Worthing FC’s George Dowell fought back from a career-ending car crash to save his club, but the fight’s not over yet

THE closest most football club owners come to having a song sung about them is angry chants of “Sack the board”.

But not Worthing FC’s George Dowell, whose name is bellowed out by the South Coast side’s adoring fans as much as that of any star player.

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The wheelchair-bound 27-year-old is a former player himself, but his fledgling career was cut tragically short when a car crash at the age of just 17 meant he would never walk again.

Rather than end his connection with the club, the 2010 accident ultimately forged what could be a lifetime bond.

In 2015 George used the compensation he received to buy Worthing, who at the time were drowning in a £200,000 debt and facing probable extinction.

And in less than five years he has now taken them to the brink of the National League South – just as he boldly set out to do when he took charge.

The only thing that looks like stopping him from realising his ambitious plan of reaching English football’s sixth tier is last week’s decision to scrap the entire 2019/20 season for teams at Worthing’s level and below due to coronavirus.

It would mean the Mackerel Men, who sit seven points clear at the top of the Isthmian Premier with eight games to go, starting from scratch whenever football finally resumes.

The decision to null and void the season – which is yet to be ratified by the FA - is not one George is prepared to accept lightly.

He argues that his club – and many others - had no say in the decision to scrap the 2019/20 campaign and has joined more than a hundred counterparts in sending a petition to the FA asking them to review it.

Fans are understandably disgusted and devastated in equal measure.

Sharing his own pain with them, George tweeted: “Imagine pouring your heart, soul, effort, time and money into something for five years… and just when you’re on the brink of achieving what you and everyone else have been working so hard for, it’s ripped from beneath your feet. This hurts, it hurts a lot.”

By his own estimations, he has poured “close to a million” into Worthing, a figure he looks surprised by himself when he tots it up before laughing off as “pretty mental” during a chat in the boardroom.

“Pretty mental” is possibly the best way to describe the turnaround since George took over, too.

No longer the stale “old boys’ club” where a few hundred fans would gather under a decrepit stand “while pigeons s**t in your tea”, Worthing are on the up, whatever the FA decides to do this season.

Crowds of more than 1,600 often pile into the newly-named Crucial Environmental Stadium to watch a young and largely local side fight for what would be their second promotion in four years during the Dowell revolution.

And those crowds – the fifth largest in the country for this level of football - now pack into the renovated bar from midday to long into Saturday night on matchdays, helping boost the club’s coffers.

As the adults have a drink, often with George alongside them, their kids play outside on the 3G pitch, hoping to one day play for the newly-formed academy sides and quite possibly the first team.

It is the dream of helping local lads make it into the senior side and beyond, while creating a true community club, that has driven George on since his first day in charge.

He had just made the breakthrough into the first team himself and was awaiting England youth trials when a friend’s car carrying him and three pals flipped off the road and landed in a field on the way to get a McDonald’s in April 2010.

George woke in hospital and fears that it might be “pretty serious” when he couldn’t feel anything escalated when he was almost immediately transferred to Salisbury Spinal Unit 75 miles away.

“My family were told bang straightaway the night it happened that I’d broken my neck and won’t walk again,” he explains with an ease that hasn't come easily.

“I was asleep on heavy meds for most of the next two weeks but as soon as I was in a position to understand the consultant explained.

“It was hard, it was horrible. The first thing I thought was, ‘I won’t be playing football again’.

“That’s all I was doing at the time and all I wanted to do. When you’re told that it’s, ‘Where do you go from here?’.”

The next ten months were spent in Salisbury, the first three of those laid out flat.

But instead of wallowing, inspirational visits from former patients made George realise “there is a life after a spinal cord injury”.

His destiny, however, as owner of his old football club was unimaginable at the time.

“Football was still my passion but I struggled to watch it even on TV for a while because I knew I couldn’t play it,” reveals the former full-back, who was studying public services and thinking of being a firefighter before the crash.

“Then I found a different appreciation of watching it, like the tactical side and stuff. I started playing a lot of Football Manager in hospital.

“Then my mates said I should start my own team when I leave Salisbury.

“It took about two years because when I left hospital I wasn’t feeling confident and didn’t want to be around new people.

