Streatham Rovers FC - Club Statement June 2022

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

London, ENG: Today Streatham Rovers Football Club have issued the following statement for immediate release:

As some of you will be aware, in February earlier this year the Football Club and our Greyhound Lane Stadium was purchased from outgoing owners Aubergine Football Investments Ltd. by Apex Eclipse Capital, the European arm of a New York based private equity backed property development investor Velocity Invicta.

Whilst there has been some concern from the usual scaremongering suspects that a property developer will seek to develop property on top of our ramshackle Zone 3 stadium ideally located between two train stations with regular services into Central London, Apex Eclipse Capital have assured us this is not in their plans at the time of writing.

A spokesperson for the firm, known only to us as Employee A (for security and safety reasons), has promised that, even if they were forced by financial necessity to build on the real estate, they would ensure that they built a large multistory residential block with a replacement sports stadium constructed on the roof. A majority of the Club Committee voted in favour of this hypothetical “architectural marvel, that would draw in visitors from around the world.”

Employee A even provided us with this detailed preliminary sketch of what a new “residential tower block stadium” would look like: (click to expand)

However, in their purchase of the ground through a myriad of the previous owner’s holding companies they have discovered that the Football Club and its various owners since the 1960s have never owned all the land the current stadium was built on, with further large swathes of the land having been sold off over the previous half a century.

The four parties that own sections of the land have since been alerted to the situation and made legal manoeuvres to force the issue. One claimant owns the western sixth of the pitch including most of the penalty area and a section of the ‘midfield’ area, totalling 1,870 square yards. A second claimant theoretically owns a ‘mirror image’ of that land on the eastern Commonside end though precise ownership could take months or even years to determine as the owner is a defunct entity. A third claimant is finalising the process of their legal entitlement to a 578 square yard strip of the pitch starting from the Shufflebottom main stand. Finally, a fourth claimant owns another similarly sized rectangle of the middle of the pitch jutting out from the Vale Terrace side.

We appreciate that this information is rather dry and may not immediately be of particular concern. It is only when you visualise the ownership dispute that the full scale of the problem becomes clear:

The minority of the Greyhound Lane pitch that the Football Club currently has fully legitimate, legal access to forms the shape of a swastika.

It goes without saying that this symbol of hatred is completely at odds with the views, values and ethos of Streatham Rovers Football Club and our various holding companies.

We believe what has happened here is fairly obvious.

Previous owners have taken advantage of the London property market’s rude health over the last four or five decades to subsidise the running of the club by selling off plots of land. It is clear in the minds of all but one Club Committee Member that it is pure coincidence that the remaining part of the pitch owned via the Football Club is in the shape of a swastika. A terrible, regrettable coincidence that has occurred through absolutely no fault of the club.

(Furthermore - and this is more of a side note than a true part of this statement - if you do see a certain Club Committee Member posting on the Club’s internet forum claiming that our owners in the 1970s and in the second half of the 1980s had links to the far right please ignore him. He was breastfed for far too long and is now pathologically addicted to attention. Seriously, he was still suckling at his poor mother’s teats when he started secondary school. We only have him on the Club Committee because he’s prone to such violent outbursts so we employed the logic of “it’s better to have him inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent threatening to pour petrol over himself and light a match before throwing himself onto the tent and killing us all”. Quite simply, he’s not to be trusted.)

There’s a few things we’d like to raise. First and foremost - what on earth were the Football Association, the London FA, Lambeth Council and UEFA playing at allowing a Football Club to sell off land in a way that made our legal ownership look like a Nazi symbol? Aren’t they meant to take a hardline against racism?

Secondly, please understand that this is the very last thing that the Football Club needs. We may well not be allowed to use the stadium next season (Xtermin8 Rat Poison Football League Rules and Regulations forbid us from playing on a below regulation size pitch, swastika-shaped or otherwise). This Club has already been locked in a titanic existential struggle for years - decades even. It’s just one kick in the teeth after another. The Club Committee all hate each other for various distinct and often brutally personal reasons. The manager is probably going to prison for dangerous driving. We couldn’t afford the hydrotherapy pool heating bills even before they shot up this year. Two of the players keep wanking each other off in the shower after matches and filming it to send to their wives who are - and I can scarcely believe I’m typing out these words - “really into it”. Our Club Lawyer has left the Club after we accidentally attributed an IRA death threat to Margaret Thatcher which means, amongst other things, muggins here is having to clean the toilets twice a week.

You're probably wondering what you can do to help. Well, you can buy our new 2022/23 home shirt, manufactured by VOMIT SportsWear and sponsored by principal sponsor Queen ElizaBET. Please. We’ve ordered too many.

You could also tweet Gary Lineker and beg him to come to our aid. A man like that has a lot of influence in the upper echelons of football.