published on June 29, 2024 in today

From Minor League Baseball to pushing for the Football League Non-League Day with Woking and the

Woking FC have a proud history as a non-League outfit, but they’re keen for that to end.

The walls of every corridor inside their 100-year-old home, known these days as the Laithwaite Community Stadium, are lined with photos and keepsakes celebrating three FA Trophy final wins and their FA Cup giant-killings — they are one of the most storied clubs in non-League football. But the fifth-tier side from Surrey, in London’s southern commuter belt, have ambitions to go where they have never gone before and win promotion from the National League to the EFL for the first time in their 135-year history.

Change has arrived in the form of new investors Drew Volpe and John Katz, the latter is now chief executive, who share half a century of experience working in the minor league baseball feeder system in the USA and bring an insatiable appetite to making Woking a success.

Can this National League club with lesser-known American investors compete with the likes of Wrexham, Stockport County and Notts County in seasons to come on a smaller budget?

Already, 2021-22 has been a learning curve as the squad turned full time and the club parted company with popular manager Alan Dowson in February after almost four years in charge. But as the sun shines on their immaculate pitch on Non-League Day, there is optimism that challenging for promotion might be on the cards in the near future. Darren Sarll will be the man charged with delivering a place in League Two after leaving fellow fifth tier side Yeovil Town to replace Dowson.

“We want to emulate clubs that can do it smartly — with a little bit of financial soundness behind it but also build and develop around a core of players that we want to see here for years to come,” Katz tells The Athletic. “This is the first year that we have gone full time and we were able to build our squad based on our budget. I think we maybe under-utilised the loan market a bit, but those we have got in have been successful.

“The better your business plan is, you’re in a better position when it’s January and you are within striking distance of the play-offs, so you can go out and make the smart, data-driven decisions on a player.”

Woking are proud of their impressive record in the FA Trophy, winning it three times in the 1990s

Sutton United, 30 miles to the east, are a club Katz identifies as one for Woking to emulate, winning promotion from the National League last season and pushing for the League Two play-offs in this campaign despite a budget lower than several teams in either division.

Above all, sustainability is at the heart of his plans for the club since he made the move from Columbia in South Carolina to the UK last August.

Katz’s personal journey from fan to investor moved relatively quickly after his first visit to the UK to watch a Tottenham Hotspur match in 2016 sparked the desire to learn more about the business of football while in his role as team president of the Columbia Fireflies, a feeder team for Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals.

“We built the (new) ballpark in Columbia in April 2016 and I decided as a treat to myself, with the blessing of my wife which she is probably regretting now, that I was going to finally use the passport that I had to go to a Spurs match,” he says. “It was the match right after the Battle of the Bridge, when Tottenham had thrown away the league title (in an ill-tempered draw at Chelsea).

“When I got home, I told my wife I needed to come back to see more football, but to justify it I sent out 40 LinkedIn emails saying who I was, what I do and that I wanted to compare notes about the business of English football and the business of baseball.

“Of the 40, I got one response.

“It was from Ivor Heller who is the commercial director at AFC Wimbledon and one of the founders of the phoenix club there. The next time I came over I met with him and went to a game the next day and my love for football only increased by going to Wimbledon.

“Wimbledon’s rise, six promotions in nine years — who wouldn’t want to attain that? You know when you love something, and that experience was what sunk the hooks in.”

After being bitten by the bug at Wimbledon, Katz began visiting the UK three times a year for matches before wanting to take the next step to invest in a team. Heller, by then a close friend, was important in identifying Woking as Surrey’s biggest club, with a good catchment area south west of London and a rich pedigree as a National League outfit.

Woking were promoted back to the fifth-tier National League in 2019 – now they are aiming to reach the EFL for the first time

Katz’s love for football and Woking is evident and insatiable — as he chats to The Athletic, he references individual players’ running data, how the change of formation under caretaker manager Ian Dyer has benefitted first-choice goalkeeper Craig Ross and where Saturday’s opponents Solihull Moors sit in the form table.

He buzzes about the ground before kick-off, arranging replacement card machines for food kiosks and taking time to chat about how Woking can contain Solihull’s 6ft 9in striker Kyle Hudlin — who made national-press headlines last year as Britain’s tallest footballer — with their manager Neal Ardley, who was in charge of Wimbledon at the time of Katz’s first visit there.

He is, for want of a better description, a fan who also happens to be a major shareholder and chief executive with big plans for Woking’s future. And Katz is all in, too. His family still live in the US, meaning that when he is in the UK his focus is entirely on making the club a success — a job which he says is far more stressful, if with slightly better hours, than when he worked in baseball.

“It’s crazy, one LinkedIn email — had Ivor and Wimbledon not responded to it, who knows? Myself and my family have spent four of the last five Christmases at his house, because I’ve been here. The reaction from friends and colleagues in baseball ranged from excitement and enthusiasm to, ‘What on earth are you doing?’ It’s different, it’s exciting — every day brings a new challenge.”

“We heard that John and Drew were interested and that was exciting because there was the carrot of going full time,” Woking midfielder Max Kretzschmar tells The Athletic. “The first time we met him it was a Tuesday night, a chilly match and John’s there with a woolly hat on. He introduced himself and said, ‘I’ve watched you guys from afar and I love the way you guys play smash-mouth football’. None of us knew what he meant, all these Americanisms were creeping in.