“I felt safe in the spinal unit. Then when I got home I felt comfortable so didn’t want to start going to places I hadn’t been before. I worried what people would think about being in a wheelchair.”

My family knew I couldn't sit at home twiddling my thumbs for the rest of my life

George eventually formed Worthing Borough FC and after two years rising from the bottom of the local park leagues while struggling for places to train, he decided to invest some of his compensation in building a community 3G facility.

At the same time a friend’s dad, Calvin Buckland, who was Worthing U18s assistant manager, told him that his old club was struggling.

While Worthing’s situation was dire, George admits that from his point of view, the “timing was perfect”.

Calvin offered to speak to the Worthing board about George investing in an artificial pitch at their increasingly rundown stadium.

But before any contact had even been made, it emerged that the club weren’t just struggling, they were weeks from going out of business.

“It was scary,” he admits. “I spoke to my mate’s dad again and said I’ll speak to the board about my idea.”

But rather than just hand over his cash, George had decided he wanted full control.

Despite some reluctance from the hierarchy and a preference to just have him as an investor rather than owner and chairman, they eventually released a wave of new shares which he bought, giving him 70 per cent of the club.

But the board weren’t the only ones who needed convincing.

On telling his mum about his plan to buy Worthing, George recalls: “She said, ‘You’re f***ing joking aren’t you?’.

“But then they were all fully supportive and understood that I couldn’t just sit at home twiddling my thumbs for the rest of my life. I wanted to get back involved in football and this was a brilliant opportunity.”

It was an opportunity George grabbed with both hands – even if it’s one he admits he “stumbled into and has somehow stumbled through”.

Straight out went the old board and in came a new pitch - a decision that has been pivotal in turning a debt-ridden club where players were being asked to play for free into one that is now approaching sustainability.

I don't know how we got through it, we were just winging it

“In the board’s ideal world I'd have put the pitch in and kept them all in place but my opinion at the time was the club was in debt for a reason,” George says.

“Not that any of them had done a bad job, I just think it needed a new lease of life and if I’m investing that amount of money I wanted to bring in people that I knew and trusted.

“We had a really strong group of volunteers and a financial director who stayed on but at the start it was just me, Calvin and that was about it.

“I’ve got a PA Jamie who’s one of my carers, he was down here a lot. It was just the three of us really and I don’t know how we got through it. We were just winging it really.

“The 3G pitch helped massively as it enables the rest of the community to use it.

“The older generation were against it and were like ’this doesn’t compare to grass’, but they all now appreciate that it’s the way forward for clubs at this level if they want to survive.

“You have to rely on the community to fund the club. Them and sponsors pay the wages.”

Progress off the pitch - including renovation of the main stand, turning the “dingy old bar” into a seven-day-a-week pub and building an outside bar - went hand in hand with success on it.

Within a year the club were promoted to the Isthmian Premier and after a period of developing the squad under current manager and former Brighton defender Adam Hinshelwood, 36, they find themselves on the verge of their highest standing in the English football pyramid in their 134-year history.

George is rightly proud that in that time the development of the academy teams has meant more than 40 youth players have made first-team appearances.

It has fulfilled his dream of creating a community club that gives kids a chance, “rather than bringing in 11 journeymen from London on massive money”.

The quality of youngsters in the squad is underlined by 18-year-old keeper Carl Rushworth, who is on loan from Brighton and has reportedly been scouted by Barcelona ahead of a £4million bid for the England U19 prospect.

As the club has grown George has stepped down as chairman and brought people in to fill new roles including club secretary, operations director and facilities manager.

Such is the stability at Worthing now, he jokes that “by the time I’m 60 or 70 I can start to have a repayment plan”.

When asked what the biggest challenge has been, George replies without hesitation.

“When you first come in you think nothing happens in the week.

“But there’s so much stuff that happens in the background – liaising with the league, health and safety, floodlight bulbs going, toilets blocked, stupid things like that.

“Then people just turn up and go ‘F***ing hell that’s broken’, and you think, ‘You don’t even understand what else we’ve been dealing with this week’.”

Worthing’s rise following George’s investment draws inevitable comparisons with Billericay, who romped into the National South after multi-millionaire Glenn Tamplin threw more than £2million at them.