Philip Carter interview

[Louis]

Some parts are pretty interesting. This interview is from 1988 to mark the centenary of the Football League (Carter was President at the time):

 

The twelfth President of the Football League is the man who defied a ninety-eight-year-old tradition by becoming the first League President never to have served on the Management Committee before taking office.

In most other respects, however, Philip Carter fits perfectly into the distinguished line of League leaders. He is the third in succession to have been born in Scotland, the third to have come from the city of Liverpool, and the second to be associated with Everton. He also shares a similar background with the founder. William McGregor was born in Scotland and started out in life as a retailer. The same is true of Philip Carter.

Carter's days north of the border were brief, however, (as were Jack Dunnett's). Born in Glasgow in May 1927 he moved to Liverpool as a two-year-old, and like most Liverpudlians was blooded young. He saw his first match at Goodison Park at the age of four, and says he's been thinking about the game ever since.

As a youth at Waterloo Grammar School, he spent more time on the playing fields than on the Goodison terraces. Then, after the war, he was conscripted into the Fleet Air Arm as a pilot. Some might say that he has been piloting ever since. Once out of uniform he joined the retailing division of Littlewoods (the pools company), rising to store manager, then chief buyer and eventually, in 1976, to managing director.

From the 1950s onwards Littlewoods was practically a branch office of Everton. The company's millionaire owner, Sir John

Moores, became chairman of Everton, and the two boards have been closely linked ever since. When Carter became managing director at Littlewoods in 1976, his predecessor had been an Everton director, then in 1987 his own successor at Littlewoods was also elected to the board. Carter himself made the inevitable progression on to the Everton board in 1973, and in 1977 became chairman, thus following in the footsteps of his mentor, Sir John Moores, who also led both Everton and Littlewoods at the same time.

Men from a pools company occupying Will Cuffs seat at Goodison? The old master would have been horrified. He fought the Pools War in 1936 to keep companies like Littlewoods out of football.

But no doubt even Cuff might have softened once he had espied the trophy cabinet. At one point it was empty. Everton had reached a low point, near the foot of the division and with crowds well below 20,000. Another chairman might have sacked the manager, but Philip Carter stuck with his man, and his man, Howard Kendall, responded.

In 1983 the Toffeemen put their sticky patch behind them and twice wrested the League Championship away from their neighbours at Anfield. Everton also won the FA Cup and the European Cup Winners' Cup, and were runners-up in the League, the FA Cup (twice) and the Milk Cup, all in the space of three hectic years.

Success at Goodison did Carter's prestige no harm at all as he embarked in 1982 upon the road which -would eventually lead to the presidency. As we read in Chapter 3 3, he began chairing informal gatherings of First Division chairmen who were unhappy with League affairs. From an original group of six, the numbers grew to ten, and then Carter found himself chairing meetings of all the Full Members.

As the League lurched from one low point to another in 1985, Philip Carter soon emerged as the leader of the discontents. He was young (ish), successful (with a CBE to boot), and after taking early retirement from Littlewoods in 1983, he was also able to devote plenty of time to the League's cause.

'One has got to have a sense of purpose,' is Carter's creed. 'There's no point in actually being involved with an organization if you're merely turning up to rubber stamp somebody else's initiatives. One should try to improve any organization you're part of. I didn't make a conscious decision to lead a breakaway, but it was a conscious decision to lead, or to help to lead the First Division clubs who wanted to air their views.'

Before he became President, Carter's first official League duty was as a member of the Television Negotiating Committee which hammered out a four-year deal with the BBC and ITV, worth £19.8 million, only to see it tossed out by the clubs in February 1985. That experience alone would have given him some indication of the frustrations and difficulties of League management.

Then followed the disastrous events of May 1985 at Bradford, Birmingham and Brussels. Pressure on the existing leadership grew, and Carter became a focus of the so-called Super League movement. The leading clubs wanted a bigger slice of the cake, a bigger say in League affairs, and wanted it so badly that they threatened to form their own competition.

