http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/we-are-hemel-stags-not-dewsbury
Can anyone here shed any light? Sounds like it could be the beginning of the end for Hemel, I hope not.
Why is this being done? Is the squad that dominated by northern lads or what?
There are no Northerners in the squad, or virtually none. Hemel have been badly struggling on the field for the past two seasons and it seems like the chairman decided that the best way to compete was to abandon any concept of development and become Dewsbury's reserve team. Which obviously is a stupid move and saw a huge backlash from everyone. Some Hemel fans are blaming the coach for alienating the local playing base, which might have some legs as a lot of their players have left the club over the last two seasons which is part of the reason for the improvement of London Skolars. Apparently there were protests at last week's match with fans throwing flares onto the field and disrupting the game. Looks like the club have scheduled a board meeting for next week and will hopefully reconsider.
Here is the original press release BTW:
http://hemelstags.com/club_info/latest_news/article/50777/hemel-stags-press-release
It's sink or swim time for a lot of the League 1 expansion clubs really, they've been involved for a couple of years now and they can't just keep making up the numbers and getting flogged every week. We've seen Newcastle and now South Wales have been bought, rebranded and are looking to move up, Gloucester are also trying something new by offering scholarships at the local university. You can't blame Hemel for wanting to improve but this isn't the way to do it.
As for Sheffield, first casualty of the new P&R system although they've been very unstable since their stadium was demolished a couple of years ago, they pretty much lost touch with their support base and the city of Sheffield when they had to play a season at Doncaster a few years ago.
