Latest news with #GillinghamFC
The Sun
a day ago
- Business
- The Sun
EFL stadium kitted out with £7m of equipment from the Millennium Dome with kids' play area turned into training centre
AN EFL stadium is packed to the Gills with trinkets from the Millennium Dome. Priestfield Stadium has been home to Gillingham since the club's formation in 1893. 3 3 3 Former Gills chairman Paul Scally grabbed a selection of bargains after the infamous London project was phased out in 2001. The government auctioned off thousands of items following the Dome's demise. Scally - who bought Gillingham for £1 in 1995 - spotted an opportunity. And the 69-year-old got carried away with his bidding at the auction 23 years ago. Scally estimates the club received up to £7million worth of equipment after shelling out just £750,000. The purchases helped Gillingham refurbish a new Priestfields stand at a knock-down price. While the club megastore boasted £250,000 of fittings bought for just £5,000. Scally explained to Sky Sports: "It was a case of being in the right place at the right time. "I've bought tea trolleys, ovens, fire extinguishers, 300 sets of bone china, glasses and all sorts on top of the bigger stuff. "This has allowed us to move the club forward quicker than I had envisaged. We just kept going back to the site for more gear. Abandoned EFL stadium left to rot with pitch covered in weeds just five years after hosting final match "I bought a seven-and-a-half ton lorry to transport everything and we must have made 100 trips to Greenwich. "I've had to borrow a 10,000 sq ft warehouse off a mate because there isn't enough room at the ground for everything." Scally also managed to get his hands on a new indoor training centre. Valued at £1.5million, the Gills chairman converted an 80m x 40m play area from the Dome for just £70,000. Scally gained control of the club in 1995 for a nominal fee of £1, but also took on its £1.5m debt. He sold his controlling stake to US property magnate Brad Galinson in December 2022, while continuing as a non-executive director. Scally was voted off the club's board last year. Gillingham are currently in League Two, having bounced around the third and four tiers for the past two decades. They spent five seasons in the Championship from 2000, but have not returned since relegation in 2005.
Daily Mirror
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Olivia Attwood's husband posts gushing tribute on her birthday
Olivia Attwood was praised by her husband, Bradley Dack, as "my beautiful wife" as he marked her latest birthday - but he also shared a warning that left her concerned Football hunk Bradley Dack has paid a gushing tribute to wife Olivia Attwood to mark her birthday. The Gillingham FC midfielder, 31, has been married to former Love Island contestant Olivia since 2023. On Friday, the TV babe turned 34-years-old - and is preparing to celebrate her happy returns this Saturday night. Taking to Instagram on the actual day of her birth, Bradley paid a gushing tribute to his wife as they prepared to celebrate together. He uploaded a string of images of them from across the years - selecting a close up of them kissing on their wedding day as the hero image of the album. Other snaps showed the couple in bars and at home and, of course, on a beach in Dubai - with beaming smiles being a consistent feature on their loved-up photos. In a heartfelt message to Olivia, the footballer wrote: "From how it is now to where it started and everything in between. HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my beautiful wife. "So proud of the person you have become and continue to be.. You've been there through it all and always had my back, so I'm always grateful to have you on my team cause I couldn't ask for anyone better to do life with. I hope you have a special day and then we can really celebrate tomorrow." And he signed off adding: "P.S there may be some embarrassing videos coming up on this app today. Love You" - along with crying-with-laughter emojis. Olivia appeared to take the threat of embarrassing videos seriously as she joked back that she may take legal action against him if he shared anything too damning. In an amusing response, she wrote: "My legal team is on standby, don't make me call them" - but also added emotional faced emojis and a black heart emoji to her comment. Olivia shot to fame in 2017 when she was a contestant on Love Island in which she partnered with recent Celebrity Big Brother contestant Chris Hughes as they embarked on an ultimately doomed romance. While the pair grew close in the villa, the romance soured once the cameras turned off and they returned to their lives in the UK. The couple endured a bitter break-up - and Olivia rushed back into the arms of her now husband, who she reportedly dated before she entered the Love Island villa during season three of the now long-running ITV reality dating show. Olivia has enjoyed further fame on camera as a cast member of the reality show The Only Way Is Essex, and she also hosts a range of investigative documentaries for ITV. Liv and Brad swapped vows on 3 June 2023 in an intimate ceremony at a five-star hotel in Knightsbridge. The couple said said "I Do" in front of 80 guests, including family friends, and Love Island stars including Amber Davies and Georgia Harrison. The couple have welcomed cameras into their own lives since 2020 in the reality docu-series Olivia Meets Her Match which shows how the couple are getting on in their relationship. The couple previously gushed over their plans to marry - and to continue their reality show that counted down to their big day. In a trailer released back in 2023, Olivia said: "This is the moment we have been waiting for. This is going to be a fairytale. Husband and wife.' Bradley then added: "I'm about to marry the love of my life. [I won't cry] as I don't want to mess up my make-up." The series is yet to return to ITV since the most recent batch of episodes which were released in 2023.
