Plainmoor Pitch

What, better than when we had a plumber and odd job man "looking after" it? ;D ;D

So why were they so hard?

Surely because the personality and nature of the "Proprietor" prevented anyone who was prepared to invest in the club having a say in how their investment was used.

We thus ended up a virtual "one man band" as opposed to the healthy, diverse and positive board we now enjoy.

These people were always out there Dave, they were always fans.

Granted when Mike Bateson came in, there was precious little positive commitment shown by the local business community, and he decided that if he was to make a personal commitment that would steady and recover the situation the club had been allowed to slide into then he would "get rid" of the dead wood of the board as it was then.

However, as time went on both the business community at large and Bateson in particular knew in their hearts that he could never contemplate heading up a democratic board..............he just wasn't that sort of animal.

* I wasn't having a pop at the "multi tasking" Trevor Webb, more the mentality that necessitated him having to be so.

To be fair when Bateson first took over, everyone was very happy and he did get the club back on an even Kiel. In the Bateson years, we went to Wembley three times, played away at Spurs, Sheffield Wednesday, Coventry, Burnley, Bristol City and many more interesting places.

Sadly he never understood footballs fans or their needs, not once but twice giving the popside to away fans, always quick to find some away to attack fans and somehow lay the blame on them.

There were reasons he may not have sold to those who wanted the club, at the time he sold to Roberts. Selling to Roberts and the way the deal was done, meant that he could still keep some control, but more importantly, keep the family in work. No matter what any may think of Richard, Debbie had her heart in the club.

She certainly went about things the wrong way at times and often treated some people who had done a lot for the club, very poorly. You see I never really bought the Idea that Bateson was taken in by Roberts, like so many others were. Bateson was well aware how Roberts intended to use the clubs money to buy the club off Bateson.

I also can't believe he could not see that Roberts was only using the club, had no real interest in the fortunes of TUFC, was only hoping to make some big money from the Hotel and shopping complex , he believed he could get built on the seafront.

Bateson, you can be sure got more money for the club, than he would have done, if he had sold it to others, before he let Roberts do his deal. You may just find that dear old Mike was not a fool taken in by Roberts, but a very clever man who found the way to up the price and walk away smiling.

He sure did, he got all the money that Saddler had put in, many months of payments from Robert's, all his loans repaid and a nice tidy sum from the consortium. Yes he sure is smiling now

Absolutely not!!!!!!!

Ask the current administration about the inherited debts they took on board, the denuded infrastructure and the shocking state of the pitch and training ground facilities; the substandard floodlights on which the club used to pay the "fine" every year (rather than invest in adequate ones) because they failed to come up to minimum Football League lux levels.

...............and don't even get me started about the "squad"of 3 (yes three) and the lost Football League status.

I think that in general TUFC fans should focus on the exciting future that OUR club now has ahead of it, rather than going round in circles on what might or might not have happened in the past.

BUT this is more of a “niche” forum than a general one, so as a club historian I would find it interesting to try to put not only the last 18 years, but the last 38 years into some kind of perspective. I’m sure we have the right mix of posters to do that here, without fear of being subjected to the twisting and distorting of history and the lies and personal abuse that were heaped on anyone who favoured reasoned debate over single track propaganda over on dotnet back in “the Good Old Days.”

Mike Bateson clearly was never the kind of generous, selfless, mad TUFC fan who would pour many hundreds of thousands of pounds into OUR club and happily write all of that “investment” off without a second thought in order to hand over, without requiring any payment, a debt-free club to a group of fans just because he thought they would have the club’s best interests at heart.

But I think that the oft-repeated theory that he “made money out of TUFC” is equally wide of the mark. I don’t have accurate figures, but suspect that if you totted up all the pounds, shillings and pence put in over seventeen years and the pounds, shillings and pence taken out over seventeen years and by the final sale you would show a small gain IF YOU IGNORE THE COST OF MONEY. But if MB had stuck those sums of money into property or even into the Building Society, I am absolutely certain that he would have made a far greater return on his money than tying it up in a football club for all those years.

So he’s not a heroic philanthropist whose love for TUFC over-rode all financial considerations, but it is equally daft to see him as someone who made hay at the club’s expense.

I don’t think that all the figures on the sale are in the public domain but a lot are. From what I have pieced together I reckon that MB probably ended up getting pretty much what he would have got if he’d sold to the right people a year earlier - not significantly more or less. It is true that MB pocketed £300k from Mr Sadler, but he got significantly less for shares sold to the consortium because he sold fewer shares. The theory that he “got paid twice” does not hold water. Incidentally, Roberts only ever made one of his £5k payments so that is neither here nor there. Unfortunately, although the consortium paid less for a 51% shareholding than they would have for an 85% holding, they inherited a load of debt from the disastrous 2006/07 campaign so that when you add that in the total cost was probably a little more than if they’d been in a position to move decisively a year earlier. Effectively then, the big loser was Mr Sadler - £341k down on the deal. The “winner” was neither MB nor the consortium, because all of that money was basically p***ed into the wind – wasted on CR’s expensive habits and by his sheer incompetence. Of course, other than just in money terms, the big losers were all of us as OUR club lost its league status – which certainly would not have happened if the current consortium had been in a position to take over a year earlier.

