The only Australian to majority own a UK football club, Clem Morfuni, has come out swinging – or at least threatened to come out swinging – to deny rumours he is selling Swindon Town FC.
Far from selling Swindon Town FC, Morfuni says he will next week announce the first in a series of youth academies in Australia designed to funnel local talent to his fourth-tier [League 2] club, west of London.
Morfuni – a plumber from the Sydney suburb of Ryde who grew his Axis Plumbing Group into a multinational spanning Australia, the US, Thailand and previously the UK, employing about 900 people – bought the ailing Swindon Town FC in 2021 after a long legal battle with the club’s previous owners, for just 212,500 pounds.
Citing unnamed sources, The Look Sports Media website last week claimed Morfuni was planning to sell and that club wages had been paid late.
“Some players were, according to sources, informed that it was an accounting error that caused the late payment,” Look Sports Media said, “however, it has been suggested that an injection of money was needed to cover the wages. It is unknown at this time if all staff and players have received their wages.”
Morfuni said the players had been paid, on time, and that the club was not up for sale.
Morfuni accused the website of “taking a swipe” at him. “I said to them, ‘Mate, one, I’m not selling the club. Get that out of your head. Two, I’m putting money into it. If you’ve got a problem, I’ll see you face to face and we’ll have a chat about it. If I’m doing something wrong. Fine. But if I’m doing it right, I’m going to come and have a swing at you. I’ll tell you that now. I won’t put up with bullshit. That’s how I am.
“Is it hard work? Fucking oath it is. It’s demanding on every level. But I love the town. I love the supporters. Some might be disgruntled, but you’re not going to make everyone happy.”
The season started well for Swindon Town FC, sitting up around fourth for much of it, alongside their now more famous celebrity-owned Wrexham. But they’ve lost two in a row, slumping to tenth, and were thrashed by fifth-tier Aldershot Town 4-7 at home last week in the FA Cup.
In 2021, Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds bought Welsh club Wrexham AFC with his friend and fellow actor Rob McElhenney. The fifth-tier club was then the subject of a documentary series. Season two of Welcome to Wrexham opens with Reynolds learning they’ve blown about US$12 million on their adventure in British football. In April, Wrexham won their way up to League 2 and so they now play against Morfuni’s Swindon. As does Salford City FC, whose owners include former Manchester United superstars, Phil Neville, Gary Neville, Nicky Butt Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and David Beckham, who each own 10%.
Recently, Aussie IT millionaire Justin Rees, bought a minority share in Southend, a fifth-tier club that was facing extinction. Rees had sold the company he co-founded ???? Eighty20 Solutions, to a subsidiary of Singtel, in 2021. Rees was taking a year off – trekking the Camino pilgrimage trail – when he heard that the 117-year-old Southend was in danger of dying and came to the rescue, organising the consortium. “If the club was completely stable, it wouldn’t be for me,” Rees told The Guardian. “It’s that challenge of the turnaround that excites me.”
The team’s new manager, Michael Flynn, said the off-field dramas had not affected him.
“I have only been here four months, so we are still early and if anybody thought it was going to be easy and we were going to win the league by ten points and get promoted and not have any blips along the way, then I would say that is wishful thinking.”
Morfuni has some advice on the difficulties of turning a club around. “Is it rewarding? It is when you’re winning. Not so good when you’re losing because they look at the chairman and go, ‘He’s not doing enough, not investing enough. He doesn’t care about us. I don’t think people realise how hard it is to run a football club, especially from the other side of the world. This is a religion for the supporters. It’s another level. People don’t realise how demanding it is. I see it. I’ve got direct links to the fans. They ring me. They text me, WhatsApp me, you name it. And I respond to them.
“People forget I’ve still got a day job.”
He works on Swindon Twon FC from 5am for three or four hours, he says, then returns to club work after 6pm, often in Teams meetings with the manager, the CEO, joint venture partners and supporters.
“The FA Cup was obviously a bad result, embarrassing. Football is the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. You’ve just got to dust yourself off and keep moving forward. This is a marathon and not a sprint. People think if you put in a bucket of money you’re going to get promoted. But look at Chelsea. They spent a billion pounds and are coming tenth [in the Premier League]. It’s about people, having the right recruitment, right manager, right culture.
“This club had been run like a shitshow for the last 30 years. If we don’t build the right foundations with the right agreements with our suppliers and sponsors, we won’t make it sustainable. People don’t just keep pouring in money.”
Morfuni said the last year had been productive. “We bought the stadium 50/50 with the Supporters Trust. We got rid of the debt. The previous owners bought a debenture for a million quid.” He said the previous owners than “put a statutory demand on the club to pay the 2.95 million pounds. We had three days to pay it or the club would be put in liquidation. I had half the money and borrowed the rest so the club would be saved.”
Swindon Academy Downunder
Morfuni said the setting up of the Australian academy showed he was in it for the long haul. “We’re setting it up as a joint venture with Nepean FC [in western Sydney]. We’re going to pay for two kids every year to go to England – I’m thinking January, the middle of winter, to understand and experience football in England and how hard it is to be a proper footballer there. It’ll be summer holidays and they’ll go from 35 degrees to minus two with a 3.30 sunset. “People see your work ethic your mental strength – and football in England is tough. I don’t think people realise how tough it is. The climate, and the different edge to being a footballer, but if you make it, you make it big.”
Fourth-tier Swindon Town FC will join the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspurs and Juventus as clubs with Australian academies.
Morfuni already has his plumbing business staff talking to clubs in Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide about setting up similar academies there.
He cites the recent Beckham documentary on Netflix as demonstrating how mentally tough you have to be to make it in the UK. “When the whole country was against him. It was brutal. As he said ‘I don’t give up that easy’. The more they abused him, the harder he worked, and he went from villain to hero. That’s why he was a superstar.”
Morfuni cites his embracing of the Swindon women’s team as one of the highlights of his time at the club.
“When I started here, I said, ‘Have we got a women’s team?’ ‘Yeah, but it’s not really part of Swindon.’ ‘Explain that to me?’ ‘They pay us to play with our logo.’ I go, ‘Why?’ ‘That’s how it works.’ ‘What about the kit?’ ‘They’ve got four-year-old kit.’ ‘Well, from now on, they’re not going to pay us. We’re going to pay them. We’ll get them a new coach. And we’re going to buy new kit for them.’
“I won’t tell you how much it all cost, but it wasn’t much.”
The women’s team was still not a viable economic proposition, he said, not having cracked 1000 people through the turnstiles. “But women’s football is going to be huge. We saw it hear at the World Cup. It’s going to be so big it’s not funny and the women are getting better and better. I’m backing it 150%.”