The National
02-04-2025
- Business
- The National
English football regulator bid 'posing risk for future of Premier League'
In 1997, Brighton & Hove Albion were one goal away from being relegated from the very bottom of the English football league. In the same year, financial circumstances forced them to share a ground – a former zoo – with Gillingham FC, 110km from home. Today, Brighton are seventh in England's Premier League, on the cusp of playing in European competition and have beaten Manchester United twice this season. Gillingham are 19th in the bottom league. Those quirks of fortune, pundits suggest, are what makes English football, and the Premier League in particular, so enticing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, is a popular axiom. But inside the top tier of the English game fears are running high that their golden goose could be cooked by new legislation. The Football Governance Bill, which last week passed through the House of Lords, will establish a new Independent Football Regulator (IFR) for English men's elite football. It is intended to have operational independence and accountability. The government hopes it will put fans back at the heart of the game, protect against rogue owners and put clubs on a sound financial footing. It will have three primary objectives: Those in the lower leagues argue that the riches need to be more evenly distributed, to help feeder and community clubs thrive and survive. Without them, they argue, there will be no next generation of players. But those in the Premier League are deeply concerned that their income and ambition could be strangled by the new regulator. What is at stake is a global phenomenon, the most-watched sports league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories with a potential audience of 4.7 billion people. It also attracts a lot of money: £4 billion a year in television rights alone. The league's wealth is such that it contributes more than £8 billion a year to the UK economy. The elite do not want that situation to change. Despite the promise of independence, there has also been a warning from Uefa that England could face a ban from major tournaments such as the World Cup or Champions League if the government oversteps its boundaries. Preventing matches taking place abroad or vetoing overseas investors would be two such stumbling blocks. The bill will now pass through the House of Commons but Premier League clubs will seek amendments rather than try to stop it. But the tinkering, suggested a football insider, could fatally unravel the finely tuned workings of the league. 'It's like the biting point on a car, if you get the balance wrong on this you are either going to stall or crash.' The biggest argument for a football regulator is to stop smaller, community-driven clubs going out of existence. Bury FC, established in 1885, went bust and were expelled from the football league in 2019 after a failed takeover. Wigan Athletic suffered a similar fate in 2020 when they went into administration after struggling with unpaid tax and wage bills, and were relegated by a division as punishment. The bill, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (and Wigan supporter) Lisa Nandy told The National after the Lords' vote, was a 'huge day for football fans' because 'for too long we've seen too many clubs disappear' due to poor stewardship or finances not being fairly distributed. 'These are clubs that stand at the heart of our communities and this bill will put fans back at the heart of the game,' she added. 'Action is long overdue and this is the moment we can really put rocket boosters under this agenda.' Ms Nandy, who has been praised for almost single-handedly saving her constituency's team, Wigan, from closure, argued that it would be a 'light-touch regulator' that would enable the Premier League 'to thrive and for the benefits to be felt at every level in football'. It is in the league's interest, she argued, to have good clubs at Championship level and below as 'an ecosystem' ultimately supported by those above. 'We're confident, as are most Premier League clubs, that the measures we're taking will strike exactly the right balance to ensure that the game can continue to thrive at every level,' she added. Henry Winter, a veteran football writer, supports her view, calling the bill 'absolutely vital' due to the proliferation of "rogue owners". The game 'obviously needs a regulator', he believes. 