Not even Charles Sutcliffe or Will Cuff could have bullied their way out of a threat like this one. As we have seen, up until the last hours of the negotiations the very future of the dear old League hung in the balance; but tradition, the promptings of Gordon Taylor, good sense and compromise finally prevailed. Carter was no longer a Super Leaguer but a Football Leaguer, and in May 1986 he became the twelfth President. He had just turned fifty-nine.

Early retirement for Philip Carter has proved to be the equivalent of most people's idea of a full-time job. Apart from being President of the League, a Vice President of the FA and chairman of Everton, he is chairman of the Merseyside Tourism Board, chairman of the Croxteth Trust, chairman of the Empire Trust (a Liverpool theatre), and a member of the Merseyside Development Corporation. He also helps to raise money for Liverpool's disadvantaged communities.

From all this we can gather two things about Philip Carter. Firstly, he has rather a soft spot for Liverpool. A man of his achievement; might easily have been lured to London. Secondly, he is not just a businessman. After leaving Littlewoods he could have joined any number of company boards. There were certainly offers. He could have concentrated on increasing his capital, or he could have simply put his feet up and enjoyed a well-earned break Instead, he dashes around Merseyside and the country from meeting to meeting doing work for which he is paid not a penny.

William McGregor and Charles Sutcliffe would have approved of Philip Carter, except perhaps in one respect. They were both Liberals, while Carter is chairman of the Liverpool Conservative Association. But, as he admits himself, he has often backed unlikely causes. He took on Everton when they were at a low ebb, and he embraces Toryism in an age when the Government is about as popular in Liverpool as a blockage in the Mersey tunnel.

So Carter is a true blue, in both football anc politics. But he can be said to be on the 'caring" side of modern Conservatism; a pragmatism who is quite willing to deal with Liverpool's council if it will benefit the city. And Margaret Thatcher, says one who has dealt with Philip Carter, the man is for turning. He will listen to both sides of an argument, he will weigh up the evidence, and he will always come up with a decision. Sometimes, just sometimes. that decision will reflect a change of heart (as in the contretemps with Robert Maxwell in early 1988).

Carter is also a practised delegator, a team leader who likes a good argument only as long as the opponent is armed with the facts. If not, he becomes impatient and he will flatten the opposition with his own set of facts. (This, of course was Charles Sutcliffe's forte.)
Philip Carter is very much a man of the modern age. He has learnt the efficacy of combing public charm with hard-nosed practicality. He speaks a language which men like : and McKenna would find quite incomprehensible. Football has become 'the product', clubs are now 'outlets'. These are the words of a man who has spent forty years in retailing which is probably just as well, because the President of the League nowadays has to be as much a marketing expert as he also has to be a diplomat.

In private, Philip Carter is said to be a difficult man to get to know. Some of his critics call him 'a cold fish'. Others say he is actually shy. But amongst friends, the twelfth President it is apparently the life and soul of a party. He loves good restaurants and he loves entertaining.

What little spare time he has from his 'early retirement' is spent with his wife and family three children and four grandchildren, to whom he is patently devoted), in his garden, or at the opera, ballet or concerts (mostly the Liverpool Philharmonic and preferably Mozart, Wagner or Sibelius). His reputation is like his attire - always correct and quite spotless.
Philip Carter is a thoroughly decent sort of chap who manages to be powerful and amicable at the same time. 'He's a winner', said one man with whom he had worked for thirty years.

This is just as well for the Football League as it enters its second century. Our hundred years of history have shown that whatever else the League desperately requires, leadership is of prime importance. All the great Presidents have led fearlessly and tirelessly. They have had to make unpleasant decisions and face a barrage of criticism from self-opinionated club chairmen, while at the same time putting on a brave face to the Management Committee and a friendly face to the world. This was as true in 1888 as it is in 1988.