“He’s come here with a great, positive attitude. The ground looks better than ever. He’s set up some fan zones, there are local beers — he brings that experience (from baseball) and it’s just simple things from the business world. Next season will be a good challenge because the budget might go up, we’ll recruit new players and he needs to find a new manager as well, so he’s got a big job there.

“He’s easy to talk to, he’s not shy in coming into the training ground to see how we’re working and that constant communication has been a real positive for us as players.”

Kretzschmar has relished the chance to return to full-time football this season after working part-time coaching in Woking’s academy alongside playing duties until the start of the summer. Being full-time has allowed a player who spent four seasons at Wycombe Wanderers from 2012 to be “fitter, stronger, and you just have that one job and one goal each day” — which is showing in the 28-year-old being the club’s second-leading scorer this season with 10.

The #WOKSOL stage is set. 🏟️ pic.twitter.com/L5nIdBXU9e

— Woking Football Club (@wokingfc) March 26, 2022

Mid-table Woking have to work hard against play-offs contenders Solihull.

Kretzschmar delivers the corner that leads to the opener, which Inih Effiong turns past Ryan Boot. The visitors equalise through a long-range Harry Boyes strike five minutes before half-time but Woking are ahead again early in the second half when Effiong pounces on a mistake at the back. An Adam Rooney header makes it 2-2 just past the hour, before Ryan Barnett nets a Solihull winner 10 minutes later.

Results have picked up of late for Woking, with three wins on the spin before this defeat after a spell of two wins in 15 either side of Christmas which saw Dowson sacked. The former Bradford City player had overseen Woking’s promotion back to the National League at the first time of asking in 2019, when they also reached the FA Cup third round, knocking out fourth-tier Swindon Town on their own pitch before losing 2-0 at home to Premier League Watford.

The decision to part company with Dowson was met with mixed reactions from fans, although the board’s faith in Dyer has paid off so far with Woking now 15th in the 23-team table with eight games to play.

“What a character,” Katz says of Dowson. “The most generous and giving man, and his commitment to the community was unparalleled. This is a community club and ‘Dowse’ took that to heart. He had a lot of credit in the bank, not only with the club and board but with me personally.

“(But) if you look at the form from November forward, you’ll see that it was a difficult decision to make. I don’t know that we were left with any choice. Now that things have settled down, Dowse and I will resume our friendship and he’s always welcome back here, because people love him as a person. Football is a results-driven business and the results weren’t there, so that’s the difficult part.”

“It was a very strange week when he left,” says Kretzschmar, who followed Dowson to Woking from neighbours Hampton & Richmond Borough. “He’d been my manager for four or five years and then you turn up on Tuesday and he’s not there. It was a bit surreal.

“We responded well with the results we’ve got but I’ve definitely been looking inwards and thinking about what I could have done better because, as players, we did let him down. On the pitch I don’t think I could have done any more but maybe I could have galvanised us. It’s the first time as a first-team player where a manager has been sacked, so it’s a learning experience.”

Change since Katz’s arrival has not just been restricted to the man shouting orders from the dugout.

As stated, there is now a new fan zone at the stadium, where supporters can enjoy locally produced beer and food before home matches, which has been well received. Even so, it has taken work to win some over — after all, part of Woking’s ground is dubbed Moaner’s Corner.

John Katz: ‘I spent 30 years in baseball, and it’s a very different vibe’

“People don’t like change and that’s not exclusive to the Brits,” Katz says. “I’m this American guy who if you believe what you read on the internet doesn’t know anything about ‘soccer’ — and I’ve never once used that word in the last 15 years. It’s football.

“There might be some scepticism initially but, as time goes on, I’m here because this is what I love and I want to be here and continue to push this club forward. You just hope, over time, that there will be more supporters than sceptics.

“I’ve learned a lot and it’s funny when you start in a sport like baseball, I spent 30 years in the sport, and it’s a very different vibe. In baseball, you are able to focus on the experience and not the expenditure. You have your entry-level tickets but you charge premiums for beer and food because you have that captive audience in baseball as it’s stop-start and a very social experience.

“Here, once I sit down for the match, unless there’s an emergency I won’t get up. It’s that level of intensity and passion and culture that you just don’t see in minor-league baseball.

“People here have those routines of going to the pub before the game or eating elsewhere, so we are trying to give them a compelling reason to alter their routine and come here earlier or stay longer. It’s little things that we are doing along the way to improve the experience, but we really know that the biggest factor in that is what is going on between the white lines.”

Between the white lines on Saturday, Woking were more than a match for Solihull, who showed their quality by punishing their hosts where they had lapses in concentration at the back in an otherwise defensively competent performance. That is the difference if Woking are to bridge the gap between mid-table and the play-off argument next season.

In a few weeks, Katz will make the long journey back across the Atlantic to spend time with his family, who must be wondering how one LinkedIn email six years ago has changed their lives.

“It’s not possible to do what I am doing without a supportive family,” Katz says. “They live 4,040 miles away and last weekend I calculated I spent 30-odd hours travelling to spend about 50 hours at home. The family have made a lot of sacrifices to allow me to do this. This football club becoming self-sufficient, getting to the Football League for the first time; that’s the on-field legacy we want to leave behind here.

“This club is a Football League club. We just haven’t been in the Football League yet.”

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