Back in the fray among the beleaguered men

As I drove past the azaleas lining the entrance to the Carden Park Hotel, Golf Resort and Spa, near Chester, I wondered at the changes that must have occurred since I last attended a Football League annual meeting. In the 1980s the atmosphere beneath the gilded chandeliers of the Café Royal in the heart of London's West End was electric with intrigue. Power brokers swept through the lobby, pausing only for the briefest of nods and winks towards the members of the media, who were waiting expectantly for scraps tossed to them from the rich man's table laden with television offers and election pledges.

Now, surely, it would be much more constructive, with quiet time set aside for rational debate in the calm of a country retreat. The superpowers had gone, taking the press with them.

The proceedings started well. Everything was slick and quick, as the delegates received multimedia presentations on television, internet and data contracts. The new hierarchy spoke confidently about a bright and vigorous future, building upon a heritage richly captured in film of interviews with supporters attending the recent play-off finals in Cardiff. "No bother", replied a Blackpool fan clutching his pint, "You brainwash the kids by taking them to Bloomfield Road before they've heard of Manchester United. I've played in games of a higher standard than some I've watched over the years!"

Supporters Direct, set up by the government last year to promote supporters' trusts as a means of giving fans a greater say in how their club is run, made their pitch, and we moved smoothly towards the more formal minutiae of such occasions, which is where things got a little sticky.

Much of the onus for explaining the board's proposals fell upon the League's solicitor. Now I have long observed that football club chairmen have little compunction about sticking the boot into a hapless lawyer, working on the principle that, as the clock is running all the time, the swifter he gets a good kicking the better. As it's probably the only Friday afternoon he'll work all year, they reckon they might as well make it memorable for him.

I ventured to try and help in urging the clubs to accept what I thought was the board's eminently sensible proposal to include players as football creditors of defaulting clubs, but my intervention cut no ice with the chairman of Darlington, George Reynolds, who observed, equally reasonably from his standpoint, that, if the Professional Footballers' Association could afford to buy originals by Lowry, they could stump up for their members should hard-pressed clubs go bust. The meeting, concluding that Mr Reynolds was doubtless a man who knew the value of a painting when he spied one on a wall, went along with him.

Mr Reynolds established an early rapport with Leyton Orient's chairman Barry Hearn, an entrepreneur who approaches most issues from ground formerly occupied by Genghis Khan and Mussolini. Was it coincidental that one of the few proposals to succeed was Wolverhampton Wanderers' amendment to allow teams to wear black shirts? All in all, the board did not have a convincing time. One of their members, Ian Stott, hastily moved from Oldham Athletic to Cardiff City on the eve of the meeting. It is not recorded whether he was accompanied by his butler, but I should advise him that the chairmen do not readily take to directors hopping from club to club.

Then the solicitor compounded his misery by referring to the Football Association as a higher authority, the only time in living memory that the existence of any superior being has been acknowledged in a League gathering.

It was little surprise that the move for two-up and two-down with the Conference foundered, for many lower division clubs can only envisage a limited future. No one is more beleaguered than today's Third Division chairman, saddled with a sizeable overdraft and contemplating the demise of the transfer fee, as he battles to keep football alive in his town. Even Macclesfield Town and Rushden & Diamonds, both of whom had been subject to the vagaries of the present limited promotion system, could sympathise at the lack of a firm long-term "parachute" arrangement.

While checking out, one chairman gleefully informed me they'd given the board a really hard time the year before. I concluded that, this year, there had only been one or two bloody noses rather than blood on the walls. Unlike the representatives of the cities of Bradford, Coventry and Manchester, who nevertheless stood firm alongside their smaller brethren, I was glad to be back among "the caretakers of the game's heritage".

grahamkelly@btinternet.com