Despite his being outvoted during the Maxwell affair and despite the disappointing reception given to some of the centenary events, few people close to the game doubt that Philip Carter has the energy and the self-confidence to tackle the difficult years ahead. Equally, few can deny that some of the issues facing football would be daunting in the extreme for whoever occupied the President's shoes. To conclude our tale of the past century, therefore, we asked the twelfth President for his views on the present state and future hopes of the oldest Football League in the world, in the earnest hope that his comments would be of interest not only now, but also when it comes to celebrating the bicentenary in 2088.

After numerous incidents involving spectators at League grounds between 1980 and 1985, culminating in the death of a boy at Birmingham and the thirty-nine deaths at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, it might appear that the football hooligan has won. He has driven away thousands of spectators, forced most clubs to put up security fencing, persuaded three to ban all away fans (Luton, Torquay and Colchester), and caused such havoc in Europe that League clubs were banned from European competitions in 198j. Hooliganism has been on the League's agenda since 196$, but only in 1985 did the government take a serious interest, by ordering the League to implement membership schemes at each club. At first they called for 100 per cent membership, but in time the football authorities were able to convince them that this would be impossible to implement without killing the game. Now we have partial membership schemes, many of which have been unpopular notjust with the fans, but with the police also. What is your personal view?

Philip Carter: We had consultations with the police, and came to the conclusion that membership schemes could help with crowd control. We also managed to agree with the Minister for Sport (at that time Richard Tracey) that rather than full membership we'd aim for a voluntary target of 50 per cent membership, that is, half of each ground being designated for members. That's not so different to the situation you find at cricket grounds.

Not every ground has the right lay-out to achieve the figure of 50 per cent. Equally, I think the clubs and the police in many cases are concerned that because they've had no crowd disorders for years, the introduction of something new may in actual fact cause problems.

So we've treated each case on its merits and local circumstances, and so far every club has given us its full co-operation. By September 1987 we had forty-one clubs able to enforce the 50 per cent members-only target, twenty-one clubs have reached between 40 and 50 per cent, and all the others have done what they can with the approval of their local police authorities.

Supporters must not think that it is some kind of gimmick, though. We've gone into the question very thoroughly. We've had in-depth discussions with all the parties concerned, and I feel supporters must give the membership schemes a fair trial.

But the Government's original concept that membership schemes were somehow the best way to combat hooliganism is quite erroneous. I think they're merely part of a total package of activities which is aimed at discouraging the hooligan element.

Let's also look at the positive side of these schemes. They can help to bring the club and the supporter much closer together. They enable the club to offer members all sorts of attractive advantages: preference for Cup tickets, better facilities, reductions on souvenirs and other goods.

Lots of people become members of organizations they support. Theatres, golf clubs, cricket clubs, whatever; there's a stronger relationship and tie than if you're just a casual attender. Ultimately, there may be a base that we in the Football League can develop collectively. A reciprocal membership scheme which covers all League clubs is one possibility for the future.

We are already looking into the possibility of a central computerized system for reciprocal membership, but at an estimated cost of £j million (about £70,000 per club) we have to ask whether it would be really justified, especially as we cannot be sure it would solve the problem of football-related hooliganism.

We must be careful not to deter the casual spectator, and there are far more of these than there are trouble makers. Our aim is to attract customers, not to make it harder for them to attend.

We think we've driven most football hooliganism away from the grounds. Of course there are exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions rather than regular occurrences.

Of course, I'd rather have no restrictions at all. We are supposed to have a free society in which people have the choice to go to the cinema, the theatre, the bowling alley, and equally they should have the choice to go t: football. That is the ideal scenario, and you can't get away from that. But the practice-reality is maybe different entirely.

Every generation of football fans seems to complain that the game lacks the star players it used to have. t It was no different in 1908, 1958 or 1988. But in recent years the loss of talented and popular individuals like Glenn Hoddle to Monaco and Ian Rush to Juventus has suggested that even the richest League clubs cannot guarantee to hold on to their best players. Will this 'skill drain' to Europe grow, or is it, as in the early 1960s, just a passing phase?

