Monday 27 April 2009
DEATH OF A FOOTBALL CLUB
The information I'm getting strongly suggests that Chester City FC will be in administration within a fortnight. The season is about to end, there is no revenue coming in, and the traditional source of income at this time of year - season ticket sales - will yield next to nothing because no-one knows if the club will still be in business come August. Meanwhile debts continue to mount. The club hasn't paid the players' wages for months. Instead, the PFA has been lending the money for the wages. That loan will have to be repaid sooner or later and is subject to interest at 10%. Any money which does come into the club such as TV money or parachute payments will go straight to the PFA and other creditors. The club has other outstanding debts which led to a transfer embargo being slapped on it by the Football League. The embargo is still there, which indicates that the debts have not been repaid. The players are due to be paid next at the end of this month - and the only way that will happen is if the PFA stump up again. Then there's the wage bill at the end of May, and June. And an income tax bill is due shortly. The owner, Stephen Vaughan, wants to sell but has failed to find a buyer. So it will be no surprise if he puts the club into administration sooner rather than later. That's if the creditors agree. If they don't, it could mean liquidation.
Saturday 25 April 2009
THE BELL TOLLS...FOR US
The fat lady has sung and the bell has tolled. Chester are out of the league. Again.
No-one is reassured by the mathematics which say that we can still catch Grimsby on goal difference. Not when they have 19-goal advantage with one game to go.
We are down because we thoroughly deserve to be, and if Luton hadn't had a 30-point deduction we would have been relegated weeks ago.
The club has been mismanaged ever since we came back into the League in 2004. We couldn't even get the celebrations right after winning the Conference and that set the tone for everything that's taken place since.
The challenge now is to stop the club dying from apathy.
Last time we were relegated, in 2000, the fans mounted a variety of campaigns to try to keep us up. This time there's been nothing because everyone is disillusioned.
Talk of winning instant promotion is inappropriate. We are in no fit state to challenge for anything. The club has to be cleansed from top to bottom before we can think of getting back into the League. The owner, Stephen Vaughan, wants to sell. Let him do so, quickly and honourably, to someone with a genuine interest in rebuilding our credibility. Then we can all get down to the hard work of restoring respect in our football club.
No-one is reassured by the mathematics which say that we can still catch Grimsby on goal difference. Not when they have 19-goal advantage with one game to go.
We are down because we thoroughly deserve to be, and if Luton hadn't had a 30-point deduction we would have been relegated weeks ago.
The club has been mismanaged ever since we came back into the League in 2004. We couldn't even get the celebrations right after winning the Conference and that set the tone for everything that's taken place since.
The challenge now is to stop the club dying from apathy.
Last time we were relegated, in 2000, the fans mounted a variety of campaigns to try to keep us up. This time there's been nothing because everyone is disillusioned.
Talk of winning instant promotion is inappropriate. We are in no fit state to challenge for anything. The club has to be cleansed from top to bottom before we can think of getting back into the League. The owner, Stephen Vaughan, wants to sell. Let him do so, quickly and honourably, to someone with a genuine interest in rebuilding our credibility. Then we can all get down to the hard work of restoring respect in our football club.
Saturday 11 April 2009
HILLSBOROUGH - A PERSONAL VIEW
Twenty years ago I was driving from south Liverpool to my home in Crosby, my head still reeling with the information and images from the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough. My route took me close to Anfield. Though it was nearly midnight something made me drive up Anfield Road to the ground. To my surprise, a number of other people were there too, just standing in the road looking at the stadium. A couple of bunches of flowers has been attached to the gates. It was the start of the amazing, moving phenomenon which saw Anfield disappear beneath a carpet of blooms.
On the day of the disaster I was producing the BBC TV news bulletin in Manchester. I spent the early part of the afternoon reviewing another programme which I had produced the night before. Then I went into the gallery to watch the pictures coming in from the Liverpool v Forest tie. The game was not live on TV - these were the days before FA Cup semi-finals routinely appeared as live events. The pictures of the crush at the Leppings Lane End were aired live because the BBC interrupted their planned schedule to take coverage of what was becoming a major news story. My role then was to react as any producer would - to get the incoming pictures recorded for use in the bulletin later, and to track someone down who could tell us what was going on.
Afterwards, as the BBC's sports correspondent in the North West, I was involved in covering the ongoing repercussions from various angles, presenting a round-up of the latest news on Radio Merseyside the next morning, presenting coverage of memorial ceremonies in Liverpool Cathedral and at Anfield, and following the progress of the various enquiries for TV and radio. Ten years ago, to mark the first decade since the disaster, I produced a documentary for the BBC's religious department, looking at the way the disaster had affected the faith of the survivors and the bereaved.
