QPR 1st recently signed up as an affiliated organisation to the Football Supporters Federation (FSF). The FSF were formerly known as the two separate bodies, the FSA and the National Federation for Supporters Clubs but amalgamated into the FSF in August of 2002, following the recommendation by the Government’s Football Task Force for the formation of “a single unified voice for football supporters”.
The founding of the amalgamation will bring strength to the Federation. It is hoped that with their aim of building a mass membership from both individual supporters, and affiliates from groups such as supporters trusts, supporters clubs and independent associations, this will go a long way in ensuring that fans, up and down the Country, get a fairer deal. They will be working on issues such as the unequal distribution of income in the game, high ticket prices and the threat of away fans being banned in the wake of the decision to restrict some Millwall games to home supporters, the way fans are mucked about with kick-off times being constantly changed to suit tv, and many other issues beside.
The FSF strongly support the steps towards democracy in the boardroom of clubs being led by Supporters Direct and the Trust concept and they aim to offer a professional and comprehensive service to all FSF affiliates and to individual members. They are all fans freely volunteering their time and being elected by their peers. As a transparent and democratic organisation, all affiliates, such as trusts, supporters clubs and isa’s MUST be democratic in their own right, with annual elections and paid up memberships the main core of this basis.
In order for affiliates to feedback to its members regarding the latest news from FSF (and for individual members interest as well) quarterly local branch meetings are held in which all local members are invited to attend. The last Southern branch meeting took place at the end of November at West Ham United Supporters Club. Unfortunately due to the timescale involved none of us on the committee were able to attend that particular day but once we get the minutes from that particular meeting we will inform you, our members, as to what was discussed. In the meantime, the next Southern branch meeting will be taking place next month (February) venue tbc, and we’ll do our utmost to ensure that representation from QPR 1st attends that particular meeting.
We recently heard that FSF are currently involved in detailed discussions with a commercial partner and potential sponsor, which, if successfully concluded, could bring some direct financial benefits to all concerned. We were informed that essential to the success of the arrangement would be the need for them to mail directly every adult member of each affiliated group’s membership. Because of legislation covering membership records this would prevent the external partner from doing it themselves, and so an exploration is taking place on how this can be achieved within the Federation in compliance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act. So let’s wait and see what happens.
The first major activity of the FSF, The Fans Parliament, took place in October, and you can read a summary about this event from Tracy below.
Football Fans Parliament 2002
Sunday 13th October 2002 – NEC Birmingham
Falling out of bed, Leon and myself dragging the girls up at 7am on a Sunday morning? Could only mean one thing. Football. This time it was to attend the first major event of the FSF. Their Fans Parliament, taking place at the Birmingham NEC with a 10am registration.
It was our first visit to the NEC and though it was like a ghost town at that time on a Sunday morning, I was impressed with the location, facilities and transport from the car parks to the main venue.
So after registration, it was time for the introduction/opening plenary. Ian Todd, Co-Chairman of the FSF opened the event by announcing that he would be chairing it and then John Monks, General Secretary of the TUC, and who is a big football fan in general, spoke about the game being a major part of the entertainment industry. How in recent years we have watched how the gap between the Premier and lower leagues has widened and talked about rip off’s regarding kits, merchandise and ticket prices. He finished by speaking about fan organisations and the power that they hold collectively.
Football league in Crisis/Football in Crisis/TV Money
Malcolm Clarke, Co-Chairman FSF, was next to speak and his speech started the first big debate of the day on the above subjects. He spoke of despite the large amounts of money floating around the game these days, football is in crisis, and how it seems that with each week along comes fresh news of clubs facing severe financial difficulties or actually going into administration. Not only the Newport County’s or Maidstone’s of previous years, but now big, well-established first division clubs such as the Derby’s Barnsley’s, Watford’s and Bradford City’s. He mentioned the collapse of ITV digital, brought about by a combination of the professional incompetence of the club chairmen who were managing the deal at the time it was signed, and of the moral bankruptcy of the two rich media giants involved – Carlton and Granada.
Malcolm then went on to speak of other deeper and underlying causes that has brought about the current crisis in the football league. The separation of clubs, brought about by the Premiership a decade ago, which we are now seeing has led to a huge wealth gap between the top division and the rest.
Malcolm ended his speech by suggesting that there is perhaps more talent in any supporters group than there is in the average club boardroom and called for the skills and abilities from those in supporters groups (as has been shown by trusts at many clubs already) to come together to begin the fans fight-back for our game and our clubs.
There then followed an open session from the audience, many of whom had submitted questions/issues regarding the above to raise on registration.
Firstly though, Tim Whelan (FSF National council’s man on television and football and Leeds fan) made a speech regarding the FSF’s campaign to ‘Keep Saturday Special’. Tim made some good points about the inconvenience caused to match-going fans and explained that FSF are attempting to minimize this via the setting up of meetings with Sky. He explained how they are also looking for funding in order to do a survey so as they can demonstrate properly the effect that football being changed from Saturday’s has on supporters.
There were then many issues raised from the floor, and listening to some of the points, stories being relayed proved highly interesting, though some of the tales were incredibly sad, such as the story told by the Watford Supporters Trust rep, who explained in great detail that with 9.5m to raise (with a pledge of 6m having already been made, including the players agreeing to a 12% pay cut) they were looking at various ways of raising this money (with 1.9m needed purely as running costs for the next 2 years). She explained how it all went wrong with too many staff, and how the board purchased the freehold to Vicarage Road and then sold it to property developers and the money raised has gone astray in relation to this. She wanted to know if the finances the Watford trust aim to raise would be akin throwing good money after bad and mentioned how they are thinking of using some of the money to support the share issue, but in the main will be used to voice themselves to the club.
