“So, what are you looking at to get out… you know, how much?” Michelle Harness asked the question out of a sense of duty, desperation and many other powerful emotions. Her beloved Scunthorpe United had moved to the brink of collapse under the ownership of David Hilton; in a hit list with more than £1.2 million in debt, facing a liquidation petition from HMRC and eviction from their Glanford Park stadium, which remained in the hands of Hilton’s predecessor, Peter Swann. It was the subject of a bitter dispute between the couple.
With the club counting down to the home game against Brackley Town on October 7, 2023 in the National League North – the sixth tier of English football and a level far removed from where Scunthorpe has always seen itself – there was another problem and that undoubtedly meant the end. The players were about to go on strike.
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‘They didn’t want to play for him [Hilton] because he didn’t pay them,” says Harness. “They had put out a statement saying they weren’t going to play. That was the end of the day for the club. It was then I went back to him and said, ‘How much?’
Harness is Scunthorpe born and bred, a lifelong fan of the Iron, who were founded in 1899 and were elected to the Football League in 1950, where they remained until their relegation from League Two in 2022. They would disappear again from the National League in 2023.
Harness, a local businesswoman who had worked as the club’s commercial manager from 2000 to 2015, joined Hilton’s board in July 2023 and as such was on the spot as it threatened to disappear. Hilton had taken over from Swann in January last year, although he would not be able to complete the £3 million purchase of Glanford Park during a period of exclusivity that lasted until May.
It was one red flag regarding Hilton’s ability to oversee the club’s financial operations, and there would be many more. His fever dream period continues to define so much, especially the club’s bounce back from the fringes and their continued struggle for survival. Even, to a lesser extent, the crucial home game against league leaders Tamworth on Saturday afternoon.
The manager, Jimmy Dean, has put the team in second place, eight points behind, having played a game less and it is easy to sense the hope and optimism on the pitch despite having one point taken six out of six available. Scunthorpe, whose players remain full-time professionals, are chasing the only automatic promotion spot; a second club will rise via play-offs.
When Swann sold the business, it seemed he would do so to Ian Sharp, a Scunthorpe-born, London-based film producer, who worked with Simon Elliott, a former director of the club. It didn’t happen, but Sharp stayed in the background and developed a relationship with Harness and other influential figures, including the director Roj Rahman and Tahina Akther, a lawyer who had worked on the board. Then there was George Aitkenhead, another Scunthorpe fan and businessman, who had been part of Sharp’s original consortium. Harness brought them together; they were able to pay £100,000 and replace Hilton.
“We thought, ‘What else do we have other than participating?’” Sharp says. “Because there was no one else. Knowing that your club is on the verge of bankruptcy is sickening and completely devastating, because you know the impact this will have on the city. For me it was bigger than football. How can this part of our history be simply wiped away? I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I hadn’t given everything I had to make it through. I know Michelle felt the same way. We all did that.”
When I came in as owner, bailiffs came by every day… they even answered the telephone exchange
The buy-in was just the beginning, what happened right after was a 24/7 whirlwind. The deadline for Swann’s eviction from Glanford Park was October 11; The Harness consortium had to quickly find the £3 million for the land and surrounding land. But here’s the gist of the story: a community pulling in one direction to preserve something they cherish.
The Scunthorpe players played Brackley, with a crowd of over 5,000 roaring them to victory. Anyone who was there can still feel the goosebumps. Harness and its directors, meanwhile, went to local businesses for donations; also the council, and a word for the Conservative MP for Scunthorpe, Holly Mumby-Croft, who made a request for an increase in funding to the government and came back with £2.5 million.
The consortium provided the remaining £500,000 and in mid-November they exchanged contracts for Glanford Park, with Swann having his deadline relaxed slightly. It has become the property of a not-for-profit community company and, according to Sharp, “substantial plans are in the pipeline to use it for non-football events.
The deeply uncomfortable part of the past year is how Hilton was allowed to take over the club and bring it so close to ruin. On September 11, The Athletic said that a man they believed to be Hilton had been sentenced to two years in prison on 15 counts of fraud by false representation under the name David Anderson. Hilton has never admitted to using the name Anderson. He said a prison sentence he served for fraud from 2015 had been completed and he had passed the Football Association’s owners and directors test. He added that he had repaid the value of the fraud, £68,000.
It was certainly a strange day on September 30th when, shortly after Hilton’s announcement that he had stopped funding Scunthorpe, they held a United We Stand campaign for the home game against Buxton, raising over £50,000 to fund unpaid to help cover wages. It was actually the staff who went against the owner.
When Harness talks about what she inherited from Hilton, the details are harrowing and shocking: unpaid bills and invoices; non-payments to HMRC; deficits in the club’s pension scheme. “When I came in as owner, bailiffs came to visit every day… they even answered the telephone system.”
Creditors came out of the woodwork in seemingly exponential numbers – including on the football side. “Other clubs, players he got rid of and never paid, agents…,” says Harness.
Should she have been better at all this? She was on the board. “One of the directors, Keith Waters, COO of the PGA European Tour, kept asking him questions [Hilton] for a series of bills,” she says. “Keith has resigned. Tahina [Akther, another director] also resigned.”
There have been times when the recovery operation felt overwhelming. The club also has an EFL loan of around £1 million to repay, although, in Harness’s words, “that comes from our parachute money from National League relegation, so I’ve parked that”. The wage bill was four times the average in the National League North. The club is under a transfer embargo.
What stands out every day is Harness’s energy and personality. “She’s a rock star,” Sharp says. It irritates her that she has to work around the clock to put the club on a sustainable footing, which she has done, while she has to clear the mountain of debt that someone else has built up. But she estimates she is “60% of the way through” and next season, when the playing budget decreases, should be “happy days… we just have to get there.”
Harness’s can-do attitude inspires others. “I now have two volunteers with a load of emulsion to paint my office,” she says. “They came to me and it was so bad. An accounting firm took care of the payroll administration for free. Someone else is re-carpeting the front corner of the stadium for free and adding new lettering because we have a new sponsor: Attis Insurance.
“I go to companies and literally beg them. Sometimes I think I’m a bit of a pity case. I am a woman who stepped in to try to help the club survive. If I was a big Charlie with a big checkbook or something, I don’t think I’d get the same answer. But if the city wants the club, they will have to step up and finance the club out of this mess.”