Jon Blakely's Canadian Chronicles

Friday 17 May, 2002

Administration is not a game

Reading around the various message boards and football sites, there seems to be two sides to the Bradford City issue.

Side 1...

...are the Bradford City fans, almost to a man on the message boards the fans are Mr Optimistic, believing (somehow) that The Chairman has a clever plan up his sleeve and that this is all a big scheme to get Carbone and the like off the wage bill. - Verdict - Administration is some sort of highly thought out plan to come out stronger.

Side 2...

...is the news sites that have the snippets of information and official quotes from the antagonists in City's current plight. - Verdict - City could die.

"City could be expunged" was one headline which really did warrant further reading. They explored the fact that if a single contract is canceled (and let's face it they will start with the big one) then Bradford City could well be expelled from the Football League. A frightening thought, so City survive but play football in the non-league scene.

What worries me is that no one is going to want to purchase City as a going concern if Carbone and Ward (to name but two) are still relieving the clubs coffers of large amounts of cash. History says that rarely do Administrators let the previous incumbent, in this case Mr Richmond, buy the businesses back that they once owned. So who does that leave?

The Main Website - Bradfordcityfc.co.uk - is showing main headlines today of : Where to buy a flight, Owen scores for England, Jamie plays for Reggae-Boyz, U-21 news and the South Korea coach on England's chances - Oh no that's just gone in favour of Kieran Dyer's news.

All well and good, but this is a club in dire straits and the fans need to have a place to go to know what is going on.

This is no longer a game, no longer a game of blaming manager's who sat by and let Richmond spend the cash, no longer a game whereby we all have a good laugh at City's close escape because Mr Richmond had a great plan to rescue the club.

This is serious. The club may not survive this.

I used to work at Aldershot football club, and used to go and watch them every Saturday when my YTS wages wouldn't get me up to Bradford every weekend. They died and I tell you to the very day before they stopped existing each and every fan thought it was a game, some sort of smoke screen to allow the club to come through stronger. They didn't, and the day they died was a very sad day to all those connected with the club, but because they were not a fashionable club with much of a history, nobody really cared.

Outside of this club, does anybody care? I hope there is a good football loving, clever, well-off business man out there doing his sums now and thinking, Bradford City...Hmmm I could do something there!

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