So, Teasdale is out. What is interesting about this news is that it
wasn’t seen as a particularly big or surprising story. Teasdale has been widely
acknowledged to be a marginalised figure in the Turf Moor corridors of power ever since
the beginning of the Kilby era. It’s seemed more a case of when rather than if he
leaves the Board. His time has passed. He is yesterday’s man.
Yet there was a time when Teasdale’s resignation would have prompted
calls for street parties and a day of national celebration from these quarters. At one
point, Teasdale’s resignation was the thing I wanted most. Now, when I caught the
Ceefax headline on a thin news day, my only reaction was a muttered ‘fair
enough’. You can’t carry on despising someone when they no longer matter. Hating
Teasdale became a pointless occupation when he ceased to carry any influence at Burnley.
If anything, I came to rather pity him. There he was, said to only be keeping his place
because he needed a base to stay on the committee of the Pontin’s League (and what a
success that competition has been), hanging around without power where once he was the
boss. Feeling sorry for Teasdale: who’d have thought it?
What seemed to emerge from the internet reaction to the news was that
everybody had their favourite ‘I really fell out with Teasdale when…’
moment. Some of these were on the harsh side. Someone had never forgiven him for saying he
didn’t believe it when we survived the Orient Game, but I don’t feel you should
hold anyone to account for what they might have said in the aftermath of that moment. For
some, their blood boiled much later when, by now on the margins, he used his slot on the
Rhapsody in Claret and Blue video to quip that some people thought his name was
Teasdale-Out. But that just struck me as a lame joke, a limp attempt to endear himself to
an audience he must have felt might be hostile. I think I’d have done the same.
My own Teasdale moment, climaxing a long one sided process of falling out,
came in the club’s lack of response over the passing of Harry Potts. I was at that
next game after our greatest ever Manager had died and I was stunned by the lack of
commemoration. No black armbands, no silence, nothing. The club’s excuse was that
this was an away game, and they were saving it up for a home match. I thought it was
appalling. Away or not, this was the first game after the death of a legendary man, and we
were playing as though it was an ordinary Saturday. Naturally, as Teasdale’s
hamfistedness was always crossed with bad luck, the next home game was postponed. A full
fortnight passed before we publicly acknowledged the death of Harry Potts.
Prompted by this, I did something I’d never done before. I wrote to
Burnley FC. Three times. I addressed my letters to Frank Teasdale. The first one expressed
my views on what had happened. The second enquired whether he had received my first letter
and when I might expect a reply. My third stated that I could now understand how he had
required his reputation for poor PR. All went unanswered.
Perhaps we could excuse this on the grounds that Teasdale was a busy man
and didn’t have time to answer letters. But, although not a professional ‘Points
of View’ type letter writer, I have, as far as I can recall, written to three other
football clubs: Preston, Swindon and Walsall. All gave me the courtesy of a reply. Only
the club I support couldn’t be bothered. Even then, it only seemed to be Teasdale.
Letters which fell under Clive Holt’s remit received a reply, either by phone or
mail. And it couldn’t even be the case that Teasdale ignored only the argumentative
letters. When my local club, Leyton Orient, popped a leaflet advertising their £10 child
season ticket through my door, I passed it onto him, with an enquiry about whether Burnley
might consider doing this. There came no reply. (Under a new Chairman, of course, a £35
child season ticket has been introduced.)
Teasdale’s unwillingness to engage in dialogue with supporters was
legendary. There was no better example of this than the 1995 Radio Lancashire forum with
three of the Directors and Jimmy Mullen. Teasdale’s apologies were made for him; he
hadn’t been able to make it. The presenter pointed out that they had offered six
different dates, all of which had been declined. As it happened, by not showing up, he at
least didn’t make as much of an ass of himself as those who did. Given that the
questioning was always going to be fairly aggressive, this could have been a calculated
move.
