Stacey West Podcast Exclusive: Ten Minutes With Ron Fowler

This podcast is proud to be part of the TalkSport fan network TalkSport powered by fans. This episode is proud to be sponsored by now where you can stream Sky Sports flexibly. Catch the biggest games this season how you want when you want. The football season is back and you can keep up with all the action on Sky Sports with a now membership, whether you're perched on the edge of your sofa or hiding behind it, you can capture more of the drama this season with now. The heat of the moment, the 90th minute winner that last ditch tackle the pride on the line and the best bit, you can dip in for the Derby or stay for the season with a now month membership. You can stream more Sky Sports channels flexibly. No fuss. Go to nowtv.com to find out more about sports memberships. 18+ UK only minimum speed 2.5 megabits per second live scheduling may be subject to change full-term supply. Hello and welcome to a super special episode of the Stacey West podcast. This one won't take up an hour of your time, it'll just take up 10 minutes. That's all we've got for you today. We have had a unique opportunity over this weekend to meet Ron Fowler, the new Lincoln City chairman. We were part of the official media that got to go and interview Ron and give his first proper interview given the news that has broken about him becoming Lincoln City's chairman. Just to make a really good point, we did share this in interview time with Radio Lincolnshire. Radio Lincolnshire, quite rightly so, get to go first with the questions. So many of the questions that you guys would expect us to ask have already been asked and covered in the Radio Lincolnshire interview. Now we were allowed to use that audio about a professional courtesy. We haven't used any of Radio Lincolnshire's audio so they have a completely different audio interview to us. So please do pop along and have a listen to what he told Rob Makepeace. Treat that almost as part one of your Ron Fowler experience with part two coming up right now for you. In fact, we'll go to an ad break first. Why not? We've got to make those pennies and then after the ad break, which is really early, isn't it? After one minute 18, so my apologies for that. But after the ad break, you will be able to get to listen to the second part of the Ron Fowler interview. Thank you very much. So how does an American owner use this? I'll get to fully understand English football and specifically inconsistency. You listen a lot. That's the best way to do it. Harvey has talked to me a lot about it, but I can hardly listen to Harvey listening to Clive and then listening to Liam. We ask a lot of questions. Not all of them are very great questions, but we ask them and we try to learn from them. We were involved with at the time in the state we call it soccer. We owned a soccer team at committee seven to 91. So we understood some of it. We had Ron Newman as our coach, who was an Englishman. We had some of it there, but football now is our different than when we were involved because it was indoor soccer. And it's just a lot of listening. A lot of dumb questions that he actually takes the time to answer or someone takes the time to answer, but we didn't come in with any preconceived notions we came in. We had a 21 month run away, and I think helped us a lot, and some people were willing to take the time to explain to us how this works or doesn't work. Excellent. That was the San Diego Soccer, wasn't that one something like nine titles and 10 years? Yeah, we bought it the year after they didn't. So we got four in a row of the league left us. We didn't leave the league because it kept on having it made a cap and it kept on taking it down and the players were being impacted. I just don't want to do this anymore. There's some of the players Brian Quentin, people like that who are still close friends. I like to think of myself the way I was back then and Quentin was a player and now he's got spiked right here. It's actually right here. I think he's both still think we're 40 years younger than we are. Very good. In terms of matches, I obviously take time to watch things, but what's it like watching on ints plus in terms of time zones and getting over the game? You know, I normally used to split in on Saturdays and I can't sleep in anymore because you're going to miss the match. So 7 a.m. is a reasonable time, and I guess I was going to use to it. But yeah, it's from a time standpoint, the time zones, it's undesirable from a geography. It's undesirable. Once you get here, once you engage in the match, if you forget about all that. And it's that it's let's have some fun to watch this. And I'm not as emotional as Harvey is in terms of the matches or whatever. It's like every cold is a lifetime to achieve in a life like first. But we're pretty competitive, but you know, things you measure it in the weeks and months and years. You can't measure it or goal. And keep on telling Harvey you got to settle down. Yeah, if you're not a little longer, you're going to do that. The most emotional fact I've seen and I thought he was that way in baseball, but soccer or was it watching the Lincoln games? Was there a particular moment or goal or a game that kind of impacted you? That turned you from the attention investor into I like I love and can see. It was more than just the family experience, you know, I attended some analyze games and liked it, but yeah, the experience here is far