Autobiography

I can remember Douglas Craig, the chairman
of York City, pontificating on how important it
was that the smaller clubs retained their equal
vote and that they should stand firm and not
capitulate to the bullies at the larger clubs. It
was like watching King Canute trying to hold
back the tide. While Canute lost his battle with
the sea, York no longer have a vote as they’ve
slipped out of the league.
Attitudes like that actually meant it was the
smaller clubs who broke up the league, not the
other way round. How can you have Darlington
with one vote and Arsenal with one vote? The
smaller clubs were intransigent, believing the
breakaway was a veiled threat and would not
happen but inevitably it did. Fortunately, a
wave of common sense then swept over the
remaining divisions, and I was involved with
the restructuring of the voting system.
The previous arrangement meant that each
division had a representative on the board,
enabling Divisions Two and Three to outvote
the larger clubs in Division One by two votes to
one. It was this structure that forced the
Premier League to break away in the first
place. Had this format remained, the First
Division would have been forced to follow suit.
Things had to change, and they did.
Three positions on the board were given to the
First Division, two to the Second and one to
the Third, with the chairman receiving the
casting vote. A proposal by the First Division to
split television revenue (giving the First
Division 80 per cent, the Second 12 per cent
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