I still remain utterly unconvinced that a really serious bid was on the table in 2006 other than that from Roberts. When the consortium finally got its ducks in a row, it “came out” in the Herald with details of who and how and why. From the moment I saw that day’s Herald, I was certain that the deal would happen. Apart from anything else, there would have been huge pressure to come to a deal with such a credible group. I still think that a really credible consortium would have played this card a year earlier – if one existed. I have spoken with several consortium members, who have all told me that they would have been interested in doing something in principle earlier, but only really got into a position to actually do something too late in the day to prevent the CR fiasco.

Merse outlined one of MB’s weaknesses in that his overbearing, autocratic, bluff style was never likely to head up a democratic “cabinet of all talents” such as we have now. The contrast between MB and Tony Boyce, whose spirit and style are stamped all over the current setup, could hardly be greater.

But it is far too simplistic to say that we could have seamlessly gone from the heady days of the late 60s to the current setup without any downturn in our fortunes if it weren’t for the horrible oppressive nature of that ogre MB – which is the way things are portrayed in some parts.

Anyone would prefer “the Boyce way” - which is the current way - GIVEN THE CHOICE. It is easy to forget that Tony Boyce was only able to run a highly successful, progressive and ambitious setup for five or six years in the knowledge that former Chairman Arthur Milner was underwriting the finances. When Milner passed away, things changed because they had to – not because anyone wanted them to. I am sure that Tony Boyce did not want to sell all his best players, scrap the Reserves, sack Don Mills and other backroom staff, flog off the club houses, sell Plainmoor’s “fixtures and fittings” to the Council, let the ground fall into disrepair and run the club on a shoestring for 13 years punctuated by regular “crisis” or “begging” public meetings. I am sure he didn’t really want to sell the club to Dave Webb – and I am sure he would not have done if he could have seen an alternative. I am certain that if anyone had the brains and the personality to put together a dream ticket Board of equals of talent and real financial substance during the period 1971-84, it would have been Tony Boyce. But he couldn’t.

After the Webb dictatorship, we tried a democratic Board again and the best man we could come up with to lead it was Lew Pope – bless him. Bateson may have failed to do what Boyce tried and failed to do, but does anyone think that someone like Pope or Benney would have succeeded?

Those who remember the early 90s will remember that MB’s early days tried to embrace the traditional “cabinet style” approach. His first season resulted in promotion, but a draining of cash far in excess of what had been expected. Things weren’t helped by a severe economic downturn – far worse than the current “credit crunch”. A “cabinet style” Board meeting in the Autumn of 1991 requested a “collective responsibility” approach to covering the financial liabilities – and the result was effectively the end of a “Board of equals” to be a replaced by a one-man dictatorship which carried on for another fifteen years.

I am sure lots of people thought about taking over that responsibility over those fifteen years. I am sure some made enquiries. I am sure some “made noises”. I am extremely thankful that in May 2007 a group of people got a lot further than that and got into a position to actually make things happen – rather than just talk about it.

Of course, there is a degree of frustration for anyone taking over a football club that a large chunk of the money put in goes on cleaning up the past, when it would be so much nicer to spend it all on moving forwards. Although you could see the money spent on clearing debts and buying shares as dead money, I would think that the baggage inherited at TUFC was less than the average and far less than at many clubs. Just look at Halifax where you are talking much higher amounts of cash injection than at TUFC just to try to survive three (or maybe even five) levels lower than the Conference. Look at the debts tackled at Cambridge, York and Oxford and the debts miraculously shirked at Exeter. All these clubs had to restart from much further behind the starting line than we did.

I suppose that the mistake that Bateson made, other than acting like a prat half the time, to make him the target of ill-informed vitriol was to effectively play banker to the club. I’m sure I heard quite a few people call him a banker – but my hearing’s not what it used to be. Under him the club didn’t borrow externally and paid its liabilities promptly. The cash put in to achieve this was not the kind of speculation or investment that could be justified in business terms, but neither was it in the spirit of a gift or a donation - he did want it back eventually. What that meant is that back in 2006 rather than the club being for sale for £1 but with millions of pounds of creditors (led by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) for a potential owner to clear, it had an “asking price” to pay which would clear what had been put in. A “fan” can start getting emotional because it means paying money to an individual – particularly an unpopular individual. A businessman can be objective and see that it’s the same but different - he can see that there is a price to pay, one way or another, to take over a football club. That price is usually a lot more than would sensibly be paid as a pure commercial transaction. Ironically, the farce of 2006/07 meant that the consortium ended up paying less than they would have done directly to MB, but more to “other creditors”. As businessmen, I doubt if that made them feel any better. I am sure they wish that they had been in position to make a move a year earlier. I bet Mick Sadler wishes the same!

Many thanks for that first class post Jon, It not only was an excellent read, but I leaned a lot of things I did not know.

Its true that we should look forward, but I do feel its good to look back to where you came from, that way you can appreciate where the club is now. There is not a lot of news to talk about, so at least the thread has helped to keep the forum ticking over, until we can get down to talking about the things we are really here for.