more inclusion, far louder, far more fun, far more energy, I guess. And even the haven't let's game. And you really get closer to the players. And you know, when I was an insider and some other businesses are sports where I knew the people with understood what was going on in the inner workings of the league or whatever. So to have no one limb and no jazz and hear what was really going on from their perspective makes it a lot more meaningful. And so just being here and staying with fans and the interaction and then getting me inside stories is probably as good as you can get. And you mentioned Harvey that a little bit as well just to select something because obviously the two bars have embraced Lincoln. I mean just to explain how important they've been in the whole process and how that's kind of look for the clubs going back to you. I think I will say what I don't think there's any change there. I'm probably more reticent than Harvey when it comes to some of these things, but I think I look at the league and I think we engage quite a bit. And I probably ask more questions than I should, but try not to say one more than once. But I think Harvey's embrace of the community, you know, that's what Harvey and his family have done. I think it's great. I know they're going to continue. We'll just try to figure out how that works. But I have a great appreciation for the treasure that you have. They're important to the community, but how they evolve. I really can't answer that right now. I mean, you talk about evolution as well. There might be wrong here, but in 2016 when you pivot on and taking your star's game to San Diego when it had been normally played elsewhere and a shining a light on the corner of the game that perhaps people weren't looking at saying, "Hey, look how great we are." Do you see any parallels between that and Lincoln geographically? We're kind of out on a limb. We've got great facilities, but perhaps they're able to look a little bit. I wouldn't say from a geographic standpoint as much as it is removed from one of the other teams in terms of where it exists. I think it's a more we-the David Goliath mentality that they've embraced well and the community has embraced it. Obviously, the management and the team have. I think there's some of that. The all-star game, frankly, was a political thing as to why it wasn't in San Diego until we got inside baseball and realized what the politics were. We were at the right place at the right time with the right commissioner to get it done. The game was literally supposed to be someplace else and it never got announced from a variety of reasons, but I remember being called to the commissioners' office when I was there for a meeting. He said, "If we give you the all-star game, can you actually start the finish in what was then about 15 months and normally you have three-year lead time?" So, I said, "Yeah, that would back served the cause." We're going to do this, right? And then just coming back to a linking kind of how visible is the chairman? Do you think you'll be to supporters? I mean, obviously, you're going to be massive behind the scenes. How visible how often will they hear from you? That sort of thing. We have two co-vote determiners. I was sort of geographically undesirable too, where it lives with Chase here, and I think among three of us, we will provide a presence in the community that is necessary, but my belief is that leadership of the team rests with Liam and Janice Michael and the other people that report to Liam and their respective areas. I think they will be featured. A problem is much or maybe more than they have been in the past. Obviously, it has been a bridge in the community for all the great things he's done, and that should remain. But I think the face of this team has to be the management, and I think we have a great management group in place to execute that effectively. And the last one for me, if we were having this conversation in five years' time, what would success look like to you? Of toothache. What I hope to be alive in five years. Success is, I'm probably more superstitious than he is, and I think it goes back all the years of baseball. As anybody in baseball superstitious, hopefully we progressed at level and we're progressed and we stayed and are able to compete at that level. But in the meantime, I'm really focused. I'm really focused on being successful in the lead one. If we continue to progress there, continue where we are this year, obviously. There's some good options, but although we're looking at it, talking about it on a lot in the background, I just don't want to talk about it publicly. Thank you very much and thank you. This episode is proud to be sponsored by now, where you can stream Sky Sports flexibly, catch the biggest games this season, how you want, when you want. The football season is back, and you can keep up with all the action on Sky Sports with a now membership, whether you're perched on the edge of your sofa or hiding behind it, you can capture more of the drama this season with now, the heat of the moment, the 90th minute winner that last ditch tackle the pride on the line, and the best bit, you can dip in for the derby or stay for the season. With a now month membership, you can stream more Sky Sports channels flexibly. 18 plus UK only minimum speed, 2.5 megabits per second, life scheduling may be subject to change full term supply. This podcast is proud to be part of the TalkSport fan network.