In his column in this morrning's Independent local journalist Brian Viner has written about last Monday's meeting at Leomminster which was meant to be addressed by Barry Fry of Peterborough United.
Fry couldn't make the meeting (see earlier story) and Graham Turner, chairman of Hereford United stepped in.
Happily, another man coming to hear Fry was Graham Turner, the owner, chairman, former manager and grand panjandrum of Hereford United. Turner agreed to step in, and treated the Rankin Club faithful to two hours of fascinating footballing insights and anecdotes. So nobody went home feeling short-changed as a consequence of the Peterborough board meeting, except possibly Darren Ferguson.
And just to bring one more ruthless football club chairman into this tale of a Monday night in Middle England, Turner told us some great stories about "Deadly" Doug Ellis, whom he served as Aston Villa manager in the mid-1980s. Never happier than when scouting an obscure and potentially cheap player, Ellis used to insist on accompanying Turner to games in Scotland, taking sandwiches for both of them so they wouldn't have to pay service-station prices, and invariably offering to drive the return-leg of the journey if Turner would drive up. "But then after the game he'd always ask me to do the driving just to get us out of Glasgow," Turner said, "and by the time we got out of Glasgow he was always sound asleep."
One Sunday morning in 1986 Ellis invited Turner to his home in Little Aston, suggested that they pop into the garden to smell the roses, and fired him. Turner's replacement was Billy McNeill, who knew the outskirts of Glasgow better than Turner, but had an even shorter managerial tenure before Ellis fired him, too. It's a dispiritingly familiar tale, an impulsive chairman undermining the stability of his own club with short-sighted firing and hiring. Darragh MacAnthony should take note.
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Next: Away At Oxford City On Tuesday November 4th At 7.45pm