Why will the media not hold the FA to account?

By Tony Attwood

Day after day, as anyone who ever glances at a newspaper will attest, sports journalists sharpen the knives, and night after night as they prepare the next day’s publication they throw them at their favourite targets: mostly specific clubs and specific managers.

Yet at the same time, some targets that really should be called to account big time are left alone.   I wonder why.

Take the current big story: the Football Association has just had its four year public funding (dished out via Sport England) of over £30m cut by £1.6m.

And what is the analysis of the FA to this sudden chopping of funds?  The action of Sport England was seen (in the words of FA general secretary Alex Horne) as “disappointing” for basically the FA has done nothing wrong.  It was, it seems the fault of the weather.

Now if you have never lived in England you might not know it, but England has always had erratic weather conditions – it comes from being surrounded on three sides by water, with the increasingly erratic gulf stream warming us on the west (sometimes), and the polar weather conditions coming down from the north.  And as we are in the era of climate change, the erratic result is now even more erratic.    Four seasons in one day isn’t the half of it – more like four seasons every 30 minutes.

So blaming the weather is a bit like calling the flooding of a home built on a known flood plain “an act of God”.  No, in England the weather happens.  A lot.

The FA’s man on the spot went on to say that the cut was unfair as the funding only started last August, and analysis of what the FA had done was made in October.

But the reality is, there were years of talk and planning before the money (which is supposed to ensure that we have a long term benefit from the billions thrown at the London Olympics) was handed over, and the October analysis was clearly known about by the FA way before the money arrived.

What’s more the weather between August and October was actually fairly normal for England.  The real down turn in the weather actually started in November and the really bad flooding came later in the year.

In fact either the FA didn’t have plans to hit the ground running the moment the money poured in, or they are are just making excuses, or both.  The obviously conclusion is “both”.  Especially when you see this statement:

“A combination of severe weather, increased pitch hire costs and reduced maintenance spend has made this a very difficult time for clubs seeking to complete their fixtures and for individual players to value and enjoy regular football.”

What is so desperately sad is that, because this is the FA and because the rule of the media is that one must only not ever hold the FA to account, I can’t find a paper that has picked up on the lunacy of this statement.

It is rather like the two votes we got to hold the World Cup after putting over £20m into the bid.  Everyone knew Fifa was bent, everyone knew Fifa had turned against the FA, everyone knew we didn’t have a chance.   But still the FA continued ploughing money in, getting minor royals and David Beckham to do their stuff – and then they were surprised we didn’t win.

But back to the cut in funding.  On the one hand the excuse is “they measured us in October” and the other is “severe weather”.    For the first, the FA always knew they were going to be measured in October, and for the second, the exceptionally bad weather came after the measurement.  With the FA even the excuses are a sad failure

Even more laughably, the FA then said, “This challenge – to ensure a much better provision of quality affordable grassroots facilities – is one we are determined to address.”

And one might say, “when?”  Or “how?”  Or “pull the other one”.

The problem for football is that the number of people playing the game (measured as those who play at least 30 minutes a week – a low figure chosen in order to include small scale 5 a side games) has shown a significant drop, and is now at 1.84 million down from 2 million in 2006.

And this at a time when reports are showing that over half of the popular are overweight (that percentage is higher among the under 18s) and the incidence of overweight related illnesses such as diabetes, asthma, musculoskeletal problems and heart disease are on the rise.

Sadly this cut in Sport England funding won’t even cause a board meeting at the bloated FA as £1.6m represents less than 0.5% of its total income.  The FA can, and will, shrug its shoulders at such a cut and say “they don’t understand us”.  It is the eternal cry of the incompetent.

But this represents a lot of the money earmarked for grassroots projects.  Most of the FA money goes on keeping the England team going, paying Fifa, bidding for the two votes we got in the world cup, paying for Wembley stadium (on which massive loans are still outstanding) and paying for the bloated bureaucrats    Only around 13% of the money it gets is spent on grassroots football, even though this is the bit that could help reduce the nation’s overweight problem, gives huge levels of pleasure and psychological balance to those involved, and contribute to giving people who might otherwise be at a lose end something to do.

The benefits of the membership of Fifa membership is jollies around the world for the bloated.  The benefits of grassroots football is mental and physical well being of millions.   The former benefit to the few is maintained, the latter is cut.

The truth of the matter is that before it cut the FA’s funding, Sport England looked not just at participation numbers but also at the plans of various sports to increase  grassroots activity.   And this is where the FA failed – as it always fails.  It’s plans were a shambles (which you will have guessed as they were blaming the bad weather before it even got bad).

The problem facing grassroots football is that the government in the UK has cut the funding to local authorities dramatically, and it is the local authorities that have to fund local sports facilities.  So the authorities have started to cut – because they are not allowed to go into deficit.  Some have increased the fees they charge local associations – often putting costs up by double or treble (although the average is about 10% per year every year – about three times the level of inflation).

It is the way the government in the UK works – it cuts the funding to various bodies, and then blames them for not providing facilities.

Of course grassroots football is not a disaster everywhere.  The nearest town to where I lived benefited hugely under the previous government’s spending, including have every secondary school and the town’s college totally rebuilt – and that included putting new floodlit all-weather pitches on each site.   These are used by the schools in the day, and by local five-a-side teams at night.

In fact given that the county council has turned off many of our street lights, in a desperate attempt to save money, most of us now navigate around the town with torches, and by the light from the five-a-side pitches.

Our tragedy is that football could make a huge impact on cutting obesity and illness rates, but instead football money goes to the most appalling of all organisations – the FA.

So I come back to my main point.  Why is the media in England so soft on the FA?  Is it because the journalists love to go on these overseas trips, just as much as the bloated bureaucrats that run that utterly pointless, outdated, outmoded organisation, with its endless, endless, stream of failures?

I think maybe it is.

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