Sean the Blade
Member
I have leaked secret council papers to the press, revealing what contingencies had been planned in the event of the collapse of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. I am now being activley hunted by Eastern European henchmen, my life is in danger, I write from hiding, in Rivellin Valley.
In the dark days of the end of Lee Strafford’s reign as chairman of the Sheffield Wednesday, its creditors were circling like sharks, viciously anticipating getting some of their hard earned cash back from the dying club.
The borrowing well had run dry, the Coop bank now refused to lend them a penny more to clear PAYE debts incurred by not paying HMRC monies they had deducted from staff salaries.
Upon the departure of Strafford, the true depth of the clubs liabilities came to light, Howard Wilkinson, the straight talking Yorkshireman, temporarily took Strafford’s place. Investors were invited to pump yet more money into the abyss, but none were forthcoming. As the club’s representatives made almost daily appearances in the high court, they wriggled and wriggled in order to buy more time, to prevent the irrisponsible club being wound up.
At this time, the city’s council realised that should Sheffield Wednesday fold, it would cost the local authorty a small fortune in unpaid dues. Something had to be done.
I interviewed Paul Scriven, hard talking Liberal wet leader of the then council “Quite obviously we couldn’t allow the MASSIVE jewel in Sheffield’s crown simply slip away, especially when they owed us so much money. So we did what we LibDems do best, and we wrung and wrung our hands, almost tll they bled, and, along with the Salvation Army prayer meeting, I think it helped”
Pressed further, Scriven expanded “Well, hand wringing and prayers are our typical response to matters of such magnitude, but pressure was placed upon us to actually DO something, so the wheels were put in motion and we got together a focus group, to see if we could get to the bottom of the problem”
“And did you?”
“Yes”
“… Aaaand the problem was?”
“Oh, right, problem , yes. Well after much debate and deliberation we concluded they couldn’t pay their bills… because they had no money”
“Okay, and why didn’t they have any money?”
“Now, that really wasn’t within the remit of that particular focus group. As the name suggests, the group FOCUSSES on one issue, and that issue was why they didn’t pay their bills. However, and this is purley speculation, I, personally, suspect thet they didn’t have any money, because.... they MAY have spent it all…”
“Until Milan Mandaric came along, of course”
“Milan came along with very powerful and influential friends in the Conservative party, he also has a large fortune”
“So did you sieze upon this opportunity to regain some capital for your council tax payers?”
“Oh no, no, no. As Sheffield Wednesday are such a massive club, with such a massive fan base in the city, we didn’’t think those fans would want their money back, and, given Mr Mandaric’s degree of influence, we did what any LibDem would do in such a situation”
“Which is?”
“Bend over, touched our toes, took it like a man, and thought of being in power! Remember the tuition fees! And all that..”
I was granted access to the city records, in the murky depths of the Town Hall, our guide informed us that this would have been the route the councillors would have taken in the event of a nuclear attack “It is estimated” he told us “That councillors could last down here for up to half an hour without having a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive at the taxpayers expense. Consequently you can see there is adquate accomodation for the tea lady, her trolley and storage for comestibles, ahh there you go, the ‘Contingency Planning’ cabinet, I’ll leave you to it”
A large, imposing cabinet, in battleship grey, stood against the reinforced, bomb proof wall. In the torchlight a curled post-it note caught our attention “Contingency Planning cabinet key dropped down drain, no idea who has the spare, Alan”.
Anticipating such incompetence we had brought our own locksmith along, who immediately began to earn his money “Steel, armoured, tamper proof lock. Having a closer look, there is nothing I can do here”
“Why not?”
“Well, to be quite honest, it’s been left unlocked!”
Opening the door there was the smell of stale paper, damp and great age “DAVE!”
“Sorry boss, too much veg last night!”
Documents were neatly stored in no discernible order ‘Contingecy for the Unlikely Event of Tory Council’ ‘Civil Disorder’ ‘Actions in the Event of a Genuine Sale at Debenhams/House of Fraser’ Ahhh, a very slender folder… ‘Insolvency of Sheffield UNITED’. I removed the ribbon securing the folder and opened it. Inside a singled sheet of yellowed A4 paper, rubber stamped “F-U-C-K EM” This proved council bias towards Wednesday, all I needed now was the corresponding Wednesday file.
