Triesman, Kelly and Burns talk FA to Commons Select Committee

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Lord Triesman reveals a bullied and impotent FA to Commons inquiry

Former FA chairman tells of a governing body unable to curtail power of 'macho' Premier League

 

 

There was a sense of deja vu in the House of Commons committee room, the winter sun golden outside, as three ghosts of the Football Association's past – Lord Triesman, the former chairman, Graham Kelly, the ex-chief executive, and Lord Burns, who conducted a review six years ago – explained how, in different ways, they tried to wrestle English football into change and why, due to the same entrenched vested interests, it had failed to happen .

 

It was new and dramatic, though, to have it all out in public, with parliamentary privilege, hearing Triesman talk of the "macho, bullying" conduct of the Premier League chairman, Sir Dave Richards, on the FA board, that the professional game dismissed after "a maximum of two minutes" Triesman's proposals for financial reform, and to introduce more women and ethnic minority people as advisers, with Richards warning the grassroots representatives on the board to "remember where the money comes from".

 

Triesman, FA chairman from 2008 until he was forced to resign last May, produced the damning verdict from his bruising experience that on the issues which really matter for which the FA, as the game's governing body, is responsible – financial wellbeing, ownership of clubs, treatment of fans, making the national team's success a priority – the FA has "backed out of regulating altogether".

 

Burns himself acknowledged that the FA has never introduced the two independent directors he recommended in 2005 to break the deadlock on the board of five professional game representatives against five from the amateur game. A former permanent secretary at the Treasury, he said of the FA's inability to govern a game dominated by the Premier League clubs' wealth and power: "It's as if the Financial Services Authority had a controlling interest by the banks whom they are trying to regulate."

 

Kelly, sitting between them, lamented that the Premier League today is not the one he envisaged, which was to be integrated closely with the FA and reduced to 18 clubs to help the England team, when Kelly helped orchestrate the top clubs' breakaway from the Football League in 1992. Kelly has previously described that decision by the FA, which allowed the top clubs not to share the subsequent multi-billion pound satellite TV bonanza with the league's other three divisions, as "a tremendous, collective lack of vision" by the FA.

 

Vital though it was to hear this history and detail on the record, laid out before the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee, the question which roared out of this first public session of its inquiry into football "governance," although left unsaid, was: will anything change this time?

 

 

The worst governed sport in the country?

 

The select committee launched its inquiry in December, after the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government promised in its coalition agreement to "support the co-operative ownership of football clubs by supporters". The committee said it was responding to "broader concerns that current and future generations of football supporters are ill served" by the way the game is run, and that it will "consider the case for strategic government intervention". That question, about whether the government should intervene to help the game manage its problems, and if so, how, will come to dominate the committee's deliberations.

 

The committee produced a specific list of the game's challenges which it will consider: whether there is too much debt in professional football, the merits of supporters trusts owning stakes in clubs, whether football clubs should be treated differently from other commercial organisations, and whether the FA and leagues, who govern the game, are "fit for purpose".

 

On that latter point, the sports minister, Hugh Robertson, has left the game, and the nation, in no doubt, deriding football in parliament last month as "the worst-governed sport in the country". The committee's chairman, the Conservative MP John Whittingdale, has explained that Robertson, and the government, will wait to see what the committee recommends after its inquiry, before deciding whether, and how to act.

 

 

What main issues have emerged?

 

The painful reflections by Triesman, Burns and Kelly about the FA's internal weakness which, they all agreed, has led to the governing body, and football itself, being too dominated by the Premier League, came after a broader discussion about the game's financial challenges with two sports industry academics, Sean Hamil of Birkbeck College and Stefan Szymanski of Cass Business School, and the journalist Patrick Collins. Szymanski argued that football and its clubs should be treated as businesses like any other, but Hamil and Collins disagreed, arguing the game is a vital part of national life and culture, and making familiar, pointed criticisms, which drew noticeably little disagreement from the politicians. English football, they said, has grown remarkably successful and rich since the Premier League was formed, yet the financial gap between it and the other three divisions from which its clubs broke away has widened enormously; clubs have fallen insolvent 54 times – including Portsmouth, last season, in the Premier League – too many clubs make losses, so end up for sale to international buyers of variable quality; agents take far too many millions out of football, while ticket prices have risen exponentially so that young adults are priced out of grounds in which the average age of a fan is 43.

 

The testimony of the former FA grandees served to explain why the FA has failed to address these downsides of the commercial boom. Triesman said "conflicts of interest" on the FA board, the professional game's dominance, enforced by Richards's "macho", threatening style, and the "lack of diversity" in the almost all-white governing body, represented "systemic failure". Burns said he wished he had gone further with his recommendations, arguing that more independence at the FA is crucial. Kelly said the men on the FA's governing council are "too entrenched" in their positions to pursue change.

 

 

What solutions were proposed?

 

All the witnesses were asked to consider what will become the heart of the matter: whether the government should itself intervene to shape the game into change. Szymanski and Burns thought not, arguing the government has no real place or "purchase" in actively reforming football. Hamil pointed out that the last time the government did pass a law affecting the game, the Football Spectators Act, which implemented all-seater stadiums in the top two divisions and a range of safety requirements after the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, it had been overwhelmingly positive.

 

Triesman, saying he had thought about the issue a great deal, said persuasion is "always best", but "it's pretty hard". He had, he said, concluded that the government could introduce a sports law, as has been done in other European countries, setting out principles sports should follow and embody, and giving governing bodies, like the FA, "clear authority for the regulation of the sport".

 

The challenge for the committee, and for Robertson once it has reported, is whether to boldly consider legislation, or fall back on yet more urging of the game to change. The politicians will not want to line up in another inquiry themselves, in several years' time, explaining, like Triesman, Burns and Kelly, why their own efforts to reform the national sport failed.