Before the interview, the inquisition. ‘You’ve written three things about me in your column that were bulls***’, says English football’s longest-serving chairman.
‘The worst was when you said I’d called Kenny Dalglish “Ian Rush” for a joke when we played Liverpool at Anfield. I did, but Kenny is a friend of mine and saw the funny side. Nobody was offended. I’d love to know who tells you these things. The only thing you b****y got right was that I was an octogenarian. I’d told my girlfriend of the time I was 60. When she read that she left me…’
Roland Wycherley is on fine form, which may come as a surprise. The 84-year-old has been attempting to sell his beloved Shrewsbury Town for four years. He is desperate to secure his legacy by handing the club to the right custodian so he can spend more time with his three grandchildren but at the moment the exit door remains stubbornly closed.
He has spoken to no fewer than 18 interested parties, ‘Americans, Sheikhs, the lot’, but a deal has failed to materialise. One potential buyer shook hands on a figure and subsequently sent a formal offer in writing for less than half the agreed price.
After 29 years of toil in which he has not taken a penny from the club, despite investing £3.4million of his own hard-earned money in the space of two years to keep the thing going (he shows me bank statements to prove it), Wycherley is now viewed as public enemy No1 by some of the League Two side’s fanbase following last season’s relegation and a sluggish start to the current campaign.
There is even a protest group. ‘The other week some fans turned up on my street asking neighbours where I lived,’ he explains. ‘I can’t go to Sainsbury’s any more. When I’m in my car people will wave at me and when I wave back they give me the finger and tell me to “f*** off”.’
The 84-year-old Roland Wycherley has been attempting to sell his beloved Shrewsbury Town for four years. He is desperate to secure his legacy by handing the club to the right custodian
Their Croud Meadow stadium was opened in 2007, cost £13million to build and was a vision realised by Wycherley
It should not be like this. In an era of venture capitalists and overseas owners, Wycherley is a wonderful throwback to a time when the local boy done good took over the football club.
‘I was raised on what they called “Incubator Avenue” because of all the kids running about,’ he explains. ‘The side of the river where they call it “Shrewsbury” and not “Shrowsbury”. I had two older brothers and an older sister. My mum was pregnant with my younger sister when dad died at 41 from cancer. Mum just had to work to support us. She cleaned toilets during the day and worked in the cloakroom of the clubs at night. You don’t forget that.’
After leaving school at 14, Wycherley took on a job as a plasterer before, in perhaps a sign of things to come, he was sacked for ‘being cheeky’ and eventually headed to a vending machine firm. Then came a night in the pub when he was 30 that changed everything.
‘A mate came up to me and said, ”We’re in the bakery and we can’t get a b****y drink at night. Can you put a machine in?”. ‘So I bought a second-hand one for £250 and put it in myself. I used to get the calls at midnight telling me it’d broken down. The buggers used to put foreign coins in it!
‘Every time I went to service it you had to press a button for a coffee at the end to make sure it was working. There was this big lad, Tank they used to call him, and I’d give him the freebie and he’d look after the machine for me in return. There were no foreign coins after that. I used to come home at night with four warm loaves under my arm.’
Wycherley pulls out an old notebook from his desk which still has the 9p price stamped in the corner. Inside, neatly drawn, are the takings. ‘I bought the machine in January 1972 and, if you can see, paid for it on April 20, 1973.’
He bought another, and then another and by the time he sold the business Wycherley had 250 employees. Then came the football club. ‘I was obsessed with football as a youngster,’ he recalls. ‘At the age of seven, I’d walk to Gay Meadow to watch the reserves.
‘Then it was 1996 and they were in the s***. They were £750,000 in debt, in a ground that flooded twice a year and getting crowds of about 2,500.’
Wycherley paid the monies owed and set about finding a new home. In 2007 the Shrews moved to what is now called the Croud Meadow, a smart facility with a 10,000-capacity. ‘Aside from loans to me, which are at zero interest, we are debt free,’ Wycherley proudly says. ‘A clean buy for someone.’
There have been some happy teams for Wycherley such as winning promotion to League One with his then goalkeeper Dean Henderson, now of Crystal Palace, back in 2018
Wycherley invested £3.4m of his own hard-earned money into the club in the space of two years to keep it going
Getting to that stage has come at significant personal cost. ‘I’ve lived off my earnings for 20 years,’ he says. ‘Never taken a penny out. Since Covid I’ve put £3.4m in to keep it going. If I’m guilty of anything, at times I haven’t surrounded myself with the right people.’
One of those may well have been an unnamed manager who he tells me insisted on ensuring the team stayed at Marriott hotels for away matches because he was a member and used the points to go on holiday.
There have been ups and downs, including a famous FA Cup victory over an Everton side including Wayne Rooney, and 10 years in League One which came to an end in April.
‘The idea was to make us sustainable in a new ground and push for the Championship,’ says Wycherley. ‘But Covid and the influx of owners from overseas and the impact on wages wrecked all that.’
