Baroness McDonagh
Main Page: Baroness McDonagh (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness McDonagh (Lab)
I am sorry not to be following the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney. He did a really good job chairing the Football League and I would have been interested in what he had to say. I declare my interest as a trustee of the AFC Wimbledon Foundation and a proud fan-owner of one of the most successful fan-owned clubs in the UK today: AFC Wimbledon.
Our history is one of two halves. It was born not out of a dream but out of adversity and the terrible governance by our own club and the FA. I know that that is something that my noble friend Lady Taylor seeks to improve. Let me tell our story. Our owner thought he could make more money from property than football so he sold the ground from under us. We blinked, and we were sharing a ground with Crystal Palace. We blinked again, and the FA had agreed a franchise and for our club to move to Milton Keynes. However, unlike the Bruce Springsteen song, our glory days were not behind us. Unsung heroes took two jumpers to Wimbledon Common and, nine years later, we appeared in the professional league again. That was despite being knocked for 18 points—later reduced to three—and kicked out of two FA competitions by the FA when one of our volunteers failed to complete an international transfer form for a player who used to play in Wales. The FA would not have done that to one of our rich clubs—but, as we know, in football money talks.
This rags-to-riches story of AFC Wimbledon is not a panacea for all clubs. Indeed, being fan-owned is a real struggle and the business model makes it very difficult to compete. However, just because other clubs cannot be fan-owned, it does not mean that we cannot have reform. In recent months, we have talked a lot about what divides our nations, but let us talk now about the thing that unites us: the love of the national game, football. From John O’Groats to Land’s End, from the Humber to Fishguard, we are united in our love of football. But, together, we have terrible governance. It makes no difference whether you look at the SFA, the FA or the Premiership. We deserve better and the governance arrangements at the moment are strangling talent development in our game. We could see that in the World Cup.
I ask the Minister today to adopt the reforms in the Efford report. I also ask the Government to do more. We now need a commission to have a root and branch look at the governance arrangements in our national sport. Suggestions such as this often fall flat because nobody can find the right person to chair the commission, so I put forward the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Loughborough, who was one of the architects in turning around our Olympic fortunes and was behind the medal-winning strategy in Beijing and London. There is a novel and radical thought to leave with your Lordships: a woman getting involved in the national game.