Philip Carter: At the moment, UEFA and FIFA rules state that each club can have only two foreign players in the team at any one time although they can have more on their books. In 1986/7, for example, Barcelona had British strikers - Mark Hughes, Gary Lineker ind Steve Archibald - but only two could play in the first team. The EEC wants us to lift those restrictions as part of their "harmanization" programme, so that footballers, like all other workers in Europe, will have free movement between member countries.

We in Britain, that is the League, FA and PFA agree with other footballing bodies in Europe that free movement would be disastrous for the game, so we've suggested as an interim measure, to keep the EEC happy, that a limit of three foreign players per team be introduced. But the EEC might still call for it to be raised to five by 1992, and then maybe eventually to end all restrictions, which obviously football will resist vigorously.

As far as the Football League is concerned, our worry is that certain domestic leagues are to be denuded of their major stars. You've only got to look at Denmark, where they've re got no domestic league to speak of because all their best players are playing in other countries.

You've got major companies owning clubs in the italian League, like Fiat at Juventus or Pirelli at AC Milan, using them as advertising as opposed to football vehicles, and therefore they have much greater muscle in attracting foreign stars.

It's not only skill we are losing. It's the fact that, as for a big-hit West End musical, once the star performer leaves the show it loses of its gloss and attraction. I think the elimination of stars in any form of entertainment must reduce the appeal to the public. This applies to football just as much.

But the Football League is not going to stop producing star players just because they might eventually be going abroad for a year or two.

If you're a large company with a very sophisticated training scheme, you know that you're going to lose some of your people eventually to rival organizations. Therefore, you organize yourself accordingly. That happens all the time in football, not just because of transfers but through injury, loss of form and so on.

Nevertheless, our ultimate concern is to improve the quality of the game and make it more attractive to the public, and we cannot hide the fact that the loss of stars to Europe is a major concern both to us and to the PFA.

So far, not many foreign players have done well in the League. Mirandinha and Ossie Ardiles stand out as exceptions. Might the League be a more interesting competition if we followed the Spanish, French and Italians by importing more talent?

Philip Carter: As we are, theoretically, the most productive, or practically the most productive League in the world, I'd be concerned that by introducing more foreign players we might be hampering the development of our own.

Of course, the equivalent of a Platini or a Maradona would be welcome, to brighten up our ideas and excite the crowds. But if the imported player is merely a competent left-back or whatever, I'm not too sure if it's right to introduce him simply so people can say: 'My goodness, we've got a Brazilian here!' If that's the case, then marketing of the team is being put before the quality of its play.

At the same time, I think the League should be proud of supplying Europe with some of its top players. If you consider, we already supply the bulk of players for five national squads: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Eire. Maybe we should be worried if foreign clubs didn't covet our players.

Do you think part of the answer would be for major companies to take over leading clubs in the Football League and sponsor them in the more direct manner found on the Continent? Wouldn't League clubs then be able to keep their best players?

Philip Carter: That's perfectly feasible, but I think it's highly improbable. For a start, the whole structure of the League's organization would have to be changed, and that could happen only with a two-thirds majority vote. I think you'd find it very difficult to get the majority of smaller clubs to agree to letting in major companies like that.

A second major difficulty would be the tax situation in this country. I'm not sure, for example, that Newcastle United's sponsors would have been able to afford to attract Kevin Keegan as they did in 1982 had he been in his prime. I don't think a local sponsor or a national sponsor would necessarily have kept Gary Lineker here.

Because of the tax laws here, the cost of trying to match his real and potential earnings abroad would have been absolutely astronomical by comparison. Barcelona can afford the Linekers of this world because they have a stadium with a capacity of 108,000, and of that total perhaps 100,000 are members who all pay up front. They positively embrace the idea of membership. So Barcelona may have £10 million in the bank from season tickets and membership fees before they've kicked a ball.

We simply don't have that situation over here, and maybe we never will. Just to take my own club as an example, Everton has a capacity of just under 53,000, less than half Barcelona's. And the ticket prices are well under half the price.

Do you predict, therefore, that if League football is to maintain standards and hang on to its best players, the public is going to have to pay more to watch ?