By this point we have moved from his office to a private box, where a waiter delivers a silver service lunch of bangers and mash (with extra gravy on the side) accompanied by a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape. Like everyone else at the club he refers to Wycherley as ‘Chairman’.
The previous Saturday we had met for the first time when Shrewsbury took on my team, Oldham, and Wycherley had reluctantly agreed to this chat, thanks in no small part to him learning that I was a fellow Cancerian (more of that later).
‘I hope you like it,’ he says as he unfolds a pristine white napkin. ‘I’m not a snob but I know what I like and in any case it’s better than that rubbish they served us at the weekend. Cold quiche and chicken in tomato sauce at b****y Oldham!’
The same room had, a day previously, been used to host the latest interested parties since he put the club on the market in October 2021. ‘We’ve had 18 different bodies here,’ Wycherley says. ‘I agreed a deal with some Americans but they had legal things going on in the background and they dropped it. My grandson, who is autistic, started getting stick at school, “Your granddad needs to get out”.
Shrewsbury’s players celebrate a goal… but the Shrews are just one point above the relegation zone in League Two
However, the club are unbeaten in their last four following two wins and two draws, including a hard-earned point at Oldham on Saturday
‘One of the problems is social media. Someone bid £5m and people see that. We’ve got 31 acres, the stadium cost £13m to build, we spent £1.5m on the training ground. ‘These people come in and it’s “Wow, this is it”. For one reason or another it never happens.
‘I had a man here saying he was fronting the Saudis. He walked in with two architects and an interior designer, saying they were going to spend £1m on reception and the boxes and that they’d get a shirt sponsor for a million. I’m thinking “That’s super”.
‘They were stationed at this hotel in Bridgnorth and said they were going to buy it. At the time, (former manager) Gareth Ainsworth left us. I told him I needed to bring someone in and liked (current manager) Michael Appleton. He said if I did that they’d walk away. I told him that when it’s your club you can do what you want but we need a manager. They said they had their own manager and it was John Terry. A week later they asked me for John Terry’s number!
‘Anyway, apparently I was untrustworthy so they had a meeting with my vice chairman. I put my picture up on the wall so I could watch them. It got to the owners’ and directors’ test with the EFL and they just kept saying they had billions but not where it had come from. Eventually they said they were connected to Saudi wealth, the people who bought Newcastle, and immediately the whole thing was null and void.’
I ask if, should a buyer be found, the emotion would be pain or relief. ‘Both,’ Wycherley says, with no hesitation. ‘There’s what it means to the town but there’s also 400 people who work here, including the Foundation, so it’s a big responsibility. I’d like to be able to come here with the family and just enjoy it. At the moment, I dread Saturdays.’
This week he may also be dreading Sundays, with his team due to travel to National League North leaders South Shields in a banana-skin FA Cup tie. Wycherley will hope that a successful outcome is written in the stars, not least thanks to his own love of the Zodiac. He reads the Daily Mail every day (‘although I almost stopped after your nonsense’) and was a fan of our former astrologist, Jonathan Cainer, who passed away in 2016.
A weathered copy of Theodora Lau’s The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes is never far from hand. He tells me he is a Metal Snake and proudly reads the characteristics, ‘gifted with a calculating, intelligent mind and forceful willpower, armed with discriminating tastes and a keen eye for locating opportunity’.
Despite his age Wycherley, in a smart three-piece suit, tie pin and pocket square, is in good nick and does not look much over 70 (‘two statins a day and I don’t overdo it’), but time is ticking and I ask if he worries that the opportunity to secure his legacy is slipping.
One would-be Shrewsbury buyer shook hands with Wycherley on a figure and subsequently sent a formal offer in writing for less than half the agreed price
One potential buyer said they had John Terry lined up as manager – only to then ask for Terry’s number!
‘I do worry, yes,’ he says. ‘I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I’m 84 and it weighs on my mind. Some of the fans think I’m milking it but I’ve never had a penny. All of my success in business has supported me to here. I worry about my two kids and my grandkids, about getting time out of whatever I have left to spend with them.’
While the final chapter is clearly still to be written, I tell him his book would be a good one as we return to his office.
‘I don’t like people saying I’m the oldest chairman but I don’t mind longest serving,’ he says. ‘The best thing has been the experiences, the people I’ve met.’
To emphasise the point, he then takes a copy of the autobiography of Lord Mawhinney, the former Conservative Party chairman and EFL chairman, from the shelf and shows me the handwritten note from the author inside that warmly describes Wycherley as ‘a raconteur and wine connoisseur’. ‘That was Thatcher’s man,’ he says quietly, before his voice picks up. ‘And when someone like that says those things about me what do I care what Mike f*****g Keegan writes?’
That seems as good a note as any on which to finish. But before departing I ask, if everything works out the way he wants it to, what he would like people to say about him, expecting an answer along the lines of a good Salopian who did his best for the club. The response should not surprise. ‘I don’t b****y care,’ he says, but he clearly does, and all of Shrewsbury should be thankful for that.
