The 1931 Fund have made their donation to the club of £15,000 which went towards the signing of Exeter City's No.31 Noah Smerdon.
The 1931 Fund is a group of around 60 Exeter City supporters who all donate £19 a month to help pay towards an extra member of the first team squad.
This season the money was used to help provide an undisclosed fee to West Bromwich Albion for Noah Smerdon. Speaking about the support of the 1931 Fund on signing for City, Noah said: “The fans are obviously a massive part of the club, it’s owned by them, and the whole 1931 thing shows the link between the club and fans."
The fund is named after Exeter City’s famous FA Cup run from that year and has helped fund the wages of players like James Norwood, Graham Cummins, Pierce Sweeney and Jack Sparkes, now totaling £140,000 since its launch.
Alan Crockford, who helped set up the 1931 Fund, says he is pleased that once again the supporters can help make a positive impact on the football club.
He said: “For lots of us we see it as a sort of Exile tax, whereby if you do have a few weeks where you can’t get to a home game, then at least you know that by paying £19 into our fund then you’re representing a turnstile click and contributing to the cause in some way.
“We all want to do our bit and it’s nice to see that we can play a small part in that process.”
“This is the 10th season and we’ve paid in £140,000 over 10 years. Our contribution is doing our bit to chip in and it’s nice that we’ve been able to organise ourselves in such way that is a tangible product that we can offer and say: ‘we did that, we paid for that.’ In that sense, it’s a nice scheme.”
The full list of donations is as follows:
- 2010: James Norwood - 10k
- 2011: James Norwood - 7k
- 2012: Callum McNish - 15k
- 2013: Elliot Chamberlain - 13k
- 2014: Elliot Chamberlain - 10k
- 2015: Graham Cummins - 15k
- 2016: Joel Grant - 15k
- 2017: Pierce Sweeney - 15k
- 2018: Jack Sparkes - 10k
- 2019: Jack Sparkes - 15k
- 2020: Noah Smerdon - 15k