Philip Carter: By our standards, continental fans do pay much more. But equally, if people want to pay for entertainment in this country, they will. How much did they pay in 1987 to see the pop singer Madonna at Wembley? £16 for a place on the terraces. They could watch a match at Wembley for less than half that.
The difference is that with soccer talking about over two thousand games a season in the League alone, not including cup competitions, and these games can attract only so many million people at a certain price. It has to be good value, otherwise people won't go.

I think football is exceptionally good value and I think that's why we still command crowds. It's a marvellous entertainment, is delivered to the public at a price which the majority, though I accept not all, can afford.

In 1981 Queen's Park Rangers were given permission to install an artificial pitch at Loftus Road. Bold, though this experiment undoubtedly was, at the time the technology was insufficiently advanced to provide a suitable surface for football. Since then substantial advances have been made in the development of artificial pitches, and three more League clubs have folllowed QPR's exmaple: Luton, Preston and Oldham. Leicester City and your own club, Everton, led a move to ban these pitches from the First Division and although this was unsuccessful, the league has placed a moratorium on further instalments until at least 1990. Do you still feel that synthetic pitches are unsuitable for League football?

Philip Carter: First of all, I don't agree that artificial pitches have reached a level of quality which makes them nearly acceptable. I deplore the fact that in 1981 the League allowed their use in competitive matches before any proper study had been undertaken. Like any other research and development, testing should have taken place outside the mainstream of activity. A large department store wouldn’t put a product on their shelves right around the country without having tested it somewhere else.
Snooker players would never be asked to experiment with a new kind of baize in the course of an important competitive match.
The concern I have is that clubs may end up caring more about the financial advantages of an artificial pitch than about the quality of the product they're offering the public.

The Football League has an overall responsibility for football. We have to be sure that the type of product that the clubs are delivering is the type that the public wants.

The question is, do the public want the game of football as it is played on artificial pitches, which is, no one can deny, very different from the traditional game on grass? The fans obviously don't want it at QPR, because the club is digging it up in 1988 and putting down real grass. The fans simply didn't like what they saw.

Some clubs would argue, however, that they need to put down an artificial pitch in order to open up their •utilities to the community and save themselves from financial ruin.

Philip Carter: I've yet to have it proven to me that these extra activities actually do produce sufficient revenue to be worthwhile. Nevertheless, if clubs do decide that they wish to take that route to financial survival, then all right, I don't wish to stop them.

But I don't think we can allow those clubs to impinge on other clubs who are producing the right quality and who are managing to cope without the need for plastic pitches.

As chairman of a First Division club, and as one partly responsible for the quality of League football, I would argue that if clubs in the lower divisions want plastic pitches then the First Division clubs can say: 'Sorry, we're grass only; if you want to be promoted you must lay grass.'

But there is a further element which concerns me just as much. I've never known a multi-purpose sports stadium anywhere in this country which has not been heavily subsidized by the local council. I've never known one to stand on its own two feet yet.

Essentially, therefore, you have local authorities trying to gain for themselves municipal sports centres on the cheap. They're saying: 'We'll bale you out or we'll take some equity in your football club and we'll put down an
artificial pitch, but in return you must now do this, that and the other to satisfy our needs.' And suddenly you find that football is subservient to every other activity in that locality, and instead of them actually building their own custom-built, multi-purpose sports stadium, they've done it at a fraction of the price, simply by shelling out the cost of an artificial pitch.

But you see, the whole argument might have changed in ten or fifteen years. There have been tremendous advances in the development of natural grass pitches. And who's to say that in a few years we won't have the ability to cover stadia?

Do you think either the administration of the League or its public reputation suffers from the headquarters being sited at Lytham St Annes?

Philip Carter: Firstly, I think criticism of the League over this issue has died down considerably in recent years. Of course, if you were starting from scratch you wouldn't put the League offices in Lytham, but in this technological age you can have your office anywhere because communication between the outlets and the office is simplicity itself.

On the second point, however, I think from a public image point of view any large national organization, in sport, industry or any field, would automatically think of basing itself in one of the major centres: London, Birmingham, Manchester or any of the large cities.

