New Investor Mark Lawn Arrives At Bradford City To Take Joint Chairmanship
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.