The Joy of Six - 6 bad ideas in footy

[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/08/the-joy-of-six-bad-ideas-in-football

 

#1 is f***ing insane - (and a good read)

 

 

1) Secret matches

Littlewoods started the first football pools in 1923, Zetters joining them in 1933, and the idea swiftly took off. By 1933 Britons were gambling £5m a year on the pools, rising to £9m by 1934. That year the government banned pools entirely in their Betting and Lotteries Act, only to back down in the face of a public outcry. Unchecked, their popularity continued to rise, with Britain’s annual spend reaching £20m by 1936.

At the time football clubs themselves were far from successful profit-making enterprises, and the idea of other people making lots of money from their game was always likely to hit a nerve at some point. In early 1936, with all 44 league clubs boasting a combined weekly gate of £48,000 while pools companies raked in some £800,000 each Saturday, the nerve was well and truly struck. After paying out their prize money the pools companies’ profit was still greater than the entire turnover of all league clubs combined. The players still laboured under the restrictions of a maximum wage, set at the time at £8 a week during the season and £6 in the summer; thus the 968 involved in league football that year were paid each week in total no more than £7,744; the pools companies were raking in a hundred times this amount, and the larger ones made £8,000 in pure profit each week.

According to the pools promoters, in early 1936 the League claimed copyright over the fixture list and demanded a large sum to allow them to use it. The promoters offered a lesser sum, and negotiations eventually broke down. The League denied this, insisting it was acting only to protect the purity of its sport. Whatever the motivations, the League called a special general meeting at the Midland Hotel in Manchester on 20 February, at which they passed, by a margin of 65 votes to 12 (with eight abstentions), a motion asserting “that this meeting of representatives of League clubs is of the opinion that football pool betting is a menace to the game and pledges itself to make every effort possible to suppress the evil”.

CE Sutcliffe, president of the Lancashire FA, proposed a possible solution. The only way to deal with the menace, which operated outside the auspices of the league and required no more than a list of fixtures in order to do business, was to deny them these fixtures. They should, he suggested, rip up the existing fixture list, reschedule all remaining games and make these fixtures completely secret, even from the clubs involved. It was agreed that this was a jolly good ruse.

“It was decided,” read the minutes, “that, after today, the whole of the remaining fixtures … as arranged in all divisions of the league, shall be cancelled.” Instead, clubs would know in advance only if they were to play at home or away, and “the League Management Committee will indicate to clubs on Thursdays their opponents for the following Saturday”. Just in case this wasn’t enough, “the clubs agreed to give the League Management Committee plenary powers to take such action as they think fit to put an end to football pools betting”.

Their decision was immediately leaked to the press, and fury and controversy resulted. Leeds United’s chairman, Alderman A Masser, led the critics, with Sunderland swiftly following. Manchester City released a statement insisting that “they are not in agreement at all with the proposals come to and at any future meeting which may be held their representative will be instructed to oppose them in every shape and form”. Their chairman, R Smith, told the Guardian that “we are not only opposed to the alteration of the fixtures, but we do not agree that pool betting is a menace to the game”. They were followed by Bristol Rovers, Brentford, Everton, Plymouth and Charlton. “I am astounded at the reaction of some of the directors who went to last week’s meeting,” countered JW Gibson, chairman of Manchester United. “They knew very well what they were going to the meeting for and what they were voting for, so that it is perfectly clear that they were not being stampeded. [They] have no right to grumble at the committee now that they find what they have done is not popular.”

The League insisted the plan would go ahead for the weekend of 29 February. “You can take it from me that is quite definite,” said the vice-president, FW Rinder. The secretary, F Howarth, asserted that to inform the media of forthcoming fixtures “would defeat our object”, and that to ensure secrecy “only those [clubs] travelling a long distance will receive telegrams” telling them their weekend opponents on a Thursday. The remainder would be getting the information by post on Friday, all being well, and in any case being told “only the one club they are playing”, so no one source could provide a full fixture list.

The Football Pools Promoters’ Association held a meeting of their own on 26 February, and announced that they had a plan to circumvent the league’s plot – if not any details about what it entailed. “A plan was devised which will overcome any alterations which may be made in the fixtures,” they said. “The promoters are quite satisfied that they have found a satisfactory solution calculated to meet all contingencies.” The League put out a counter-statement alleging “a breach of confidence of some member of the meeting [of 20 February]” which had led to “the effectiveness of the scheme” being “at least partially impaired” and called another meeting, for the following week.

On Thursday 27 February the first few clubs found out who they were to be playing that weekend. Preston, who thought they had a free weekend, were to host Sunderland, who had been due to visit Sheffield Wednesday. Southampton, who had been planning to travel to Port Vale, were told to head for Bradford City instead, and so forth. That weekend these secret fixtures were played out – at least outside London – in front of relatively minuscule crowds. Newcastle, with an average gate of 22,000, had only 8,000 spectators for the visit of Norwich; Aston Villa’s attendance fell from an average 35,000 to just 15,000 as they beat Liverpool 3-0; Masser, whose Leeds team lost 3-0 in blizzard conditions at Sheffield Wednesday in front of just 6,000 people (9,000 down on the average gate) admitted “the weather conditions were appalling” but insisted that many fans “object to interference with their liberties”.

Masser invited representatives of all league clubs to a meeting on 2 March to discuss the issue; in the end 36 sent delegates, of whom 26 voted in favour of a resolution expressing “its loyalty to the League Management Committee” while calling for “immediate restoration of the fixture list”. The League called yet another meeting, this time for 9 March, while pressing ahead with plans for a second weekend of secret fixtures – only this time with added secrecy: “If you are told anything during the week you can take it you are having your leg pulled,” their president, Charles Sutcliffe, told journalists. He called on the Home Secretary to ensure “that legislation is effected with all speed to eliminate pool betting on football”. In an editorial, the Times also asked for a parliamentary debate, lamenting an “issue that is reducing the most popular of all open-air entertainments to chaos and public ridicule”.

The following week, after a second round of secret matches, the League officially rescinded their earlier resolution and decided to revert as closely as possible to the original fixture list. And in April Parliament did indeed debate whether pools betting should be banned, a bill proposed by Richard Russell, MP for Eddisbury. “It is not good for the State that there should come into existence societies and companies which make private gain through encouraging anti-social habits of excessive betting and gambling,” he said. Its rise would lead to problems keeping the game of football clean, and what’s more, “of all the things that lead to deterioration of character, gambling is the worst. Even drunkenness has none of the hopelessness of gambling.”

Labour’s James Barr seconded the motion, insisting that in his opinion it was the duty of the house “not to humour the poor in their poverty but to lead them out of it”, and that though “workers should have some surplus of income left for entertainment, it was for Parliament to see that whatever surplus they had was spent in pure, noble and innocuous ways”.

After some light-hearted debate – JohnMcGovern, the Scottish socialist, asserted that “it appears that men get into trouble mostly because of women, but nobody has suggested the abolition of women” – the house voted against the motion by 287 votes to 24, instead agreeing with Alan Lennox-Boyd’s insistence that “the proposals of this Bill are an unjustifiable interference with private liberty”.

The league’s dalliance with secret fixtures was over, and the popularity of the pools continued to rise. Their success was never without controversy – in 1949 the church called for their complete prohibition as “they constitute a menace to social and personal life and are a form of exploitation for which there is no justification”. There would be no prohibition, and the popularity of the pools has since been checked only by the advent of another regular low-stake government-endorsed chance-based gambling opportunity in the form of the National Lottery. 

 Staff check football pools coupons at the Littlewood’s factory in Liverpool, 1947. Photograph: Getty Images/Popperfoto Creative