My hand eventually rested on a bulky folder… Sheffield Wednesday. Opening the file I was greeted by a wad of blank planning applications, all signed. No dates, no descriptions, nothing “Do you know what this means Dave?”
“They did it using on-line channels?”
“No, the council have given them carte blanche to do whatever they want, it’s basically pre-approved planning, no wonder their world cup bid went through so quickly! Look at this…” Ream upon ream of damning evidence crossed the torchlight, bias, bribery, corruption, scandal, legal action… and this was just the 1964 section. I opened a suspicious looking box “Bugger me Dave!”
“What?”
“This is dynamite!”
“Eh?”
“This IS dynamite” The burning fuse sparked and hissed, I threw the device, grabbed Dave and pulled the contingency cabinet down over us. A dull thud became a thunderous crash as the shock wave hit the cabinet. The pressure hit Dave hard, suddenly the ‘lights’ in his, now crossed, eyes went out and he began to drool “You okay Dave?” I asked, my own head ringing, he turned and in a simple mantra style he said “W-e-d-n-e-s-d-a-y til I die…”.
I lifted the cabinet, and crawled from underneath, through the dust I noticed a pair of hand sewn shoes, and hand tailored suit. There stood Milan himself, two very burley, very threatening men at each of his shoulders...
“Is it safe?... Is it safe?”
“You're talking to me?”
“Is it safe?”
“Is what safe?”
“Is it safe?”
“I don't know what you mean. I can't tell you something's safe or not, unless I know specifically what you're talking about.”
“Is it safe?”
“Tell me what the "it" refers to.”
“Is it safe?”
“Yes, it's safe, it's very safe, it's so safe you wouldn't believe it.”
“Is it safe?”
“No. It's not safe, it's... very dangerous, be careful”
I grabbed a handful of papers and ran, and ran. I ran down to the bottom of Fargate, crossed the tram tracks, and into the Sheffield Star offices. A fat Journo type took me by the arm “Oreyt son?”
“Here, evidence of corruption, in the council, Sheffield Wednesday….” I panted handing him the papers “Print it quick”
“Hey this isn’t a sprint, it’s a Marathon Man”
I watched the journo make a telephone call, I saw him mouth the words “yes he’s here” I just ran, and I’m still running now….
In the dark days of the end of Lee Strafford’s reign as chairman of the Sheffield Wednesday, its creditors were circling like sharks, viciously anticipating getting some of their hard earned cash back from the dying club.
The borrowing well had run dry, the Coop bank now refused to lend them a penny more to clear PAYE debts incurred by not paying HMRC monies they had deducted from staff salaries.
Upon the departure of Strafford, the true depth of the clubs liabilities came to light, Howard Wilkinson, the straight talking Yorkshireman, temporarily took Strafford’s place. Investors were invited to pump yet more money into the abyss, but none were forthcoming. As the club’s representatives made almost daily appearances in the high court, they wriggled and wriggled in order to buy more time, to prevent the irrisponsible club being wound up.
At this time, the city’s council realised that should Sheffield Wednesday fold, it would cost the local authorty a small fortune in unpaid dues. Something had to be done.
I interviewed Paul Scriven, hard talking Liberal wet leader of the then council “Quite obviously we couldn’t allow the MASSIVE jewel in Sheffield’s crown simply slip away, especially when they owed us so much money. So we did what we LibDems do best, and we wrung and wrung our hands, almost tll they bled, and, along with the Salvation Army prayer meeting, I think it helped”
Pressed further, Scriven expanded “Well, hand wringing and prayers are our typical response to matters of such magnitude, but pressure was placed upon us to actually DO something, so the wheels were put in motion and we got together a focus group, to see if we could get to the bottom of the problem”
“And did you?”
“Yes”
“… Aaaand the problem was?”
“Oh, right, problem , yes. Well after much debate and deliberation we concluded they couldn’t pay their bills… because they had no money”
“Okay, and why didn’t they have any money?”
“Now, that really wasn’t within the remit of that particular focus group. As the name suggests, the group FOCUSSES on one issue, and that issue was why they didn’t pay their bills. However, and this is purley speculation, I, personally, suspect thet they didn’t have any money, because.... they MAY have spent it all…”
“Until Milan Mandaric came along, of course”
“Milan came along with very powerful and influential friends in the Conservative party, he also has a large fortune”
“So did you sieze upon this opportunity to regain some capital for your council tax payers?”
