In 16 games this season, Durham City AFC have conceded 163 goals and scored just four.
They have won one game since 9 April 2019 and upwards of 60 players have come and gone this season alone.
They have alienated their remaining fans and owe another club nearly £2500. They are, by any metric, having the worst season of any side in the top 11 tiers of English football.
For their last match players had to find their own way on the 123-mile journey to Windscale, on the far side of Cumbria. They lost 14-0.
Their expenses for the 250-mile round trip will not be reimbursed – the players are not paid for playing or travel. Only 10 men turned up.
The Windscale clash came 353 days after their biggest league loss to date, a 16-1 away hammering by Carlisle City on a dark Tuesday evening.
In less than a year since that last visit to Cumbria, Durham have had four managers, five secretaries and been relegated from the 10th-tier Northern League Division Two to the 11th-tier Wearside League. They have conceded 273 goals in 41 competitive games and become the laughing stock of North-East football.
Owned by former Newcastle, Rangers and France U-21 defender Olivier Bernard, the Citizens are Durham’s oldest football club, established in 1918.
They have only ever played seven years of league football (1921-28) but were considered Durham’s biggest football club until the meteoric rise of Durham Women FC.
Their current malaise can be traced back to 2007-08. A record-breaking season should have allowed them promotion to the National League North, but they were blocked from promotion for using an artificial pitch.
Sponsors withdrew, players bolted and, having amassed 102 points the season before, they conceded 168 goals.
Fortunes eventually stabilised and Bernard bought the club in 2013 with the dream of creating a thriving academy system to act as a feeder club for Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough.
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Based outside of the city, first in Consett (13 miles away) and then in Crook (9 miles away), the Citizens’ fanbase and funding dwindled year on year. They now play at Leyburn Grove, a pitch without stands or changing rooms between Durham and Sunderland.
By the start of the 2018-19 season, Durham found themselves propping up the Northern League Division Two, four tiers below the National League North.
Thanks to structural changes and liquidation elsewhere, they would stay there until their relegation last season.
They won one game last season, a 1-0 triumph against Washington FC on the final day. It was their first victory in over three years. Playing against 10 men, an inspired goalkeeping performance and a penalty gave them hope that life in the Wearside League could represent fresh hope.
They were wrong.
But against all odds, the club continued to exist. Last December, Durham City announced a partnership with Zenith Sports and Event Management, a so-called global sports management group.
If you look Zenith SEM up on Google, you will find an address in Tower 50 of Dubai’s Business Bay, which is actually a PO Box.
The company is officially registered to a residential flat 30 minutes outside Sydney, the home address of Zenith’s founder, president and managing director Chris Tanner.
Once a low-level Australian football agent, Tanner became chairman of Durham when the club partnered with Zenith. He is not paid for his role, but takes 30 per cent of all money the club brings in. Given Durham are functionally bankrupt, and have been for some time, this is a huge drain on any gate fees and the sponsorship money they still receive from some better-off fans.
The players, coaches and staff in the UK receive nothing for their tireless hard work and commitment for keeping Durham alive. They just do it for their love of non-league football.
Every secretary and manager which comes into the club receives instant warnings from fans and colleagues alike, but they cannot help themselves – they will not sit idly by and watch a storied club go to the wall.
Tanner has become the by-word for the Citizens’ ills, gaining the epithet “Kim Jong Tan” from now-alienated fans and followers of the Durham soap opera.
Durham’s official Twitter page is private, having blocked over 100 accounts, almost always for showing concern for the club’s alarming situation.
Zenith SEM even accused a journalist of dealing crystal meth to fellow students in response to investigating Tanner’s previous dealings and early weeks at the club. That was me and I am not, nor ever have been, a meth dealer.
Tanner’s conduct within the club aligns with his conduct outside it. Based 10,000 miles away in Sydney with an 11-hour time difference, he has not been to the UK while in charge of the Citizens.
In March, John Wilberforce was Durham City Secretary for nine days. At this level of football, secretary is traditionally the most influential role, but this clashed with Tanner’s perception of his own significance.
“He wouldn’t answer any questions about the fact that we were getting phone calls and emails about unpaid bills,” Wilberforce tells i.
The largest of these unpaid bills remains outstanding. Willington AFC are a Northern League Division Two club which Durham groundshared with for the past four seasons.
The Citizens once owed Willington £2,800. The figure is now £2,400, a significant amount of money to a Step Six club. As Durham has no assets of its own, and debts of up to £150,000 according to Companies House, this debt is Bernard’s to settle.
His apathy toward his own club and failure to settle debts with another risks liquidating two storied non-league clubs.
Tanner and the club did not respond to i’s requests for comment on this article.
As Bernard was a vocal critic of the Mike Ashley regime at Newcastle, the irony is not lost on fans. One of them established “Save Durham City”, which has become a Twitter hub for the saga.
“[Bernard] has made Durham City homeless, attached a six-figure debt to the club and when he lost interest, appointed Zenith to run the club,” a spokesperson for Save Durham City says.
“He takes no responsibility yet won’t sell the club without trying to recoup a crazy amount of money, when in reality it has no worth. Bernard needs to remove Zenith from the club and accept a token fee to either an individual or consortium who have its interests at heart.”
This off-the-pitch drama contributes heavily to the failings on it. “In the summer they couldn’t attract a coach because there was no certainty about where they were going to be playing and because of the bad vibes caused by Tanner,” Wilberforce adds.
“The new coach, who has never coached at this level, has tried to attract players, but all of the players around the Wearside and Northern Leagues know about Tanner, so they won’t play for him.
“The players aren’t getting paid, they’re not even getting expenses. If you’re getting beaten 15-0 and not even your petrol is being paid, then who’s going to do that forever?”
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In a pre-season tie, former secretary Carl Whelpdale was substituted on for Durham. By his own admission, the 43-year-old is “not in the best shape”. “It was my senior debut and retirement. It was fun, but desperate really,” he says.
“We were 8/9/10-0 down anyway. I thought, how hard can it be? It was very hard. Some of these lads had already been on the pitch 80 minutes and I couldn’t track them at all.”
Earlier this season, a group of players discovered they had been released from the club via the Twitter page at 3am, derided for their “Sunday League mentalities”. Given they had been recruited from Sunday League sides, like most of Durham’s current crop, this was unsurprising.
After a recent game at their new ground, one fan told me that only five of the 20-or-so attendees were playing the £3 ticket price, down from an average attendance of around 30 last season.
Every fan I speak to agrees that the club should forfeit their league position to save the dignity of those involved. The club could take a year to regroup and rejoin the Wearside League Second Division. It might even encourage Bernard to sell, or Tanner to leave.
If they play all their league games, Durham are currently projected to concede 315 goals.
As Wilberforce puts it: “It’s like a car crash is happening right in front of you and you can’t stop it”.
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