Welcome to Clarkeonenil’s daily comment feature on all things Leeds United, today Graeme Garvey takes on the “fit and proper” regulations.
If you want to own or run a football club, do you have to be a good person? No. Do you have to be an honest person? No. Do you have to be a friendly person, a bit of laugh, always ready to help out when a mate’s in need? No and, like for the other two, the answer is official. All you need to be is ‘a fit and proper person’. ‘A fit and proper person’, eh? The phrase is so grand that it makes you think that such wondrous things as owning or running a football club cannot be for mere mortals like you or me.
A fit and proper person! We’ve got some of them at the helm of Leeds United – and that’s also official – so it’s probably a good idea to find out exactly what one is or is not. Over to last week’s Guardian, – The League confirmed it had written to Leeds seeking clarification because directors and 30% shareholders in its clubs must be identified to it and passed as fit and proper people who have no recent criminal convictions and have not run a football club into insolvency twice. The League made no further comment until a spokesman said last month: “The Football League has concluded its enquiries regarding Leeds United’s fit and proper persons test documentation and has addressed the issues raised with the club. Following further information from Leeds, the League is now satisfied that the club is compliant with Football League regulations.”
Lots of words there. Sometimes the Guardian forgets that many of the people it is writing for haven’t got all day and all night but the first thing that jumps out is that ‘fit and proper people’ have no RECENT criminal convictions. Just by needing to mention criminal convictions shows the type of person we’re dealing with here. It reminds me of the old joke about the man who, on trying to enter Australia is asked by Customs if he has a criminal record and he replies, ‘I didn’t know you still needed one.’
Then there is that other beauty; fit and proper people have not run a football club into insolvency TWICE. Phew, we only just squeak through on that at Leeds, don’t we? “Just one case of insolvency to be taken into consideration, Your Honour.” Can happen to the best of us, can’t it? And, again, why talk of such things if that isn’t exactly the type of person the Football League are dealing with?
A fit and proper person, then, is not quite the wonderful soul we might first have imagined and how unhappy the League were when they were forced to admit that the person or persons who hold our cherished club by the proverbials had not made a habit of doing these bad things. So the Football League had to just grin and bear it. The words in the statement give that away. No, “We are delighted to say that Leeds United AFC is run by good, honest and friendly people.” Not even, “Leeds United is run by fit and proper people.” Instead, “The League is now satisfied that the club is compliant with Football League regulations.” Or something to the effect that “you’ve got away with it this time.”
Not a resounding statement from the League in endorsement of the powerbrokers at the club, then. And our friend, Lord Mawhinney’s packing it in anyway. A Ph. D. in radiation physics is no help when you dealing with fit and proper people. I can well imagine the scene as the chosen few at the Football League were allowed to look into the Cluedo envelope and gaze at the list of name/s of the true owner/s, then they just sighed and put it back in, shaking their heads. But we must spare a thought in all this for our noble Chairman. It must have been awfully horrid to be in his position and not to have known who owned your club. And this guy’s had a bit of a bad press from some. Anyone who wanted to put up electric fences to keep in Chelsea fans cannot be totally bad, can they? In fact, he might even be ‘a fit and proper person’. I don’t think he’s had any recent criminal convictions has he? And he’s only run the club into insolvency once. No, the more I think about it, the more I realise he’s the fit and proper kind of guy you need, always on the look-out for shysters who are trying to do us down. And, in Ken’s world, there are shysters everywhere, from our own doorstep in Leeds to the frozen wastes of Siberia.
There might be those who have been beaten down by the ownership saga, who can’t follow it all or possibly don’t even care. Good thing for them that there are others who can and do. The justification for it being a good thing in the case of our club lies in the final part of the Guardian extract where the League had to keep going back to Leeds until they eventually got the documentation they needed to finally convince them that it wasn’t run by CONVICTED felons dragging it down yet again. Without trying to make it like some Hollywood tosh with sugary music swilling along in the background, once we stop challenging people who truly are not fit and proper in the real world, we’re talking about a whole society being lost not just a football club.
Rather than pay the slightest attention to the fatuous ‘You’re not famous any more’ chants, a much more hurtful one would be, ‘Who owns yer?’
