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Newcastle United

312 NewcastleUtdThe day the promises had to stop
by Denis Cassidy
Amberly Publishing, £9.99
Reviewed by Mark Brophy
From WSC 312 February 2013

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As calls for improved governance of football clubs continue to be made, Denis Cassidy’s experiences after being appointed a non-executive director of Newcastle United in 1997 give an illustration of just what can go wrong. He remained in position for 20 months, during a period which spanned the removal of Kenny Dalglish and appointment of Ruud Gullit as well as the News of the World undercover sting which forced the owners Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall to leave the board for a short time.

Despite the inside track he can provide, the book itself is a mixed bag. Though it’s styled as an attempt to show how the creation of the Premier League has affected the game in England, much of the book sets the scene for the section describing events during the short period Cassidy was on the board, and concludes with a run down of his thoughts on how to ensure success. Alex Ferguson’s views on success might prick up a few more ears, 
of course.

That’s not to say that there isn’t interest in the rest of the book. Cassidy’s insider knowledge isn’t limited to the period of his tenure on the board and his excellent contacts mean the reader is often left wanting to hear more. At one point, he reports meeting Lord Taylor just after the delivery of the report which changed English football post-Hillsborough, frustratingly without any record of the conversation.

It’s that 20-month period in the boardroom where the book comes to life, however. Though current owner Mike Ashley doesn’t escape criticism, Cassidy clearly disapproves of the way the Shepherds and Halls ran Newcastle; he calls them “vandals” at the point they are trying to force their way back into control of the plc board. He suggests John Hall used the club first as a promotional vehicle for his own regional interests then later as a cash cow for his other businesses. Cassidy points out that Newcastle abandoned corporate governance best practice when they removed independent directors  from the board in favour of the majority shareholders’ nominees. The Shepherds and Halls are painted as draining the club to the point of financial chaos, to their own personal benefit.

The final implied criticism, left to an appendix on the last page, is both the largest and via its format least open to argument. Without commentary, it’s an account detailing how much was taken from the club by the Hall and Shepherd families in their time at the club between 1996 and 2007. The total comes to nearly £144 million. As Cassidy succinctly puts it earlier: “Did their performance over that period justify such rewards?”

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Town planners

wsc299 As Huddersfield’s unbeaten record comes to an end, Steve Wilson looks ahead to the second half of the season

On Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club, Neil Clement had only enough time for one leading question to Huddersfield Town manager Lee Clark about the club’s unbeaten run in the league that stretched back to December 28 last year. “Is it actually a distraction you could do without?” he probed. A mixture of confusion and mild disdain coloured Clark’s response. “No,” he said, not unreasonably. “If it carries on for the rest of the season, I’m pretty sure we’ll go up.”

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Letters, WSC 293

Dear WSC
I’m assuming the Ruud Gullit who recently defended himself working for a dictator by saying he wasn’t interested in politics (Caucasus calling, WSC 292) to be the same one who dedicated his 1987 European Player of the Year to Nelson Mandela. I realise people’s opinions can change over 20 years, but I’m just curious as to what made him decide he wasn’t bothered about injustice anymore.
John Chapman, Sheffield

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Honour crimes

After losing Fernando Torres to Chelsea, Liverpool supporter Rob Hughes explains why player disloyalty is not a new phenomenom

The media circus that trailed Fernando Torres’s move to Chelsea once again raised what is fast becoming a dominant issue in today’s game: club loyalty. Liverpool fans’ dismay was complete when, at his first press conference at Stamford Bridge, their departed idol coolly batted away accusations of traitordom and justified his switch of allegiance by declaring that “romance in football has gone”. Yes, he said, he’d had three good seasons at Liverpool but he wanted to play for a team who actually won things. What’s more, he was never a Reds fan (though, in his defence, he was candid enough to admit he’s no Chelsea nut either). Club loyalty counted for nothing when it came to winning trophies.

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Division One 1914-15

Graham Hughes recounts the only season of English League football to have been played during war time

The long-term significance
This was the only time that a full English League programme has gone ahead during wartime. Since its formation 26 years earlier, the Football League had been growing in membership and popularity. It now faced its first real setback, with a barrage of criticism over the decision to play on while Britain’s young men were being asked to go to war.

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