Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here.
On every working day at Vale Park, everything stops at 12.30pm. All members of staff walk upstairs and have lunch together. If you miss someone in the morning, you know that you can catch them there, all sat around tables eating and chatting.
It’s not obligatory, of course, but if you aren’t there and nobody knows why then you should expect someone to check in and ask if you’re OK. It’s an inconsequential detail about life at this football club. But put a thousand inconsequential details into a pile and you have an identity.
Carol Shanahan had already tried to buy Port Vale, her local football club, twice before a deal was finally agreed in 2019. Had she not done so, one of two things would likely have happened: Port Vale would have struggled to survive or someone would have bought it to asset strip. Shanahan and her husband saw something that needed saving.
The Shanahans had become wealthy through the success of fintech business Synectics Solutions, but Carol had always had what she describes as a “weird” relationship with money and from that came a desire to use it to help her local community.
“When I was a kid, they used to play Monopoly and I loathed it,” she tells me, speaking a couple of hours before Vale’s home game against Crewe Alexandra. “Either somebody owned all the hotels and you knew, almost whatever number you rolled, you were going to have to owe money that you haven’t got – there’s no way out. So I’d get to the point that I threw the board over.
“Or you’d own all the hotels and you knew, almost whatever number they rolled, they would owe you money that they couldn’t afford. And I’d feel incredibly guilty to the point that I’d throw the board over. I thought ‘this is a stupid game – why are they pitting us against each other when we don’t all have a fair chance’.
“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve lived with the principle that money will not be my master but will always be my friend. I want money, because I want to be able to do the things that I need to do for people, so I’m not against it. But I’ll never worship it. I don’t want all the hotels.”
Shahahan’s purchase changed Port Vale overnight. The first action of the new ownership was to buy Vale Park in its entirety and bring it back under the umbrella of the club. It sent an implicit message that the new owners made explicit in a statement: “All future revenue generated within Vale Park will remain within Port Vale Football Club.”
For someone who was so determined to donate their wealth for the good of others, buying a lower-league football club is a fascinating decision. They tend to hoover up money quickly, for one.
Burslem is an area where charity makes a difference. This is a corner of classic post-industrial England, where the pottery, mining and steel industries brought migration to the area for work. The industries then largely died out one by one, were never replaced and the population was left with far fewer opportunities to be self-sufficient. Successive governments pretended that the problem didn’t exist, or at least that’s how the people felt.
“It’s an interesting dilemma,” says Shanahan. “As a family we are putting a lot of money into Port Vale. Would that money be better spent directly into the community, rather than through a football club. That’s the major question for me. But when you help a football club, you help people who you don’t even know and may never meet.
“Money helps communities, but money in itself is not the answer. It’s about creating hope and belief. They need a place where they can come together. And that place is a football club. Religion has lost its community to a large extent. Football is still on the up.”
There is an easy case in point that proves Shanahan’s theory. When she became owner, a programme was started through which hot meals were provided to the most vulnerable families in the local area. When the country entered lockdown during the Covid-19 crisis, Shanahan furloughed her staff but they all came in as volunteers because she had an idea.
The kitchens were deep-cleaned, freezers borrowed from closed restaurants and pubs and a massive system of meal preparation and delivery put in place. The ground was used not as a home of football but a community hub. By the end of lockdown, Vale Park and its staff had provided 375,000 hot meals to those who needed it most and earned the respect of all, whichever team they supported. Average attendances rose after stadiums reopened fully.
Shanahan knew that a football club could be run in a different way; now she had seen it in action. It reinforced her resolve that Port Vale could be an exception: somewhere different, something different.
“A lot of what I see in football, I don’t like,” she says.
“And I absolutely want to prove that there is a different way. People who come and work with us are repelled by it because they don’t get it. But others, usually if they have had some corporate abuse elsewhere, get it.
“That isn’t to say that you don’t want to be successful. But I absolutely believe in the personal touch. I believe in the humanity of an organisation.
“We also have to be winners. Darren [Moore, the manager] has got a reputation for being very nice. I’ve got a reputation for being very nice. People can sometimes mistake that for weakness. But we’re both killer winners. We don’t need to be nasty to get there, but my God do we want to win.”
There are another two stories that demonstrate this focus on humanity. Every home league game, the club invites the extended family of every first-team player into the boardroom before and after the match and they watch the game in the directors’ box.
This season, Carol says, she had a familiar conversation with a partner of a player: “Just chill”. She was worried about her two children playing with Lego in the boardroom while the match was on and missing the game unsupervised. Shanahan told her that she had four members of staff watching the children.
When the player scored during the second half, Shanahan ran into the boardroom screaming “Your Dad has scored!” The kids ran out to the stand and watched the rest of the match.
The following day, the player found Carol and said: “The kids won’t stop talking about it! They had the best time, just playing with Lego. They want to come back and they also keep asking me about my goal.”