Various presentations have been made by towns or cities wanting the League to set up shop within their boundaries, and a sub-committee from the Management Committee is looking into the possibilities. Birmingham is certainly one of the strongest candidates so far. Apart from its merits as a city, we can't forget the fact that the League's founder lived and worked in Birmingham. Manchester, too, has very strong links with our history and traditions.

Rather more important than the location of the headquarters is the question of how the League can go forward into the next century. To help us resolve that question, during the centenary celebrations of 1987-8 we have set up a charitable trust which we hope will eventually enable us to raise sufficient money to enter into some sort of development which goes beyond simply moving the offices.

One of our ideas is to build a Centenary Centre. This would provide areas for meetings and conferences. There would also be all-weather outdoor and indoor training facilities for managers, coaches and players which would be available both to League clubs and to young players all year round. We would also consider a museum of football.

But we won't be rushing into any hasty decisions on this. The location has to be right and the price has to be acceptable to the clubs. We're not allowed by law to use money from the charitable trust to spend on new offices -it can be used only to finance the other social and educational developments — so we'd still have to find extra money if we wanted the offices to become part of this Centenary Centre. And we've got to make sure our planning and motives are sufficiently sound to make any new development worthy of carrying the League banner into the twenty-first century.

Most sporting events nowadays are sponsored, be they Test Matches, Grand Nationals or even sedate bridge championships. But purists would argue that the Football League, which has survived so long and has such a tremendous worldwide reputation, should maintain its dignity by steering clear of sponsorship. Having concluded the deal with Barclays Bank in August 1987, you presumably don't agree.

Philip Carter: Sport needs money from outside sources. That is a fact of life in a free country. The League simply cannot afford to turn down a good offer - providing, of course, that the company doing the offering is the right one -not just to help League football to survive, but to help it to improve.

Remember, we are talking about the national game. It is natural for us to want to preserve and improve it, just as it is natural for a commercial interest to want to become associated with us.

Barclays have branches all over the country; so does the Football League. And even in smaller towns with a Fourth Division club and gates of 2000, that club still has tremendous local importance. Through their branches, Barclays can get more people involved. And what a tremendous compliment to the League that such an important international bank should wish to tie its name to ours. I don't think sponsorship cheapens the League. I think it enhances football. It enhances both sides.

You were part of the Television Negotiating Committee whose efforts to reach an agreement with the television companies were scuppered by the clubs in February 1985. We have already looked at how damaging that rejection was to the League's interests, but what about the future? In your opinion, does football really need television, or does it damage the game?

Philip Carter: I'm quite clear about television. I think that a correctly balanced presentation of televised football, a blend of live and recorded games, is an essential part of projecting football to the public. It's a form of advertising, it promotes interest in the game. Rather like those trailers of films or shows, it whets people's appetites and provides a regular reminder that football is happening, live and exciting.

I think the whole question of TV is going to change dramatically in the next few years, because we face the gradual introduction of cable and satellite television. This will provide a form of competition to the existing channels. We could have a sport-only channel, for instance, with plenty of time for live or recorded football — not just League football, but from all over the world.

We may see greater regionalization, so that each region shows its own games to a local audience, as happens in the United States; as happens now, in local radio.

Certainly, if those sorts of changes take place, then the sponsorship and advertising possibilities will be far greater than they are at the moment, and we in the League will have a wider scope for negotiating separate deals. It may well be that one channel or a cable company will buy the rights to the Littlewoods Challenge Cup, for instance. It may well be that the League will, through its new outlet, World Wide Soccer, be able to package its own programme and sell it to one of the main channels,as it is now doing overseas.

All those possibilities are there for the future, and I don't think they're that far away, frankly. We are already selling matches abroad through Thames Television International, who film selected games, edit and package them under our auspices. At the moment, the TV package goes to more than forty countries, which shows how popular the League still is abroad.

We also have to be careful that the British public has enough of its own football to watch on television, before satellite television swamps them with games from around the world.

