How Blackpool fans boycotted their way to victory

Under the tagline Not A Penny More, it was decided that a boycott of Bloomfield Road was the most powerful course of action to send a message to the owners.

“It was a massive decision and a very painful one,” says Christine Seddon, the Blackpool Supporters’ Trust Chair. “I’m a third generation Blackpool fan and to me and my family, this was far more than just watching football. It was a social thing, a community thing.”

Starting at the dawn of the 2015/16 season, Seddon and other members of the Supporters’ Trust would arrive outside Bloomfield Road on match days – unfurling banners and handing out leaflets explaining their reasons for boycotting – then leave at kick-off.

“For every single game – all competitions – we’d stand outside. From August 2015 right up to March 2019, in all weathers. Some days we’d be frozen; others we’d be soaking wet. We didn’t miss one.

“We wanted to show other fans we hadn’t gone away and abandoned the club. We just felt it was the only power we had, the only way to highlight our situation.”

The boycott worked, with average attendances plummeting from 14,000 to 4,000. Following a second successive relegation in 2016, many Blackpool fans resisted breaking the boycott when the club bounced back to League One at Wembley the following May.

“I was really proud of how many people resisted that day and continued the boycott,” remembers Seddon, who watched the League Two play-off final win at home.

“Conflicted didn’t go anywhere near describing how awful it felt. We were Blackpool fans, so wanted them to win, but didn’t want that to help the owners and enable them to stay in place.

“No football fan should have to be in that position. It was awful.”

“How can you not want your team to win?” Wilkinson adds. “How can a football fan not want that? But we were in a place where the team winning might benefit the Oystons in some way. That’s the predicament we were in.”

Though the boycott wasn’t enough to oust the Oystons on its own, it played a crucial part in their eventual departure.

Belokon, who had been sidelined since the Premier League years, took them to court in 2017. He won the case, with the High Court judge ruling that the Oystons had “abused their majority powers to the detriment” of Belokon and the club.

The Oystons had to pay the minority shareholder £31m for his shares, but several deadlines passed without the money being paid.

A second High Court hearing followed, where Blackpool were placed into receivership. The Oyston family’s reign at Bloomfield Road was over.

Wilkinson was one of 60 Blackpool fans that travelled to London for the hearing, watching on from the public gallery.

“The lawyers representing Belokon, aided by the Supporters’ Trust, provided evidence of the boycott and the loss it was causing to the club,” he says.

“It was put to them that should the receiver be appointed, the boycott would cease to exist, meaning fans and income come back to the club. That was the point that swayed the judge to appoint the receiver.

“The boycott was so relevant in the decision to appoint the receiver, which took the club out of the Oystons’ hands.”

Though Wilkinson and Seddon take great pride at the boycott, it is tinged with regret that it lasted close to four years. As a result, some Blackpool supporters never had the chance to go back to Bloomfield Road.

As a child, Wilkinson was introduced to the club by his father, who would drive the 100-mile round trip from the family home in Warrington to each home game. An early boycotter himself, he passed away before the Oystons had departed.

Seddon’s mother, who made the journey to Wembley for the 1953 FA Cup final on the back of her brother’s motorbike, also never got the chance to see her team play again.

“She had Alzheimer’s and was deteriorating at the time the boycott started,” Seddon says. “She agreed we shouldn’t go and we didn’t renew her season ticket which was difficult because it really helped her. She’d been going since she was a little girl and I really felt we got Mum back for a while when we were at games.

“Sadly she passed away last year. We didn’t quite make it back in time.”

As Wilkinson and Seddon both point out, these are just two of many similar stories.

“We had over 200 people who had family members that passed away while we were boycotting who they wanted to remember,” Seddon adds. “That highlights the human costs of what a football club means and how hard it is to stop going.”

Following the news that the club had been placed into receivership, the Supporters’ Trust quickly set about reclaiming Bloomfield Road, making sure that after years of neglect, the old ground would be up to holding a near capacity crowd.

A team of volunteers was mobilised, wiping down seats and scraping thick layers of seagull excrement from parts of stands that had been derelict for nearly half a decade. It was the first time the volunteers had set foot in the ground since the boycott had started.

Above the directors’ box, a board advertising Oystons Estate Agency was wrenched from its position.

“A huge cheer went up when it came down,” Wilkinson remembers. “Like when Saddam Hussein’s statue was toppled in Baghdad,” he laughs.

“As you can imagine, it was emotional, seeing your old seat again,” Seddon recalls. “Sad, too, seeing the state the ground was in, but encouraging seeing so many people turn out to get the old girl back to how she was.”

A crowd in excess of 15,000 attended the Southend game, the home side snatching a 2-2 draw with a stoppage time equaliser. The result, though, didn’t really matter too much; the fact that they were back home did.

“What was going on the pitch was almost irrelevant that day,” Seddon says. “The connection with the players had gone. It’s only now, in a new season, that’s starting to return again.

“It’s been a long, very difficult time, but it’s starting to feel like our team again.”