IN A recent address at the Supporters’ Direct Annual Conference, author David Goldblatt quickly got down to brass tacks.

What is a football club? It sure as hell isn’t the stadium, because you can move. It’s not the players, because increasingly none of them are bound to clubs for very long. Managers come and go, directors come and go, coaches come and go.

What actually remains at the core of these institutions that gives them life over a period of time are their fans, but above all it is the common culture that these fans have generated.”

Too true, but rather than being the source of great strength for football supporters, this cultural currency is more often used by clubs against them. Bottled, diluted and flogged back to fans, it’s unwrapped with the same fervour they used to create it in the first place.

Take Leeds United for example. The Members Club, Yorkshire Radio and LUTV are the equivalent of a blanket thrown over a birdcage; all they do is confirm that with ‘You are free… to do as we tell you’, Bill Hicks was right, as usual.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Following Goldblatt to the stage was Hamburg SV supporter Oliver Scheel with a smack in the chops for anyone who believes that a good membership scheme amounts to little more than discount merchandise and a magazine subscription. He supports a club which offers all the usual platitudes plus something infinitely more desirable.

Each of Hamburg’s 57,000 members has the right to attend the club’s AGM, not only to grill its board of directors, but also to participate in a democratic process which enables a fan to join them at the top table, a seat Scheel presently occupies.

‘Bah, Hamburg!’ you might say. ‘It’ll never work over here.’ And you’d be wrong. Thanks to Supporters’ Direct, we have 45 supporter-directors, as well as 14 fan-owned clubs. Since 2000, the organisation has swelled its ranks to 120,000 members and overseen almost 150 supporters’ trusts, 100 with shareholdings of some sort.

Austria Salzburg are run along similar lines, although one individual who stands – often literally – head and shoulders above the rest achieves his status in a more unorthodox fashion. The man known only as ‘Schützei’ once bounced agelessly before me singing ‘Super Leeds!’ at the top of his voice as if that’s what he always does – because, well, it is.

Schützei’s as big a part of the Austria Salzburg experience as the Ultras’ megaphone, except he requires no amplification whatsoever. From a lofty position (a fence will do, or once – it being Austria – the slopes of a nearby mountain) he commands second half silence from violetten young and old before delivering a bizarre scat-like proposition to a which a hearty ‘AUSTRIA!’ is the unanimous response.

Before they all skidaddled off for der winterpause, the apples of Schützei’s eye swatted rock-bottom St. Georgen to lead the table at the half-way stage, two points above that pesky Kuchl and four clear of Grünau. Suspended until late March is a fascinating three-way struggle for promotion in Austria Salzburg’s most gruelling season yet on their noble ascent from the country’s 7th division.

Until then, the Alpine weather means they’ll somehow have to get by on a measly diet of futsal, safe in the knowledge that they may well be indoors, but they’re certainly not in the dark.

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MICHAEL Lewis’ brilliant book Moneyball is the real-life tale of startling sporting success on a shoestring. When baseball stattos demonstrated that the nitty-gritty players who actually win matches were greatly undervalued, Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane sat up and took note. Out went the scouts, in came a Wall Street bean counter who signed a bunch of apparent no-marks for peanuts, and the cut-price A’s started to mix it with Major League Baseball’s big spenders.

The book makes the compelling case that much baseball wisdom is wrong, and for a brief period its football stock was rising too. But with Moneyball’s leading UK practitioner, Aidy Boothroyd, now out of work alongside fellow number crunchers Sam Allardyce, Iain Dowie and Alan Pardew, football’s proving to be a rather different ball game.

Beane’s own attempts to shake up the San Jose Earthquakes, with the help of one-time Leeds United meltdown egghead Bill Gerrard and ‘English Legend’ Darren Huckerby, have left the side dead last in Major League Soccer’s western conference with only 8 wins from 30.

In the east, Red Bull New York finished just two wins better off, but in a development more goofball than moneyball, they face Columbus Crew in tonight’s final – and nobody, not even the geeks, know how they did it.

How come, they’re all asking, a sub .500 side – that is, one which won less than half its regular season games – can earn a shot at winning the whole damn caboodle? With a win percentage almost identical to last season’s West Ham, it would be as zany as Alan Curbishley winning the Premier League. Any other team, said MLS commissioner Don Garber to the New York Times, and this ‘would be heralded as an incredible sports story. But when the Red Bulls do it people think it’s a joke.’

It’s a joke that’s already wearing thin. Only Red Bull’s North American scum standing on the brink of success could have Americans doubting the single thing that underpins their team sports. Red Bull New York suck. If they succeed, then the playoffs suck too.

They may well be badged up like the Village People, but a victory for fellow first-time finalists Columbus Crew at LA’s Home Depot Center tonight is the only hope for reason. According to New York’s official site, should the unthinkable happen a celebration will occur at Red Bull Arena on Tuesday. They’d better get a move on with it, then. Here’s hoping they don’t have to bother.

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SITTING third bottom of the Blue Square Northern Conference North Premier (or whatever it’s called), Blyth Spartans have somehow saved their best this year for the FA Cup. Shrewsbury Town never recovered from going a goal down within 30 seconds and, to quote Clive Dunn, they don’t like it up ‘em.

Shaun Reay made a name for himself but centre half Richard Pell nutted every kitchen sink and booted the taps into touch. Blyth capitalised on their possession and spent the rest of the game launching Shrewsbury’s beachwards – hugely infuriating to the visitors, as Blyth have only got two match balls.

The game was apparently being broadcast live in the US, so Croft Park’s announcer didn’t waste an opportunity to plug the rock night during a break in play: “Next up at the social club, from 8pm on the November 28th, just £2 on the door: Shovelmouth.”

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