English Football

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those debates where you think of various things to say but then hear them ticked off one by one by the people who speak ahead of you.

If ever there were an answer to sexism, it can be seen in this debate. The female Members of this House have championed football—seen as a male preserve until fairly recently—and indeed they have done most of the heavy lifting. So it now falls to the rugby player to comment around the sides of the heavy work that has been done.

When it comes to Bolton Wanderers, I should declare that I was brought up in Norwich. Our experience is very different. We have had civic receptions to say, “Well done”, although we have been promoted and relegated almost as often. Our club has experienced ups and downs, but it is very lucky to have better management. If you have good management, you will survive the bumps and the bangs.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, has just pointed out to us that, even if fans protest and do not turn up, they do not tend to transfer their allegiance. I just wonder how many applications from other parties will be arriving on his desk tomorrow morning—but that can probably be reported back to us. However, there is something about the soccer fan that makes him want to stay with his club—probably more so than in virtually any other sport. I have seen the same thing to some extent in rugby league, but rugby union is only just establishing a regular fan base. It used to be the case that you supported the club that you played for, at least perhaps in a junior team. That tends to be the culture. Also, the culture of promotion and relegation means that, if anything goes wrong, it goes wrong big time. If you have a bad season, your income base falls away and you become even more vulnerable.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred to another thing that I had intended to mention: the idea of franchising and having a guaranteed fixture list must be very attractive to many big owners, particularly American ones. We have to look at the culture of this incredibly successful sport, which is an amazing generator of invisible earnings for this country. We have to examine disasters such as the one at Bolton—a disaster for the club, for the structure, for everybody involved in it and for the financial base of that town and the league itself. If we want to preserve the culture of it being technically possible to reach the top through good management and canny decisions, we have to make sure that there is better governance.

The briefing provided by the Library spoke about how a huge step was taken a couple of years ago—which it was. But was it enough? The evidence would suggest not. But one thing that has come out, both here and in much of the briefing I have received, particularly through the FA, is that we are not taking advantage of the fan. If ever there was a role for exposing and ensuring transparency in how a club is managed, there is a body that will do it for you. This is also a way in which the manager of the club, for instance, might benefit. He says, “I can’t pump more money in. I can’t buy you those players, because I have to prepare in case something goes wrong”. There is no guarantee of success. I am afraid that the average football fan has rather a record of blaming everybody else: the wrong combination of players, someone being injured, the wrong manager with the wrong team. It will happen, because just as success is rewarded, it is guaranteed that failure is punished. Things will swing around—even if it is only relative, it is going to happen.

So how are we going to do this? I suggest that it might be worth looking at something along the lines of members of the board, possibly non-executive directors, having the job of exposing what has happened. There is a degree of agreement. I thought we might be heading for a classic left-right combination when the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, started up. But even then we had a degree of agreement that it is an independent structure that the Government cannot get that involved in. So we cannot regulate too much, but we should encourage a framework that tells us what is going on because, as all sports get more professionalised, these pressures are going to come, and indeed have already come. Rugby league has had, let us say, its interesting moments. The initial phases of professionalism in rugby union have had their moments. All have been placed under similar pressures. Football is far and away the most dominant game, but it will be seen as something as a template and model.

We have to look at this as a whole because of the importance of sport to our culture and everything else. We use professional sport as a driver to get others involved in sport. Indeed, many of the duties placed on our senior professional clubs are there to encourage junior and amateur sport, to make sure that people go through. The good work done by all sports, on mental health, for example, happens because professional clubs have the resources, the drive and the connections to do it properly. Sport is a tremendous asset when it is used properly. When it fails, the damage is massive. I am not sure of the situation in Bolton, but anyone who has been involved in youth teams, community work et cetera will be damaged. There can be no two ways about that. Also, do you want to link yourself to something that might disappear? How much more reticent will you be about using this asset? All these things come to the fore.

We have an odd situation, and an economic activity that is culturally linked to the very soul of many communities. Unless we get a better understanding, and a better way of looking after these things properly, we will continue to have these problems. Bolton Wanderers are merely today’s problem—as Leeds United were a problem in the past. Look north of the border and you see Glasgow Rangers. Whoever would have thought that they would go through the experience they went through? We have to see that these clubs are maintained and run properly. Making sure that they are transparent in their actions is the only real way we can do this, because I do not think we want a state-run professional sporting structure. So I hope that the Minister when he responds will give us an idea of what sort of encouragement and support the Government can give to football in this case, and professional sport generally, so that it can run itself better.