Port Vale 1-1 Crewe Alexandra (Monday 25 November)
- Game no.: 39/92
- Miles: 112
- Cumulative miles: 6,319
- Total goals seen: 111
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: Singing a hymn in a church with the owner of a football club shortly before they play on Sky Sports on a Monday evening
The other is what happens when a loyal Port Vale supporter passes away. On the day of the funeral, the cars have the option to drive past Vale Park and the club asks to be kept informed.
At the time when the cortege passes by the club entrance, every member of staff working is present and stands in line facing the cars. Moore brings all the players off the training ground to take part.
“This act of respect demonstrates our deep appreciation for the profound impact they have had on our club as we firmly believe in the power of remembrance and the bond that connects us all as a community,” the club handbook reads. And it’s right. If you’re going to commit to change through the power of people, you can stop at nothing.
Shanahan’s generosity saved Port Vale; no argument there. She also funded a promotion campaign in 2021-22 that took Vale back to League One after a gap of five seasons and consolidated them there the following season.
However, last season went badly. Despite starting the campaign with five wins in their first seven league games, Vale then went on a run of three wins in 30. Manager Andy Crosby lost his job, director of football David Flitcroft came in for concerted grief from supporters and Shanahan herself was roundly criticised for overseeing a relegation.
It clearly affected the owner. She had put in vast resources – money, time, energy – over a four-year period and it seemed that goodwill had dissipated alarmingly quickly. Owning an EFL club typically leaves you in one of two states: the club is doing badly and everyone forgets what you have done, or you’re doing well and everyone wants to know what is next.
“Every season there will be 15 to 18 clubs in a relegation battle because that is how our competitions are designed,” she says. “That means that 15 to 18 sets of club staff and Foundation staff are going to go through hell. We all went through hell.
“Football is like a game of snakes and ladders: big ladders, small ladders; big snakes, small snakes. You’re going to have it all. The only golden rule is: stay on the board. Just stay on the board. Enjoy the ladders and take what you can from the snakes.
“The relationship between fans and people in the club seems to suggest that we are fair game for them to take their frustrations out on and that’s OK. And it’s not OK. It’s not a Port Vale thing and it’s not a football thing – it’s a societal thing. But it has to be addressed. We can’t keep acting like it doesn’t have a serious impact upon people, because it does.
“Then your family starts to give you looks. My family said it to me this summer, that they understood that I wanted to do this and they had been very supportive, but just needed me to explain to them the benefits. They were struggling to see them at that point.”
Carol stayed. That season changed her (for the better, I would argue); it created some separation. It also made her resolve that she had to make this work. She reaffirmed her commitment to Moore and backed him in the transfer market.
Matt Hancock had already arrived from Burton Albion and was made CEO in January; he was another vital piece of the puzzle. The League Two season is relentless and things shift incessantly, but Vale are three points clear at the top.
An hour or so before Vale’s home game against Crewe, I walk with Carol to the Holy Trinity Sneyd church that stands at one corner of Vale Park. Before home games, she attends a service run by the club chaplain that invites supporters to pray for those inside and outside the club who are suffering and have a singsong to warm up the lungs for the evening ahead.
Thoughts are offered to Oliver Arblaster, the Sheffield United player who has just suffered a serious ACL injury. Arblaster was on loan here for the first half of last season. Carol messaged him as soon as she heard to offer the club’s love and support. When Arblaster captained Sheffield United against Manchester United last season, she went along to watch like a proud parent.
To and from the church and boardroom, we bump into roughly 50 supporters and staff members who are beginning to mill around Vale Park. It’s a small thing, another of those inconsequential details of which the owner often speaks, but Carol asks every person how they are and has a chat, even if only for a second or two in passing. That doesn’t happen with most football club owners.
That’s the point of all this, kindness paying forward to more kindness. It’s not why Carol does it, but it becomes the impact anyway. When Vale wanted a Sheffield United player on loan this season, Arblaster told him that he had to come here. I speak to multiple members of staff who want to emphasise that this isn’t just words on a page. They have never worked anywhere quite like it, certainly not in this industry.
There is an authenticity to the process. It may or may not end in promotion this season, next or in any other season for Port Vale. On-pitch projects can take years to land upon a ladder and there are many snakes on this board. People will come and go.
Carol’s son Patrick works within the club and that creates a clear long-term plan for the future. You look to leave clubs in a better place than you found them and you hope to make a difference to people you’ll never meet along the way.
“At the moment it is ‘thanks for sticking with us’,” Shanahan says. “I can honestly say, and I mean honestly say, I don’t do it for thank yous. I think if you start to do anything for anyone external, you’re in the wrong frame of mind. This is our mission, for whatever reason that we’re doing this.
“There are typically two drivers for people: money and people. A lot of people go after money and the end justifies the means, so if there are some casualties along the way then so be it. I think that if you can get the people right then you can win, but you have to look after them.
“The big thing for me, before we got promoted, was that we had to be successful because otherwise it gets put down as hippie nonsense. Now we have to get promoted again. People will be looking for it not to work here. so you don’t have a choice: it has to be successful.”
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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