There were many other interesting tales relayed from supporters of Leicester City, Luton, Barnsley and Leeds. Dave Boyle (Supporters direct Caseworker) spoke on behalf of the AFC Wimbledon situation and stressed the importance of clubs holding onto their grounds – their main asset.
I raised the issue of groundshares and relayed concern over this type of thing occurring in football and John Reid, another QPR fan & QPR 1st member, gave a speech over how greed and avarice now appears to be at the forefront of football and how we all need to look at where the money has gone in recent years.
Other issues raised were player contracts; the possibility of an emergency to help out football clubs that get into trouble; player contracts; land restrictions regarding ground issues; tv deals and kick off times; wages sacrifices; lack of faith in the administrators of the football league, with again much emphasis being put upon the importance of retaining your ground; Mark Longden from the Man Utd isa spoke about scrapping the premier league and returning to how it was before and the club agm amongst many others.
Before breaking off for a lunch break, Alan Bloore (FSF Vice-chair and Barnsley fan) sketched out some of the issues facing away fans and the things they have been working on. Ticket prices, treatment of away fans and various other problems that away fans come across regularly. He mentioned they applied for a new rule regarding away fans in that from now on they will not be charged anymore than the cheapest home price ticket at clubs. The football league rejected it. He spoke about concessionary prices and how there is now a complaints procedure at the FSF for the benefit of away fans should they wish to use this procedure. They have regular meetings with the police and how they are trying to set up a legal team up and down the country in order to advice supporters regarding poor treatment.
Alan’s speech brought about many comments from the floor from fans of various clubs before Ian Todd had to bring the session to a close for lunch.
After lunch the first session was one on Safe Standing in which Phil Gatenby (FSF National Council member and Manchester City fan) explained about the founding of a campaign for a standing area at his club’s ground which quickly escalated into becoming the safe standing for England as supporters of other clubs in the first division and premier league became involved for the battle for a safe choice for fans.
He explained that SAFE is not about the return of terraces with packed, swaying masses, but about the wish to see small, safe standing areas implemented, using the most up to date technology in stadium designs.
Again, following Phil’s speech, many comments were made on the subject from the floor.
Next session was about atmosphere and racism, which was led by Steven Powell (FSF development officer and Arsenal fan) who spoke about organisations such as kick it out and the various activities that they arrange. More comments and suggestions were made as a result of Steven’s speech, including one interesting thing from Brian Lomax (Supporters Direct Chief Exec and Northampton fan) how after a recent survey was done between Asian white youngsters between the ages of 8-12 , 71% of the Asian youngsters said their favourite sport was football, whilst of the white youngsters 60% said it was their favourite sport.
The general feeling was that not only should more be done to prevent racism in the game, but the good all round atmosphere in grounds must be retained also.
The next debate of the afternoon was about ‘who actually runs football’ and Dave Boyle (FSF vice-chair, supporters direct caseworker and Northampton and AFC Wimbledon fan) kicked of the debate by asking the question “Is it time for the game to intoduce a “fit and proper person” test for those who own and control our clubs?”
Dave’s speech was passionate and emotional and spoke of those fans that can tell us of their own terrible experiences of clubs falling into the wrong hands. Fans from clubs such Brighton, Doncaster, Chester City, Maidstone, Enfield, Chesterfield and most recently Wimbledon can all vouch for the dire consequences of your club falling into the wrong hands.
As you can imagine, Dave’s speech brought the house down and many fans spoke of their experiences, including our own John Reid again, who gave a little explanation about QPR’s recent history and how we still do not know who actually “owns” QPR. Others who had plenty to say on this subject included fans from Gillingham, Barnet (remember Stan Flashman!) and a Motherwell fan who suggested to trusts never mind about reclaiming the game – We need to reclaim our clubs!
The final session of the afternoon was about football franchise. Ian Todd spoke of the issues of football franchising and amongst many of the issues he raised was this little gem taken from the football league regulations, which apparently requires member clubs to register their ground and not move without the consent of the Board. Ground locations must have Board approval and will take into account the “conurbation from which the club takes it name or with which it is otherwise traditionally associated”.
As Ian commented, like Wimbledon playing in Milton Keynes!
He stressed how the campaign to ensure that, as the FA have risked claiming, the Milton Keynes decision does not create a precedent, must and will go on. He also stressed the importance of everyone remaining vigilant to the constant threat of mergers, name changes, ground moves and ground shares.
His speech brought about a passionate and emotional talk from one of the AFC Wimbledon supporters present, who spoke from the heart about franchise and the importance of not letting it happen again.
The event was closed by Ian Todd and Malcolm Clarke who finished by expressing everyone’s grave concerns about the Chairmen and owners of our clubs.
Steven Powell then informed everyone there about the annual conference taking place in the Summer and urged not only those all present (whom he referred to as the movers and shakers) but to as many other fans of the game who are members of the FSF to attend.
We came away much refreshed and with renewed vigor after meeting, listening and talking to so many other fans who feel as passionately about the game as we do and the most resounding thing to come out of it all is that unity is strength.
Tracy Stent