The Bentley wasn’t in the driveway. After nine months of demonstrations, Southend United fans understood what that meant: Ron Martin was not home. Martin is the chairman of Southend United FC, and his nearly 25-year tenure is largely regarded as one of the most disastrous in contemporary football, both by fans and more objective observers. Since 2007, Southend has dropped from the English game’s second tier, the Championship, to the third and ultimately the fourth. For the first time in its existence, the team was relegated from the league in 2021. At this ultimate indignity, a plaque at the Blue Boar tavern, which marks the place where the club was founded in 1906, was painted over letters Rips.
On the late September day I attended, about 40 or 50 fans were amassed on the pavement outside Martin’s residence. A large coniferous tree dwarfed the two security guards who idled on the driveway. When fans had started protesting outside Martin’s house in early 2023, a few brought bags of beer as if it was an away day. The organisers, Southend Fan Protest Group, soon put a stop to this. If they were serious about their objectives – summarised by their banner, “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. PAY UP. PACK UP. SELL UP” – they needed to do it properly. They replaced the cans with flyers, and their cause picked up more supporters.
Most attendees were not natural born protesters, and the atmosphere was one of subdued duty. Some fans attempted to lighten the proceedings. One arrived with boxes of cupcakes, each with “Martin Out” piped in white lettering. Another protester, whose first Southend game was a 1-1 draw against Aldershot Town in 1967, was dressed as a clown.
A month earlier, Martin had been summoned to attend the high court over an unpaid £275,000 tax bill. It was the 18th time since 2000 that he had been called in by HMRC to explain why the club had missed the deadline for payment. Judge Sebastian Prentis said that Southend United would be wound up if they missed the new, final payment deadline of 4 October. “If this was not a football club, with the attachment of its fans, I would be winding it up today,” he said. “This has got to be sorted out.”
Southend were deducted 10 points by the National League for missing the August deadline, leaving them rooted to the bottom of the table. Two days later, on 25 August, their match against Eastleigh was interrupted by protesting fans who threw tennis balls on the pitch, along with plastic rats, a nod to Martin’s nickname, Ron the Rat. Some fans had taken to singing, to the tune of Rotterdam by the Beautiful South: “Martin’s a wanker everywhere he goes, Martin’s a wanker everywhere he goes, everywhere he goes.”
That the club was mismanaged and broke was nothing new. Previous chairmen had faced fan protests. But the decline under Martin had been longer and steeper than ever before. Under Martin’s tenure, staff wages had often been paid late or missed altogether, and there were regular threats that the club would be wound up.
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