Teasdale certainly had a reputation for being a cunning fighter of his
corner. When calls for his head were at their strongest, it seemed to be the manager who
took the bullet. This happened a couple of times, with Casper and Mullen. It
shouldn’t have worked, but it did. By taking the opportunity of an exaggerated
incident, Teasdale was able to replace Mullen with the mystifyingly popular Heath and buy
himself more time. Self-preservation was a skill at which he excelled. You don’t stay
Chairman through 14 up and down years otherwise.
Advocates for Teasdale – and there are more than you might think
– point to the work he did to ensure the survival of the club in the mid to late 80s.
They have a point. Teasdale was made Chairman of a near bankrupt club in 1985. Two years
later, our last gasp escape from the black hole of the non-league was extraordinary.
Teasdale was at the helm as we pulled away from that nadir. For that, naturally, our
thanks. Putting the club on a firmer footing by cutting costs and paying bills was a job
that needed to be done, and he did it. At that time we needed someone who would count
pennies, focus on the short term and lower expectations to the point where they could
realistically be met. Those were Teasdale’s qualities. But it is reasonable to
question whether these were the attributes we required in the following years. The
repeated reference to this achievement wore a bit thin as the years went by. The Orient
Game became the justification for continued mediocrity. Ten years on, it sounded lame to
attempt to deflect criticism by pointing out that things were so much healthier than ten
years ago. In any case, although it had been necessary for someone to take rigorous hold
of the finances, the main backers of the club in the years after the Orient Game were not
the board. They were us, the supporters. Teasdale’s personal financial contribution
was minimal. He was not a wealthy man, did not own many shares and did not have the
personal resources to inject further cash. The reason the club’s finances recovered
so sharply was that, after that rude shock to the system, disproportionate numbers of us
started turning up week after week, pushing our cash through the turnstiles. The money to
keep the club afloat and turn it round came from us. We made it viable.
Perhaps this was, in part, what made Teasdale’s lack of warmth
towards the supporters so galling. If he had put pots of his own cash into the club, we
might have excused him wanting to do things his way. But we were putting up the cash, he
was making the decisions, and our involvement never went beyond being turnstile fodder. We
were expected to keep turning up, cheer the team and leave the complicated stuff to our
masters. The fans were a cash cow that the club milked without hesitation, without
consultation and, it seemed, without gratitude. Indeed, the Board seemed to expect our
gratitude for them taking the trouble to run the club on our behalf. And yet we still
spent five more years after the Orient Game stuck in Division Four.
I never got a sense that the club had a plan, a strategy to bring about
and sustain a level of football commensurate with the club’s history and support. We
have one now. Teasdale lacked vision. The one exception to this seemed to be the
redevelopment of the ground. It’s possible to interpret this in two different ways.
Redeveloping the ground in the second division when we didn’t have the team to match
it seemed like folly. On the other hand, we are now in the first division with a
completely all seated ground, without the worry of future Taylor compliance on our minds.
We built our ground before the collapse of the football pools meant the grants dried up.
On the other hand, would we have got into the first division again under Teasdale? Our
ground makes sense there. We could have slipped into the third and it would have been a
white elephant. And of course, in building it without adequate internal resources, we
nearly got ourselves right back in the damned financial mess from the 80s all over again.
Still, this was one example where Teasdale was damned if he did, damned if
he didn’t. The same people who complained that we weren’t building new stands
later complained that we were building new stands. Another example was the public
relations company Teasdale briefly retained. We all complained, rightly, that Teasdale had
no grasp of PR. Then we complained that PR was a waste of money.
Another accusation often levelled at Teasdale was that, for very little
financial outlay, he was able to treat Burnley as a thoroughly enjoyable private drinking
club. One always got the sense that Teasdale liked the trappings of Chairmanship, such as
the free food and drink, away game hospitality and hobnobbing in the boardroom. That said,
I suppose most directors do. If you didn’t have a certain amount of vanity you’d
never put yourself forward in the first place. But there were one or two times when it
seemed that Teasdale didn’t mind putting his own club’s supporters out to keep
other club’s directors happy. A ludicrous spell in the mid 90s saw us shifting games
to Friday night so that teams wouldn’t have to leave out international players who
would not have been allowed to play on Saturdays. In other words, we helped sides pick
their strongest teams against us. Such changes were always touted as being in the
interests of the maintenance of good relations with other clubs. It would have been nice
to think that the inconvenience caused to supporters might have been considered. It seemed
to me at the time that our board was doing favours for chums in away directors’
lounges.