It was that last experience which brought home just how much the Hillsborough disaster was still a tragedy in action. It did not conveniently stop on that day, and certainly not at 3.15pm that afternoon, the time arbitrarily decreed by the coroner as the moment beyond which no evidence would be considered regarding the deaths of individuals. The disaster was still a living monster, damaging lives and relationships on a daily basis.
Making that programme took me to the heart of the human suffering. Parents told me of the loss of their children. One man described how he drew on golf balls the faces of the police officers he held responsible for the death of his son, and hit them as hard as he could with his club. Others described their own battle for survival in the depths of the Leppings Lane pens. The words of one still echo: "People say we are lucky to be alive, and yes, we are lucky. But if you knew what was going on between my ears, lucky isn't the right word for it - definitely not."
I discovered that the ongoing Hillsborough Disaster was about anger and destruction as much as grief. The group which represented the families had split. The Hillsborough Justice Campaign had broken away from the established Hillsborough Families Support Group. The two sides disliked and distrusted each other. Liverpool FC, impressively supportive of the Families Group, seemed not to know how to react to the splinter grouping and refused to recognise them. This created bitterness and disillusion to heap on top of everything else.
Among the members of the Justice Group were Dave and Maureen Church, who lost their son Gary. Maureen, when interviewed, could not hide her anger at the football club. It was raw and uncomfortable viewing and it summed up a complete breakdown in the relationship of people who at first stood shoulder to shoulder. It also left me, as the producer, caught in the crossfire between the two groups and the football club. For years, Dave and Maureen battled to find the information they needed to show how, and just as importantly, why Gary died while watching a football match. It cost them both their health. Both were struck down by cancer. Dave survived but Maureen did not. I went to her funeral - another victim of Hillsborough.
Today, at Anfield, there was an impressive minute's silence in memory of the dead. The two family groups, in their different ways, have done a magnificent job over the last 20 years. But still the key question remains unanswered. How come no-one has yet accepted proper responsibility for 96 deaths which were totally preventable?
Twelve months earlier, the FA Cup semi-final had featured the same teams at the same stadium and gone perfectly. So what went so badly wrong this time? What was different in 1989? The answers to those questions can be found in Phil Scraton's excellent book Hillsborough - the Truth which I thoroughly recommend. Changes in command in South Yorkshire Police were a big part of the problem.
This afternoon the fans chanted "Justice for the 96." They did so from seats on the Kop, the living legacy of the disaster which had the beneficial spin-off of rendering all British sports stadia much safer, cleaner, better organised venues. But that is not the only legacy, and anyone who thinks that the passage of 20 years has been an example of "time healing" had better not voice that opinion too loudly in the company of anyone who lost a friend or relative, or was pulled out of the pens and left for dead, on a deceptively sunny April day in 1989.
On the day of the disaster I was producing the BBC TV news bulletin in Manchester. I spent the early part of the afternoon reviewing another programme which I had produced the night before. Then I went into the gallery to watch the pictures coming in from the Liverpool v Forest tie. The game was not live on TV - these were the days before FA Cup semi-finals routinely appeared as live events. The pictures of the crush at the Leppings Lane End were aired live because the BBC interrupted their planned schedule to take coverage of what was becoming a major news story. My role then was to react as any producer would - to get the incoming pictures recorded for use in the bulletin later, and to track someone down who could tell us what was going on.
Afterwards, as the BBC's sports correspondent in the North West, I was involved in covering the ongoing repercussions from various angles, presenting a round-up of the latest news on Radio Merseyside the next morning, presenting coverage of memorial ceremonies in Liverpool Cathedral and at Anfield, and following the progress of the various enquiries for TV and radio. Ten years ago, to mark the first decade since the disaster, I produced a documentary for the BBC's religious department, looking at the way the disaster had affected the faith of the survivors and the bereaved.
It was that last experience which brought home just how much the Hillsborough disaster was still a tragedy in action. It did not conveniently stop on that day, and certainly not at 3.15pm that afternoon, the time arbitrarily decreed by the coroner as the moment beyond which no evidence would be considered regarding the deaths of individuals. The disaster was still a living monster, damaging lives and relationships on a daily basis.
