As horrific as it may sound the burn bites of a former football league chairman burning down his own stadium the Doncaster Rovers in 1995 and bringing foreclosure on the non-league club Bridlington Town with an earlier acquisition from fire sales to fireballs, the man in question Ken Richardson who also had crimes in another sporting arena.

The former SAS soldier Richardson whose millionaire status came with one’s company to manufacture sacks, led Richardsons to use his wealth to become involved in the greatest British horse racing scandals of all time. Richardson became one of sports infamous rogues, highlighted with a regular £90,000 income through gambling. In 1982 it all came crashing down. Richardson placed £20,000 on a horse while having an involvement with the stable, to keep under the radar, in order to avoid suspicion placed bets at various bookies. Prior to the race the horse was replaced with another Richardson stabled horse which could outrun the field and crossed the winning line with ease. It did arouse suspicion, the bookies refused to pay out with an investigation exposing a scam, Richardson was given a nine month suspended sentence and a ban from horse for twenty five years.

Richardson began looking for another hobby horse and in 1990 became the owner of Bridlington Town in the Northern First Division. A new stand and club house was installed alongside signing football league players on excessive wages to pay dividends to fast track on promotion to the Northern Premier League in the 1992-93 season. With the club also winning the FA Vase at Wembley Stadium, Bridlington seemed destined for higher spheres. One year later the club no longer existed, legal wrangles stopped the club from fulfilling their home fixtures and a move to play at Doncaster Rovers hit the buffers with attendances slumping due to the travel distance.

Bridlington drop zoned to the bottom of the league, Richardson pulled his funding rather than be relegated, the club folded, corruption and destruction over a decade became Richardson’s playing field. Twelve months later dodgy Ken purchased Doncaster Rovers which as a further reminder to the Bridlington supporters of Richardson’s nefarious plans on the agenda was to sell the Bellevue ground to developers, the ground was a relic, an apocalypse waiting to happen. On approach to the stadium, oil type barrels were strewn across the gravel pitted mire, a fire hazard time bomb and Richardson later lit the fuse, but not before an 18 million pound price tag was slapped on the ground’s value in 1994, the costliest land grab outside of the English top flight in the UK. But there was a problem on the leach riddled aspiration marker, Richardson did not own the ground, it was owned by the council who in turn had no intention of selling to developers. The third biggest pitch housed in English football was advertised in the Telegraph, June 1995 and Richardson was informed that he could not sell the ground, from land sale to fire slap it on the insurance road to redemption with devil crowed Ken who returned past favours being cashed from a former SAS colleague under the name of Christian, but there was nothing christian about this character.

Richardson paid Christian £10,000 to set fire to the club’s main stand, £100,000 of damage being the parting sniper shot, the scam was exposed with Christian’s mobile phone being found at the scene of the crime messaging Richardson stating that the job’s done, the former SAS soldiers badged up motto ‘who dares wins’ to ‘who dares loses’ all that training blazed away across the Doncaster skies, an embarrassment to the regiment. Richardson still retained ownership of the club, both were arrested and time in waiting was two years before court proceedings.

Matters on the pitch continued despite the wrecked stand with the club finishing with two respectable finished of ninth and thirteen league positions. Wrecker ball Richardson started to sell the club’s best players with the club finishing second to bottom of the third division in the third season following the fire aftermath being relegated to the non-league abyss with an unwanted record being set of 34 losses in 46 matches, conceding 113 goals, a record in English football, the year 1998 marked down in football’s annals. Richardson left the club with the arson charge coming down the pipe. A consortium named as West Ferry took control of the club, a meteoric rise followed and within five years football league status was regained in 2003, the rise continued, and championship status was remarkably achieved in 2008 where the Donny currently sit. A new ground was built in 2021 at the cost of 20 million pounds housing 15,000 on capacity now named as the eco-power stadium, Doncaster’s old stadium the Belle Vue incurred some kind of blast, bon blasted, the question is was Richardson in town? The Belle Vue stadium is now demolished.

In 2023 hit the cell birds to jail for four years while co-arsonist Christianson served one year in prison for the plot to burn down a football stadium. The court stated that Richardson served up a concoction of waffle and piffle and would run over his own grandmother for that smoking barrel. Bridlington Town’s downfall in this sordid affair has since been consigned to the back burner, pardon the one with the club hitting the resurrection to reform, Bridlington Town are now based in the 8^th tier of the pyramid system. English football has a long catalogue of rogue owners wrecking football clubs and momentarily shatters community spirits, but the bulldog spirit rallies around for clubs to phoenix rise and fight to another day.

To feature in October’s edition:

Manero relives the calamitous fall of Darlington and the glorification years of Hull City ‘Quaker Men v The Tigers’ and ‘FIFA’s White Elephants’, the abandonment of the post World Cup stadiums, plus ‘The Manero Brand’, a further insight. Chestermanero.com can be accessed onto the TV screen link Google.