We have to persuade the television companies all over again that League football is worth a prime-time slot on a Saturday night. Football is the national game, and yet we have allowed ourselves to be manoeuvred into a situation in which the television companies are dictating the terms. We must regain the initiative.

Almost from the day it was born, the League has enjoyed a wavering relationship with the FA. Sometimes the two bodies have worked hand in hand, sometimes they've shaped up for a fight. In the latter event, someone has invariably come forward to suggest that the League should break out on its own, or even take over the Association altogether. Might this ever occur?

Philip Carter: Absolutely not. As guardians of the professional game in England, we could not possibly, nor would we want to, have any jurisdiction over the 40,000 other clubs around the country. The two organizations are complementary and interdependent, but they each have separate roles to play.

The FA is the major body representing football throughout England, and it's the body which represents us in the rest of the world, through UEFA and through FIFA. There is no way that the League could take on that responsibility, and any suggestion that we would even attempt to, is nonsense. We're not equipped to do it.

Of course, you're going to have differences of opinion and differences of emphasis. But the present FA chairman, Bert Millichip, has stated publicly that since the new Management Committee came into power in 1986, he feels that the League and FA have never worked so closely together.

I do think, however, that the League should be better represented at the FA in those areas which relate to the League. Beyond that, it should be represented only in areas in which the FA feels that a League presence would be beneficial. But these are minor quibbles. Otherwise, the League is totally bound up within the FA. I see no reason to change the nature of the relationship.

The fact is that we must work together for the mutual benefit of football. And I don't accept any argument that somehow the League's authority is being weakened. It is up to us to see that it isn't. If we're not strong enough to see that our particular battle is fought in the right quarters, then the problem is in our camp, not the FA's.

Part of the reason for restructuring the League, for which you campaigned so hard, was to increase public interest. That has certainly been the case with the end-of-season play-offs, but the public at large might argue that the introduction of the Full Members' Cup is hardly a great attraction.

Philip Carter: The main reasoning behind reducing the First Division to twenty clubs was to enable us to introduce a third cup competition. We already have the FA Cup and the Littlewoods Cup, so a third cup on the same lines would hardly be of interest to the public. I accept that, which is why we proposed the British Cup, involving English, Scottish and maybe Irish clubs, along the lines of the original Texaco Cup. But if we have a British Cup, then hostile elements in FIFA can turn round and say that in future Great Britain should send only one joint team to the World Cup. Or UEFA could restrict entry to the Cup Winners' Cup to one team, the winners of the British Cup. So we have to be careful there, and that is why we have been experimenting with the Full Members' (now Simod) Cup, and will continue to do so until we get the right formula.

The other point about reducing the First Division is that it will enable us to play every League game on a Saturday. Even with an extra cup competition, that should also give us two free weeks which the England team can use for pre-match preparations.

So the restructuring has two elements. A new competition to compensate for loss of League fixtures, plus a boost to our international prospects.

One of the ten demands made by the so-called 'Super Leaguers' was the introduction of automatic promotion and relegation from the Vauxhall Conference (or Alliance Premier League). Why, as chairman of a First Division club, were you so insistent on this?

Philip Carter: We wanted to complete the pyramid of football, so that any one of the 40,000 clubs in the country could, on merit, eventually make its way through the minor leagues up to the Football League itself. From that point of view, automatic promotion and relegation has put us in touch with the rest of football and helped revitalize the game. Now, in theory, any team, however humble, can try to 'do a Wimbledon', as it were. There's nothing like competition and incentive to improve football.

The old system of re-election was very difficult for the League clubs to handle, because it couldn't honestly be viewed as fair. It was extremely difficult for the chairmen to have the responsibility of deciding whether one of four clubs was going to be thrown out.

And let's be absolutely clear about this. Automatic promotion and relegation was in point of fact proposed first by the lower division clubs, not by me. I think that in the past, most First Division club chairmen hardly bothered whether one club or another stayed in or out of the Fourth Division, unless they were local. But the Associate Members cared sufficiently to suggest that we changed the system. The credit for the change must be theirs.