Making that programme took me to the heart of the human suffering. Parents told me of the loss of their children. One man described how he drew on golf balls the faces of the police officers he held responsible for the death of his son, and hit them as hard as he could with his club. Others described their own battle for survival in the depths of the Leppings Lane pens. The words of one still echo: "People say we are lucky to be alive, and yes, we are lucky. But if you knew what was going on between my ears, lucky isn't the right word for it - definitely not."
I discovered that the ongoing Hillsborough Disaster was about anger and destruction as much as grief. The group which represented the families had split. The Hillsborough Justice Campaign had broken away from the established Hillsborough Families Support Group. The two sides disliked and distrusted each other. Liverpool FC, impressively supportive of the Families Group, seemed not to know how to react to the splinter grouping and refused to recognise them. This created bitterness and disillusion to heap on top of everything else.
Among the members of the Justice Group were Dave and Maureen Church, who lost their son Gary. Maureen, when interviewed, could not hide her anger at the football club. It was raw and uncomfortable viewing and it summed up a complete breakdown in the relationship of people who at first stood shoulder to shoulder. It also left me, as the producer, caught in the crossfire between the two groups and the football club. For years, Dave and Maureen battled to find the information they needed to show how, and just as importantly, why Gary died while watching a football match. It cost them both their health. Both were struck down by cancer. Dave survived but Maureen did not. I went to her funeral - another victim of Hillsborough.
Today, at Anfield, there was an impressive minute's silence in memory of the dead. The two family groups, in their different ways, have done a magnificent job over the last 20 years. But still the key question remains unanswered. How come no-one has yet accepted proper responsibility for 96 deaths which were totally preventable?
Twelve months earlier, the FA Cup semi-final had featured the same teams at the same stadium and gone perfectly. So what went so badly wrong this time? What was different in 1989? The answers to those questions can be found in Phil Scraton's excellent book Hillsborough - the Truth which I thoroughly recommend. Changes in command in South Yorkshire Police were a big part of the problem.
This afternoon the fans chanted "Justice for the 96." They did so from seats on the Kop, the living legacy of the disaster which had the beneficial spin-off of rendering all British sports stadia much safer, cleaner, better organised venues. But that is not the only legacy, and anyone who thinks that the passage of 20 years has been an example of "time healing" had better not voice that opinion too loudly in the company of anyone who lost a friend or relative, or was pulled out of the pens and left for dead, on a deceptively sunny April day in 1989.
VIEW FROM THE PRESS BOX (5): LIVERPOOL
The view from the Anfield press box is one of the best in the Premier League. The elevation is perfect yet the scribes are surprisingly close to the pitch. The box was extended at the start of this season to give radio reporters more room. It also means the radio reporters are virtually sitting among the supporters, which can be quite energising! One of the other plus factors about Anfield is that, unlike many grounds these days, the media are not quarantined in a self-contained suite from the moment they enter the stadium. The TV gantry is out of shot, above. BBC 5 Live commentators are on the opposite side of the stadium in the Centenary Stand. Their position is above the Carlsberg advert which is visible midway along the stand under the roof. Anfield traditionalists will probably not be impressed to know that the press lounge, where hacks gather before and after the game, was built on the site of the iconic Boot Room, established as a place of legendary plotting by Bill Shankly before being 'redeveloped' in the early 1990s.
Star rating out of five: 3
Saturday 4 April 2009
EXCLUSIVE: UCLAN IS FIRST - OFFICIAL
This is an exclusive for I-Ontheball readers. Our Sports Journalism course at the University of Central Lancashire has become the first undergraduate sports journalism course to receive official accreditation by the Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC). OK, there aren't that many such courses around but there are a few and it's nice to be first. The BJTC sent a three-man panel to vet the course yesterday. They scrutinised our documentation, quizzed staff in depth, talked to students and watched two TV bulletins produced by students. At the end of an exhausting day they announced that we had been awarded their formal seal of approval.
VIEW FROM THE PRESS BOX (4): BLACKBURN
Clear view from the very back of the Jack Walker Stand. Slung under the roof is the TV gantry.
Star rating out of five: 3
FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS
The start of the F1 season was a triumph for Button and Brawn - and also for a set-up called the Ariel Trust. The Ariel Trust is based in Liverpool and trains young people in broadcasting skills. Many years ago a young lad turned up for training. He duly went through the course, moved on to an in-house hospital TV station in Chester, and from there to BBC Radio Merseyside. Last Sunday Jonathan Legard made his debut as the BBC's new F1 commentator. Great moment for Jonathan. Great result for the Ariel Trust.
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