Leyton Orient football club are in deep doo-doo. Really deep. They are going to court this month to face a winding up order due to an unpaid tax bill of £250,000. That really winds me up. London’s second-oldest football club, dating to 1881, can leave the world forever due to an amount of unpaid tax that wouldn’t even be noticed on Google’s unpaid tax account. Nor Amazon’s, Starbucks’ or countless others, who avoid far vaster sums each and every week. The sum is less than a week’s wages for Wayne Rooney, who gets about 300k for the 10 to 15 minutes he plays each week.

And that is the real crime. The disparity in financial viability of the ‘big clubs’ in the Premiership and the wee clubs down in the League. Because even though these organisations are strongly linked (generally in terms of relegation) they are funded separately. Mainly because, given the choice, most armchair enthusiasts would rather watch Chelsea play Arsenal on a Sunday afternoon than Port Vale vs Rochdale. Snobs. And I know the arguments; we have the best league in the world, but only because of Sky TV, blah, blah, Rupert fucking Murdoch’s fucking money, blah!

I have a serious soft spot for Orient. In 1969 they won (the old) Division 3. Luton Town, now out of the league altogether, were runners up. And every weekend, and sometimes during the week too, the 13-year-old me would go down to Brisbane Road and join the 30,000 who regularly attended during that fantastic season. It was pure magic. The ground so small that the players would talk to us when they came to take corners. It was just a wonderful time, even though I was a Spurs fan. This was such ‘lowly’ football there was no conflict of interest. I consulted a lawyer about that.

30 years later, 30 years of being a bit of a purist Spurs fan, it must be said, not tainting my Premiership boot-soles with lower league dirt, Orient reached the Division 1 (or, old division3) play-off final. To play at Wembley(!!!!), against, mighty Scunthorpe. So I fished out my old O’s scarf, phoned a mate about tickets (“can you get?”, “this is Orient, you can get as many as you want”), and dragged the daughters to Wembley for the day. Old Wembley. Proper Wembley. When you could still park in the borough on match days. And what a match it was! Pure, total shite. From the kick-off, the poxy Scunthorpe goal that decided it, to the last whistle, a dull and dire game of football. I fell asleep, the girls ran off to practice their pick-pocketing skills and then we came home.

But I still love Orient. Barry Hearn sold the club 4 years ago to a guy with a very dodgy track record. And now its all come back to haunt everyone. The team look like being relegated out of the league altogether and possibly wound up as a business. Leyton Orient will be no more. Yeah, Wimbledon, blah-di-blah-di-blah, but no. So please send me a cheque for a quarter of a million pounds made out to HMRC and I’ll do the rest.

Its the least you can do.

Happy Friday

A xxxx