Exeter City are different – and that matters more than ever

At the front of the away end in Huddersfield is a large white banner with red trim. It contains one line, computerised but made to look like handwriting. The banner goes everywhere that Exeter City do and rightly so. It is a simple message, a boast and a statement of fact: “We own our football club.” Only two Football League clubs can say that. AFC Wimbledon are the other and are currently in the process of attempting a transfer of shares and control to private ownership, although the latest proposed deal has broken down. Wimbledon will try to make it work. They feel that they have to. Exeter City do not. Unlike Wimbledon, they know what can happen under private ownership because it is the reason they are here at all. The Supporters’ Club saved the club in 2003 after John Russell and Mike Lewis had taken the club to the edge. The pair would eventually plead guilty to fraudulent trading. When the Trust were finally able to look under the bonnet, they found previously unknown debts of £4.8m. There are many wonderful private owners, of course. But when you have been burnt so badly, the control of fan ownership becomes the only identity worth sticking with. It creates a connection that you cannot fake. There is a large red heart painted on the seats of the Big Bank and it is the soul of the club because of what it represents. We own our football club. The Trust are proud owners of their club (Photo: Getty)Exeter City do not have a vast fanbase but those who travel away and are Trust members have to feel closer than the rest of us. Those I speak to have made the 550-mile round trip to Huddersfield. Last weekend they made the 500-mile round trip to Salford. Every away day is a chore from Exeter. The last 18 months have been the most challenging of Exeter City’s fan-owned era. A period of overspending was unearthed that overshadowed significant sell-on clauses and transfer fees. It caused the departure of the chairman and chief executive as blame was apportioned by supporters. Then, almost exactly a year ago, a fire at St James Park caused £100,000 of damage. In February 2026, manager Gary Caldwell left for Wigan Athletic (he had agreed to work on reduced budgets). By May, Exeter were relegated to League Two. There were enforced redundancies over the summer. Everything was going wrong. One of the inherent limitations of the fan-owned model is that your mistakes become exacerbated by the environment in which you operate. Elsewhere, you might be able to spend your way to recovery, speculating to accumulate. That’s not possible here. Errors have an immediate impact but then also require an extended period of rehabilitation. Mercifully, Exeter City are over the worst. The playing budget has certainly been reduced and the off-field staff who were made redundant have our sympathies. But Matt Taylor has steadied the ship and Exeter are holding their own in League Two. The club is debt-free again and the worst fears about consecutive relegations to non-league appear to be unfounded. Chairman Wilf Walsh understands that trust must be earned all over again, but panic is over for now. At Huddersfield, I am lucky enough to witness one of the great days, one of those mileposts along that road to recovery. Exeter City beat the highest-ranked team in the competition. They are so much more than I witnessed last season, seizing the game rather than going through the motions. Taylor’s side are combative in midfield and expansive on the counter. They are magnificent to a man, but two players stand out. George Birch was born in Yeovil and joined Exeter City at the age of 13. Ed James was born in Exeter and joined his local club at eight years old. Now aged 20 and 21, Birch and James were the game’s two best players. How could you not watch on from the away end and be doubly proud of them? George Birch in action against Man City in January (Photo: Getty) Exeter City relies upon developing talent and then selling it on, adding sell-on clauses in the process. It would be no surprise if these two were the next academy stars to secure the future of the club. That only amplifies the meaning of matches such as these when those players demonstrate their potential worth. You are seeing the present and the future in one. Outside the away end, they prepared to get back on coaches that had arrived two-and-a-half-hours before the game and would take six hours to get home, with a stop. Weariness? Don’t be silly, they might as well have been walking on air. The songs of home filled the air. The banner was folded into its bag for another day. And there’s always another day. The fan model is not perfect. This is not a utopia and it does a disservice to those who put in countless hours, often unpaid and usually unthanked, at such clubs across the pyramid to describe it that way. It is a reality inspired by intangibles – hope, belief, local pride, a desire to prove people wrong – but fuelled by tangible hard work and dedication. In the Football League, a natural concrete ceiling exists – probably now roughly around midtable League One – above which you simply cannot cope due to the lack of disposable income and the inability to rely upon owner handouts and their acceptance of making annual losses. Every season starts with a handicap that you chose to impose upon yourself. As a result, the model itself faces constant pressure. It is, by design, flawed and frustrating because of the climate in which it operates. As we move further away from 2003 and Exeter City’s most serious emergency, so too memories fade and the raison d’etre is diluted. Young supporters – entirely naturally – may take a step back to wonder why, if every other club that Exeter competes against does things differently, why bother? What if being the exception isn’t worth it? That is why days like Saturday, just like the mistakes of the last two years, are bigger than simply one moment. They prove that, on any given day, Exeter City can compete through remaining true to their ideals. They also work to reinforce the connections that make this club so special. I totally understand why there are months as an Exeter City supporter where your head might be turned and you yearn for things to be a little easier. It provokes those “What if?” questions to live in your head forever. So you need the good days. You need reinforcement. The challenges are never going to go away. English football continues to acquiesce to the rampant wave of capitalism, private equity, hedge funds and even state ownership. Fan ownership, in most corners of that world, is viewed as a quaint anachronism. Give Exeter City a little rub on the head: haven’t they done well, considering. Read more Daniel Storey: Robbie Savage’s Peterborough are becoming a circus Kat Lucas: Cristiano Ronaldo retires as the Donald Trump of football But that only makes being different more important. We should want Exeter City to do well because they may be the last bastions of a movement that means something, an endangered species in a sport of private equity hunters. If they succumb to the noise or succumb to non-league because they cannot make this work, nobody can. It will never be easy. The game will forever be weighted against Exeter City in the Football League. Their bad times last longer and their good times only provoke harder work to make them last. But my god it’s worth it for the good days. Fan ownership isn’t ideal but it is an ideal. Lose that and a part of English football dies with it. That makes Exeter City a litmus test for the state of the game. Long may they continue to stand on that heart.