most noticeably to impressional children, Luton pioneered?rejecting all advertising sponsors from Gambling. Just as importantly the club’s decision was swayed by listening to what was important to a board member whose friend killed himself after building an addiction.?
• Luton demonstrated that?building?with core values?and culture is more powerful than all those teams with higher financial spending (Profit,?AND Purpose). Many teams that failed at playoffs were forced to sell key players and their models were exposed as unsustinable.
• Luton recognised their greatest assets are their people, and built back ‘United’ with community and external stakeholders in mind. They engaged fans in the process, took time to unite on what they stood for (the intention of any good sustainability materiality assessment) and turned?“the power of the 12th man”?AND?the broader ecosystem?to their advantage. They built values around something they would all be proud of.
• Luton leaned into the 60-yr demon, and?invested into the infrastructure?upgrade giving a huge moral victory and motivation when it was needed. Finally winning planning permission for the new stadium was achieved through these purposeful values and only by doing the hard-work and?uniting a multitude of local stakeholders?to defeat powerful profit/power-seeking adversaries.
• Luton spent wisely,?balancing short and long term,?and despite their projected ￡170m+ windful have the established culture and leadership to continue to spend wisely. Nick Harford now leads player recruitment, and everyone that joins buys-into the clubs identify, history, values and vision. Following the final win at Wembley ever player interviewed prioritised wishing their captain (rushed to hospital) well and congratulating Coventry for their achievements. They instil?togetherness and humble respect?and are role models to society.

5.)?Luton demonstrate, as with Sustainability Transfomration, that the Financial side (profit) is important, and is paramount for viability in most cases but?broader value creation (prosperity, people, and planet)?can be achieved when building with purpose, togetherness and unity of community. The ￡170m windfalls are great to chase, it will help sustain the long-term viability of Luton Town FC, and the untold regenerative impact to the broader community, but the ￡ chase itself needs to be built from a position of purpose/values and they both need to co-exist like polarities (ying and yang) in harmony for sustained success. After all not many clubs bounce back so well from play-off defeat, let alone a multi-league plummet. No other club has achieved this momentous feat.?

Chapters still untold.?

“The greatest climb ever”.

Up The Hatters!

Listen:?The Remarkable rise of Luton Town (BBC Audio)