'The regulator can protect football, including the Premier League clubs, because if not they could easily implode,' he told The National. The league came close to being changed forever in 2021 when a breakaway "super league" of top European clubs was proposed, before being shelved after an outcry. In theory, a regulator would be able to prevent that from happening. The furore sparked Boris Johnson, who was prime minister at the time, to introduce the legislation, which was then inherited by Labour, who decided to push it forward, though Prime Minister and Arsenal supporter Keir Starmer is said to have lukewarm feelings about it. Mr Winter suggested that the regulator would carry 'a big stick in the background' to wield against wayward Premier League owners 'killing the golden goose'. There are concerns that US-owned Premier League clubs (10 of 20) could stage matches in the US – Liverpool v Everton in Boston, perhaps – or even form a breakaway group, as has been tried previously. Other than fans picketing Liverpool's John Lennon Airport, 'only a regulator would be able to stop that", he argued. Clubs are deeply worried that the changes could affect lucrative broadcast deals, with a well-placed source suggesting the bill's focus on an extra layer of regulation is 'a major concern'. 'The fear is that over-regulation could dilute what makes it so successful, leading to decreased revenue and less money distributed in the wider game,' he said. This, Winter agrees, is a fair point, as all 92 clubs in England need to work together because the less wealthy teams 'desperately need the money to keep the pyramid of English football together'. He also empathised with top clubs having to give cash to teams in lower divisions with owners sometimes wealthier than themselves, or to proprietors with questionable financial motives. There is also a fear that the reforms will mean a loss of competitiveness, diminishing the chances of a smaller club such as Bournemouth, Brentford or Brighton succeeding in the top flight and making the 'big six' – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur – even more dominant. 'If you've got clubs like Bournemouth who suddenly hit upon a strategy, go on a brilliant run of recruitment, get a great manager that no one else was looking at and suddenly they've got a team that's challenging for Europe, that's what gives the big six jeopardy and the league its unique attraction,' an established football pundit said. If the big clubs were winning '6-0 every week' it would be 'incredibly boring', he added. A total of 51 clubs have played in the Premier League since its inception in 1992. Lose its competitiveness and you 'lose everything', the pundit said, including four billion or so television viewers, from the Gulf to India, and China to the US. 'Why on earth would you regulate one of our most successful industries, which people are falling over themselves to invest in?' he said. 'There's a real worry that if they get the formula wrong we could ruin the league.' As the legislation stands, the new regulator will be given powers to determine the Premier League's almost unique 'parachute payments', a huge sum of money given to the three relegated clubs that is worth approximately £108 million to each club over three years. Knowing that cash is available if it all goes wrong means newly promoted clubs can invest in players and wages with confidence, to try to compete with the best. Sometimes it works: Brighton invested astutely in players and are in their eighth Premier League season. Sometimes it does not: newly promoted Ipswich spent £100 million on players but will almost certainly be relegated this season. 'The parachute insurance policy enables you to compete on the pitch and in the transfer market,' said the Premier League club source. 'If it goes overnight, you go back to the bad old days where the top six dominate the Premier League because of their financial powers.' Under what are called 'backstop powers', the new regulator could intervene between the Premier League and the English Football League if they cannot agree a deal to redistribute money to the lower-division clubs. The pot is currently £1.6 billion paid over three years, which is 16 per cent of Premier League revenue. 'The Premier League gives more to grassroots football than any top division anywhere else in the world, and by some stretch,' said the club source. This makes the Championship the richest second-tier division in football, and the sixth-richest league overall. He also made the point that other leagues such as the Bundesliga in Germany or Ligue 1 in France are not ordered to pay significant sums to lower clubs. 'There's a constant clamour for money to be given down through the leagues, which doesn't happen anywhere else in the world,' the source said. On the backstop, the football pundit called it 'overly complex and unrealistic' noting that it might require clubs to give more money than they currently do, which could deter investment. 'The backstop mechanism and its impact on the league's financial stability are significant concerns." Ultimately, Premier League owners are unlikely to like Winter's interpretation of the regulator's role in arbitrating any impasse in backstop negotiations. The source said: 'The regulator can basically hold a constitutional gun to the heads of the Premier League and say, 'you are going to have to hand over whatever money it takes and get it done now'. I don't know what it is about the British mentality but profit always seems to be a dirty word. The Premier League is one of the most successful exports this country has and we're in real danger of damaging that by putting all this unnecessary red tape interference in place,' he added.
