| Sham-pions League |
| Tuesday 18 May 2010 |
by Jez Hemming AVID watchers of the soap opera that is the FAW will no doubt be slightly baffled by the latest news regarding Uefa licenses.While it is nice to see Airbus UK rewarded for the hard work their committee have put in, the decision to effectively stop promotion and relegation to the league for a season and demote the league’s biggest crowd puller, Rhyl is beyond explanation. A cursory glance at the fate of Caernarfon Town will give Rhyl fans a clue as to what the future might hold, despite their team finishing sixth. The Super 12 was "ill-conceived, badly planned and unfairly implemented" according to a statement from Gap Connah’s Quay, who are by no means a lone voice. It would be surprising if Rhyl, plus rejected promotion candidates Afan Lido and Llangefni, did not share that damning critique. So no change at the FAW post -David Collins. It was another senseless administrative exercise that conspired not to strengthen but hobble an already ailing league. New Chief Executive and former fizzy pop marketer Jonathan Ford will no doubt be telling clubs to have a Coke and a smile and get on with it. So much for a brave new dawn for Welsh football. Whilst the suits scrutinise the admin, none of the so called Super 12 clubs know how many games they will play next season or what format the league will take. Will it be 32, 22, 44 or 66 matches? Lord knows but, despite WPL Secretary John Deakin claiming 44 games is a non-starter, anything is possible down Vanguard Way. According to their website the FAW cannot enter into discussions about the reasons why the licensing decisions were made because “it must respect a confidentiality agreement, which is signed between the club and the Association”. This is the first time I can remember the FAW respecting anything to do with our battle weary and beleaguered clubs, their army of unpaid servants or their fans. The FAW also says it has nothing to do with Uefa licensing. An ‘Independent Club Licensing Decision-Making Body’ does that. The decision to rubber stamp the flawed 12 team league idea was taken by clubs at gunpoint, metaphorically. Having railroaded the changes through, the FAW prevaricated for over a year about what format the league will adopt. It probably starts in August, so clubs will have about eight weeks to digest and adapt to the changes if they are lucky. Now we hear the best supported club for the past six seasons and one that takes a fair amount of fans away with it has been cast aside, reportedly due to financial concerns. How playing in the Cymru Alliance will help Rhyl tackle those concerns is something only the FAW can answer, or at least they would if they were not bound by confidentiality. How a club that effectively had no alternative but to play in the League of Wales when it was formed and were league champions a year ago, can be allowed to just disappear from the league on financial grounds should be a source of shame for everyone at Vanguard Way. It will not shame them, as we are all too aware. They will potter around as normal, only being replaced when one of them shuffles off to the great boardroom in the sky, or tires of the annual jaunt to the Fifa conference in Nassau in his nice blazer. Reporter Dave Jones wrote a while back about 10 reasons why the Welsh Premier could be proud. Nice sentiment and true enough, but not one of those reasons was a result of anything the FAW had done. Sure Rhyl can take some blame for not managing their pennies but it is pennies that all clubs receive from the suits and more clubs will follow Rhyl, even allowing for the Super-Duper 12. There is some good football played in spite of the pitfalls, especially considering the facilities at most clubs. Yet it doesn’t fire the imagination of fans in sufficient numbers and they are its lifeblood. They are also a group given scant consideration by the FAW. The competition, I use the term loosely, is a joke in England. I was explaining what goes on to a colleague of mine in Lancashire and he could not understand why the FAW had not tried summer football. As he said: “It’s not like you have mild winters there is it? And surely football starved holidaymakers would turn up in their hundreds to watch Welsh League matches on a Sunday afternoon”. He may be right. When I told him of the Super 12 idea he said the Scots were thinking of increasing their league’s size because smaller leagues did not cut the mustard either financially or for excitement. When the second division of that leviathan of world football, Lithuania, gets a higher average attendance than Wales’s premier league perhaps things need rethinking. Watching Airbus UK play Newtown three or four times a season in the pouring rain, whilst an admittedly mouth-watering prospect, is probably not the answer. After years of deliberation this was the FAW’s master plan. The WPL is not just derided in England, it is in Wales too. Why else would major Welsh media organisations marginalise it? The notable exception is Sgorio, although I’m not sure it rivals Eastenders for viewing figures, as recently reported. When a competition ditches former champions, rejects promotion of clubs who have worked for years to achieve league status and retains a club that actually finished beneath the relegation places, as they did with Newtown, it ceases to be a competition in any real sense. As Newtown’s chairman said recently, there have been two competitions going on this year; achieving the Uefa license and securing another season of WPL football. He said most clubs could only afford to compete for one or the other and one can sympathise with that. So where was the money and expert guidance from the FAW whilst all this was going on? The term ‘where’s Wally’ seems appropriate. From stalling over meeting the Welsh Assembly’s investigation into Welsh football to hoarding the millions given each year by Uefa, from clubs that dearly need a chunk of it, the FAW has stumbled through a succession of catastrophes since it’s ill-conceived and poorly implemented attempt at starting a national league. Doing things like stopping Colwyn Bay from playing at home and the perennial farce of who gets promoted and who gets relegated or not, as the case may be, propagates the suspicion the FAW bumbles aimlessly along like the local drunk between visits to Switzerland for wine and canapés. All this while making increasingly unfathomable decisions. A reliable source at a WPL club told me of the “thousands of pounds” lavished on WPL clubs’ media officers when sent to Cardiff for media training. His concern, and apparently that of many others there, was wasting cash when a portion of that money could have helped clubs like Rhyl. A free bar might impress FAW councillors but it does not impress the working class heroes who give up their time to help their local club. Welsh domestic football, as I have been advocating for years now, needs a top-down makeover. If your car engine’s broken, there’s not much point in touching up the paintwork and the engine of Welsh football, the FAW, is irrevocably broken. So what do we do about it? There are a number of things that should, but will not be done by the FAW. Summer football and perhaps a regional structure with league play-offs to decide European places would raise excitement levels a bit. Hash Piperdy’s suggestion that the FAW pay for a big name player, either in the twilight or at the outset of their career, for each club is a great and affordable way of raising interest. I’m pretty sure that big money sponsorship, sadly lacking at present, would come along with it. Investing in community stadia that invite fans to watch a good match, on a decent pitch and in comfort would be a wise move by the FAW. We have third world facilities in the main, with the exception of a few clubs. One of those, Rhyl, have just been dropped through the trap door, although Bangor City’s dilapidated ground is still available to visit on a frosty December afternoon. This is no criticism of Bangor, they need help too. The people with the ideas; the fans, the army of volunteers and the chairmen, are not listened to. If they were, the changes to the league might be radical and exciting. At least supporters would feel they had a stake in it. Perhaps it is time for clubs to take back the power and negotiate a better league that actually serves the interests of fans and, if that is not possible, break away and form a rival structure. After all, what would they really lose if they did? A two-legged tie in early June against the Moldovan cup winners? Losing that will not exactly have fans crying into their half time Bovril I suspect. That the latest chapter in the lamentable history of the FAW is unsurprising is probably the biggest indictment of all those directed at Welsh football’s governing body. |