Keep fighting for Walsall fan power

Walsall's Sporting Star columnist Darren Fellows knows that the modern day protests against the club may again fall on deaf ears - but at least they had a go.

In the summer of 1996 a small band of supporters, frustrated at how their football club was performing off the field decided to form ISSA, the Independent Saddlers Supporters Association.

With the thorny issue of no two-way communication between the club and supporters already a deep set issue and the increasing levels of rent due on the Bescot site becoming a concern, the decision to strip the supporters club of its official tag was deemed by some as one step too far.

Those fans who had supported the board and shareholders in dragging the club from the gutter it had previously spent itself into deserved better.

Friends I'd had for years, friends who had followed some of the poorest Walsall sides I've ever seen to the furthest flung corners of England were giving up on the club.

They felt the club weren't listening, that we and our opinions counted for nothing. They wanted, needed and, most importantly, deserved a voice.

After a couple of well attended public meetings and the election of a steering committee the organisation approached the club for a meeting and, to the surprise of more than a few, a week or so later were sitting face to face with owner Jeff Bonser and chief executive Roy Whalley.

To give Jeff credit, at least he was willing to sit down and talk to us. While appearing enormously suspicious of our motives and getting tetchy every time that a question or point didn't fit in with his or the club's way of thinking, least he gave it a go.

As far as two-way dialogue went it wasn't great, it was Jeff's way or no way after all. Some of the answers we took back to the subsequent meetings were at best difficult to justify but, even if there was a reluctance to listen, Jeff and Roy at least heard what the ordinary fan felt.

I don't think I was the only one who suspected at times that the club were toying with us in order to ease growing supporter tension.

Hindsight also suggests that Jeff played an extremely smart game over this period and in the end provided us with just about enough rope from which to hang ourselves. Needless to say, as the time and patience of certain board members dried up, then suicide duly followed.

Fourteen years on and clearly little has changed. Fans are again drifting away in their droves and a fair number of the few who remain feel marginalised by the lack of communication between themselves and the club.

The rent paid on the Bescot site and the seeming lack of ambition within the club to aspire to own the land is still the major issue for many and, whilst the supporters club regained their official status, that particular body is no closer now to asking an awkward question than it was in 1996.

Whether Jeff and Roy like it or not, many have had enough.

The demonstrations have again began and with the flames of the campaign so disastrously fanned by Roy's ridiculous rant, any hopes that he and Jeff had of a quiet end to another season of stagnation look doomed to end in even more disappointment than one of our more recent cup campaigns.

This current campaign takes a new twist for this weekend's home fixture against Hartlepool, with the organisers requesting that the campaign supporters follow their yellow theme.

In attending the game in a yellow T-shirt or wearing a yellow scarf, you can show your support without the risk of contravening ground regulations or providing the powers that be with an opportunity to exploit their ground regulations to the lowest common denominator.

With those super dangerous Cypriot flags deemed off limits, it will be interesting to see how the club react to the next phase of the protest. But so long as the protest is conducted in a peaceful manner, I suspect that after the club's churlish actions at the last home fixture that they may well have to sit there, grin and bear it.

I wish the campaign luck because they will need it. They'll also need broad shoulders and a fair amount of resilience as Roy's rant and the ludicrous banning orders have already proven.

Like ISSA before them their campaign may fail to succeed, but whatever the final outcome at least the protagonists and their supporters can sit back and say that they gave it a go.

Again, from experience, the knowledge that you tried and failed is a much better option than sitting there, doing nothing and wondering what if?