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Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Development More Important Than Football At Hereford Suggests MP


Jesse Norman, MP for Hereford, will lead a debate on lower league football in the House Of Commons on Thursday. He spoke to BBC Hereford and Worcester this afternoon about what he will say in the debate and confirmed that he would be talking about the current problems at Hereford United but also mention the strength of the game in Herefordshire.

"Hereford United has been an important part of the story because the situation has been a disaster for the club and for the fans.

"But it's by no means the only club in Herefordshire. We have 120 junior teams and 40 senior teams.

"Herefordshire FA manages a very thriving youth and adult game in the county.

"I'll be talking about all of those aspects.

"Hereford United itself is a catalogue of what can go wrong when a club is taken over and mistreated.

"That will include the fit and proper test, the behaviour of some of the regulatory authorities, the behaviour of the new owners of Hereford United and what they did, how the Southern League behaved.

"They (the new owners) took over a club which undoubtedly was very indebted and it may be they didn't know the true scale of the debt at the time.

"But they had an opportunity to keep the club which had just avoided relegation in the Conference and they had an opportunity to inject new money and to manage a debt rescheduling process within that context which would have guaranteed good football for Herefordians.

"And in fact Mr Agombar did not post the bond which would have allowed them to continue to play in the Conference. It was relegated by two leagues and the effect of that is that the club has fallen into disarray.

"Ironically it has become harder for the owners to manage the debt situation as a result of that.

"And lot of other issues to do with repayment to people who are owed money who were football creditors who, traditionally have been paid out before non-football creditors.

"There's an awful lot to answer for I think."

The point was then put to the MP that football is more of a business than a sport.

"I think that's a proper concern to be had in parts of the game.

"In the case of Hereford United what comes out strongly is that this is a club that is as much public as private. It's a mistake just to think of it as a private company, it's a public entity because it is the fans who support it, who buy the merchandise, who buy the season tickets, who turn out every other week and go to away games as well.

"It's those people and their concerns that have to recognised.

"Our game has grown up over many decades and the regulatory authorities do continue to see these things and themselves in private terms.

"Frankly the time has come when they need to be paying more attention to public concerns than they have done and one of the areas where you see that is it's starting to look as though the Football Association did not disclose the results of its own fit and proper test publically for three or four weeks when they could have done.

"That may have had a serious effect on the way people would have looked at the voluntary arrangment set up for Hereford United.

"The City of Hereford has been struck over the head very forcible because of the loss of the club. The fans and those around the club has done a brilliant job putting on alternative games but all we really want is the football club back functioning, happy and succeeding."

What about the issue of running the club into the ground and taking the assets?

"That is a serious concern and that concern hasn't been reduced by the fact that Mr Agombar and his associates didn't want to keep the club, despite all their promises, in the Conference Premier.

"If they had done then I think fans would have taken the view that this was someone who was serious and was there to put a guarantee and therefore some money behind his fine words.

"But as soon as you say we're not going to do that, you drop two divisions, then people say well hold on a second what that really means is that you are focusing on the commercial side of it.

"You don't really care about the football because you haven't protected it.

"It looks as though you have a bit of football which keeps it notionally as a football club whilst they really get on with the true focus which is the commercial development of the ground."