More About Geoffrey Richmond
Scarborough have always maintained a position close to my heart. Seaside town, nice little ground and when in 1987 they became the first club to claim automatic promotion to the Football League from the Conference they did it with Bradford City Legend Ces Podd at right back. They were a nice little club.
And for a little club they made some progress. After promotion they were bought up by a guy who had recently sold lighter company Ronson and he moved them forward a little before reaching what he perceived to be a ceiling and closing the coffers. He ended up swapping the club for another who he believed would not be held back by the little club tag that Boro always had and moved into Bradford City. That man was Geoffrey Richmond. The rest of that story you know.
The rest of the Scarborough story ended this morning at the High Court in Leeds with debts of £2.5m pushing the ailing team out of business. A statement from the club said it all
While it is sad to see the demise of a club with a proud history of 128 years, the club’s finances have for a number of years been in a very poor state and the company has been in and out of various insolvency proceedings.
Scarborough tried to sell the stadium but could not. The Judge noted that the early winding up would allow the Supporters Trust to form a new club and carry on the tradition of football. 128 years of tradition to be exact.
Scarborough has been in the League until 1999 and were in the UniBond League for next season after two relegations. At the top of that the larger league Watford took away £20m for finishing bottom. Next season £60m will do to the final placed club. The creeping mismanagement of Boro’s finances are one thing - business of football is often characterised by how badly it is done - but what we have here is a club starving to death on the outskirts of the richest City in the country. A drive past Black Fryer’s Bridge says we can do this is life but I hope that football could be an escape from those harsh realities.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the way that football works. Scarborough crash while others boom and the laws put into place to protect the game and it’s institutions are woefully inadequate being used to punish the weak in the case of Rotherham last season and reward the cunning. Leeds United, I refer to thee.
Every attempt to put a rule in place that could have been put in place to help the clubs who suffer in administration has been thwarted by opportunists such as Ken Bates at Leeds or the Leicester City directors that walked away from Filbert Street. Geoffrey Richmond’s plan to readdress the situation in 2001 was good sense from the wrong mouthpiece.
Richmond’s plan was to let football get its house in order post-ITV Digital by offering new contracts and making redundant players who would not sign them. It was a harsh way of ripping up a deal and the worry for some that prized assets would use this contract freedom to leave for The Premiership on free transfer scupperred it. Clubs like Scarborough ended up on a slow route to extinction and for whatever reason could not find a way off it.
A historical anomaly - and a worthwhile footnote - that it was Geoffrey Richmond’s attempts to make football law that could have saved his old club.
46 year old Mark Lawn has invested a chunk of his wealth in a half share of Bradford City and joins Julian Rhodes as joint chairman of the resurgent Bradford City.
Lawn made his money with Driver Hire - a driver recruitment agency in Bingley - and spent it wiping out his club’s debts. Julian Rhodes - as with the gusto of Lieutenant Colonel Travis - took a deserved delight in this day saying
We’ve got rid of all the debts apart from a small overdraft facility.
Laws investment is financial stability rather than team building funds but will allow City to concentrate revenue on the football side of the business rather than servicing the debts. Lawn will also take over as the public face of the club. The new Geoffrey Richmond in the nicest possible way.
Richmond’s dawn at City was brilliant but in the scheme of things all to brief. The new man at Bradford City could dip into the Geoffrey manual for tub-thumping but will do well to bang a less hollow drum than Richmond’s pushing energy and resource into building of more permanent structures at the club. The youth program begins to brings fruit and always needs augmenting, the scheme that is selling City season tickets for less than twenty quid more than Bradford Park Avenue ones is peerless in football in terms of an investment in the future of our club and the financial boost can be to this generation what kid-for-a-quid was to others.
Lawn begins with a club as low as it has been for many a decade and tired of the much heard mantra that the only way was up - down seems to have been the more commonly taken route - but his arrival coincides (not by accident) with Stuart McCall’s third coming and an increased sense of the positive around the club.
All of which is very much a new day and one which needs to be ceased with both hands because to return to the metaphor - this new dawn breaks over the last chance saloon.
Let it be known, I’m not one of Julian Rhodes biggest fans.
Yes, respect is due for the way his wallet keeps getting prized open to fund the shortfalls, but the deep deep part of me will never forget that the Rhodes family were implicit in the debacle that caused the whole problem and the relegations that followed and more importantly were negligent in allowing the fat man - Geoffrey Richmond - the level of personal vanity that put the club on collision course with Division Four.
That said, this week could be a massive milestone in the future of both Bradford City and one Julian Rhodes.
On the positive side, we could be sat here next week looking at a future where we could take some “ginger” steps towards the return of a period of “Bantam Progresivism”. The Glasnost of West Yorkshire.
A week from now, we might have Stuart McCall in place and if sense prevails a very experienced number two such as Terry Dolan or Stan Ternant alongside him. These men who lived and breathed the rise of the club from 1985 onwards.
We could have a modest amount of investment that might just fund some half decent, wholly owned committed players and we could be looking forward to the most exciting summer at Valley Parade for many a year.
Or we could be in the depths of despair…
McCall installed as number one at Bramall Lane, scratching around for a second choice and being left with the likes of, God forbid, Peter Jackson or worse still David Wetherall as manager.
Not that I dislike Wetherall, great leader, great club man, great player, just not ready yet to be manager as McCall himself wasn’t in 2000.
The knock effect being we panic and give contracts to players we should be saying adios to like Marc Bridge-Wilkinson, Steven Schumacher and Ricgard Edghill. Players who contributed in a massive way to our relegation with their lack of commitment, lack of skill and lack of anything approaching pride in a claret and amber shirt.
The outcome of this week will either make Rhodes or break him.
Land McCall and he’ll be forgiven relegation, forgiven the fact that an experienced manager such as Andy Ritchie, appointed when Colin Todd left, would have prevented it and be hailed as the deliverer of an orange future.
Failure to land the one we call McGod and Rhodes will have dropped another almighty clanger, have wasted half a season and have so much egg on his face that he might as well have spent the last 6 months in a chicken battery.
I hope for his sake that Mrs McCall’s heart rules over Stuart’s head.