One hundred years is a long time for any organisation to survive, especially one which has been subjected to such a constant stream of abuse and criticism from all quarters. Do you see any reason to believe that that criticism will abate in the future?

Philip Carter: I do feel optimistic about the future, because I think that everybody in football now, finally, realizes that we're facing a different challenge. The requirement of the past just to produce twenty-two players on a Saturday afternoon and expect people to roll up to watch them has long since disappeared.

We're being forced to become more professional in the projection of the game itself. We've now appointed a marketing director, and we're also examining ways in which we can remodel the League secretariat, not just to improve the competition but to improve the ways in which we relate to other organizations, be it concerning football, television, sponsorship, local government or whatever.

It all boils down to how we develop, use, promote and market our product. We have to be more aware on a collective as well as on a regional and local basis of what it is the public wants and demands out of football, apart from purely the match itself.

That means tailoring our stadia to the needs of ordinary people, not always to be thinking of how we can police a violent minority. We want to take fences down, not build more. For example, I think it's quite incredible that we've started this whole wave of family enclosures at football.

People talk glibly about how we've lost all the families. It's not true; we've never had families at football grounds. Fathers and sons maybe, but not families. But now we're actually attracting mothers, daughters, fathers and sons, in spite of all the adverse comment about the game. That must be a positive move as far is we're concerned.

I think it's also encouraging to see how we're attracting sponsors of repute; the media want our product, and at long last the Government is interested in us too. I know its interest was sparked off by the Bradford fire and the crowd problems in 1985, but I think that in time the Government's concern will crow once it starts to realize the benefits of the game itself.

So, overall, after we hit rock bottom in May 1985, I now get the impression that the public is getting behind the game again. It's difficult to quantify. One could argue that an extra one million through the turnstiles in 1986/7 is a measure of our success, but it goes beyond statistics. I think people generally talk about football rather more kindly in 1988 than they did in 1985, or even 1978 perhaps. They can see that we're trying as hard as we can to make football better all round.

Do you think football will ever attract back the so-called missing millions?

Philip Carter: Success in the League for the next decade or more will not, I think, be measured in terms of increased attendances. You see, we could attract a few million more spectators and yet still not solve our other more
basic problems. More fans won't necessarily help us to become more viable, though of course I'd love to see every ground in the League bulging to capacity.

The capacity of most grounds will continue to go down as we increase levels of comfort and add more seats and membership areas. We've been doing this for years, and while gates have declined, our income has steadily risen. So I don't think we necessarily want to use old-fashioned yardsticks. Just one example. Everyone loves the FA Cup, and rightly so. It will always be the most hallowed knock-out competition in England. But the economic facts are that in 1986/7 the Little-woods Cup was more lucrative for most League clubs than the FA Cup.

A major thread running throughout our history has been the concept of the League as a family; sometimes living in perfect harmony, sometimes squabbling, but essentially united by a common interest. At one stage, you led a movement which almost culminated in the break-up of that family. Now that the internecine quarrel is over (for the time being at least), and you are now at the head of the family, do you see it surviving much longer?

Philip Carter: I think the family is safe. I'd like to think that the structure of ninety-two clubs can be maintained, for all the reasons which have been stated time and time again — that you've got the nurseries of the future and the dormitories of the past and so on - but I am concerned that other issues may emerge which would cause the structure to be changed. The obvious one is artificial pitches.

And as with attendances, we shouldn't be hampered by the old yardsticks. We can maintain the structure without necessarily adhering to that magic number of ninety-two. We must be practical about this. Some clubs will not survive for ever, and no club has a divine right to remain in business.

But I do believe in the structure of the League as it stands, and I would be wary of years will be just as exciting, controversial and fascinating as the first century.

So I look forward to the future with confidence. There's no doubt in my mind that football will continue to be the game of the people, or that League football will remain the biggest spectator sport in the country, and I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to contribute to the greatest game in the world, and to have been one of 'the Men Who Made it'.