“Oh no, no, no. As Sheffield Wednesday are such a massive club, with such a massive fan base in the city, we didn’’t think those fans would want their money back, and, given Mr Mandaric’s degree of influence, we did what any LibDem would do in such a situation”
“Which is?”
“Bend over, touched our toes, took it like a man, and thought of being in power! Remember the tuition fees! And all that..”
I was granted access to the city records, in the murky depths of the Town Hall, our guide informed us that this would have been the route the councillors would have taken in the event of a nuclear attack “It is estimated” he told us “That councillors could last down here for up to half an hour without having a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive at the taxpayers expense. Consequently you can see there is adquate accomodation for the tea lady, her trolley and storage for comestibles, ahh there you go, the ‘Contingency Planning’ cabinet, I’ll leave you to it”
A large, imposing cabinet, in battleship grey, stood against the reinforced, bomb proof wall. In the torchlight a curled post-it note caught our attention “Contingency Planning cabinet key dropped down drain, no idea who has the spare, Alan”.
Anticipating such incompetence we had brought our own locksmith along, who immediately began to earn his money “Steel, armoured, tamper proof lock. Having a closer look, there is nothing I can do here”
“Why not?”
“Well, to be quite honest, it’s been left unlocked!”
Opening the door there was the smell of stale paper, damp and great age “DAVE!”
“Sorry boss, too much veg last night!”
Documents were neatly stored in no discernible order ‘Contingecy for the Unlikely Event of Tory Council’ ‘Civil Disorder’ ‘Actions in the Event of a Genuine Sale at Debenhams/House of Fraser’ Ahhh, a very slender folder… ‘Insolvency of Sheffield UNITED’. I removed the ribbon securing the folder and opened it. Inside a singled sheet of yellowed A4 paper, rubber stamped “F-U-C-K EM” This proved council bias towards Wednesday, all I needed now was the corresponding Wednesday file.
My hand eventually rested on a bulky folder… Sheffield Wednesday. Opening the file I was greeted by a wad of blank planning applications, all signed. No dates, no descriptions, nothing “Do you know what this means Dave?”
“They did it using on-line channels?”
“No, the council have given them carte blanche to do whatever they want, it’s basically pre-approved planning, no wonder their world cup bid went through so quickly! Look at this…” Ream upon ream of damning evidence crossed the torchlight, bias, bribery, corruption, scandal, legal action… and this was just the 1964 section. I opened a suspicious looking box “Bugger me Dave!”
“What?”
“This is dynamite!”
“Eh?”
“This IS dynamite” The burning fuse sparked and hissed, I threw the device, grabbed Dave and pulled the contingency cabinet down over us. A dull thud became a thunderous crash as the shock wave hit the cabinet. The pressure hit Dave hard, suddenly the ‘lights’ in his, now crossed, eyes went out and he began to drool “You okay Dave?” I asked, my own head ringing, he turned and in a simple mantra style he said “W-e-d-n-e-s-d-a-y til I die…”.
I lifted the cabinet, and crawled from underneath, through the dust I noticed a pair of hand sewn shoes, and hand tailored suit. There stood Milan himself, two very burley, very threatening men at each of his shoulders...
“Is it safe?... Is it safe?”
“You're talking to me?”
“Is it safe?”
“Is what safe?”
“Is it safe?”
“I don't know what you mean. I can't tell you something's safe or not, unless I know specifically what you're talking about.”
“Is it safe?”
“Tell me what the "it" refers to.”
“Is it safe?”
“Yes, it's safe, it's very safe, it's so safe you wouldn't believe it.”
“Is it safe?”
“No. It's not safe, it's... very dangerous, be careful”
I grabbed a handful of papers and ran, and ran. I ran down to the bottom of Fargate, crossed the tram tracks, and into the Sheffield Star offices. A fat Journo type took me by the arm “Oreyt son?”
“Here, evidence of corruption, in the council, Sheffield Wednesday….” I panted handing him the papers “Print it quick”
“Hey this isn’t a sprint, it’s a Marathon Man”
I watched the journo make a telephone call, I saw him mouth the words “yes he’s here” I just ran, and I’m still running now….