When we got to Wembley in 1994, Teasdale was quoted in an article in the
Observer as putting the health problems he’d suffered down to "years of
debauchery" rather than the pressure of helming Burnley. This amused me at the time,
but was it really the sort of thing you wanted a Chairman to be saying? Wouldn’t we
have preferred some focus on the job? There was a feeling in the late 80s and much of the
90s that all at the club were having a ball, sometimes to the detriment of team
performance. An acquaintance tells a story of running into Frank and the team on a weekend
when the game has been postponed. He enjoyed a fine evening in their company where the
drink flowed freely and Teasdale performed his party piece of swallowing raw eggs. The
next day, with a sore head, he thought, is this really the sort of thing I want to see the
team doing and the Chairman giving his blessing to? As a season which had started
promisingly faded into underachievement, it became a question worthy of repetition.
Debauchery is all very well for the followers, but from those who lead, we expect rather
more professionalism.
Not that Frank was a professional. This was a point often advanced in his
favour, that he held down a full time job and had Burnley to run in his spare time. Others
might have thought that a club such as Burnley needed either a Chairman with more time to
commit or a professional Chief Executive to take charge of day to day matters. We only got
the latter when Teasdale stood down. Whenever the topic had come up before, it always
seemed to be Teasdale’s name that was linked with the post. Perhaps this was why he
didn’t have time to answer letters. However, one special Teasdale moment underlined
that he could move quickly enough when he wanted to. The then editor of the London Clarets
magazine, rounding up the news, had repeated some rumours then prevalent on the internet
about Teasdale’s shareholding and reputed takeover bidders. When this was published,
he received a letter from Steele, Ford and Newton stating that the allegations were untrue
and insisting that we retract them and publish a full apology in the next issue of the
magazine. Naturally, we did no such thing, but wrote to Teasdale asking whether it was
strictly necessary to involve solicitors when we could have sorted this out ourselves.
Needless to say, we did not hear back. At the time I felt he had singled us out because we
looked a soft target. You could read much the same sort of stuff in Burnley fanzines and
on the internet. We were a supporters group with a history of good relations with the club
and our magazine had carried articles supportive of Teasdale. He must have known that a
fanzine or website would have told him where to stuff his letter.
The key charge levelled at Teasdale is that he simply hung on too long. He
should have got out long before he did. In fairness, this might be easier said than done.
Get out in favour of who? For most of his reign, we were hardly fighting investors off.
That said, I felt that regime could have been a lot more proactive if they’d wanted
to be. All very well saying we’d consider offers if they arose, but what was to stop
us going out and actively seeking new money and new blood? And when a chance came along to
step aside, he made a mess. I give you the Shackleton Fiasco.
Supporters of Teasdale always pointed out that he was a Burnley fan
through and through. This was never in doubt. What was questioned whether this, by itself,
was sufficient. When Ingleby came in, it showed what the level of disenchantment with
Teasdale had become that many were prepared to support a businessman based in America who
knew little of Burnley and was looking simply for an investment. Not only was being a
great fan seen as insufficient; it had now become not necessary. With some reservations, I
was prepared to support Ingleby as offering the chance to take the club in a new direction
that was missing under Teasdale. Frank, of course, had other ideas. When a mysterious
‘bid’ was cobbled together by Peter Shackleton, which would broadly maintain the
status quo and keep Teasdale on board, the opportunity was ceased. The club made
Shackleton their preferred bidder, and Ingleby’s bid wasn’t given the time of
day. As we all know now, there was no Shackleton bid. It was dreams, hot air and promises
which merely reduced the value of the paper they were written on. (The club apparently has
quite a file of letters promising cheques in the post over a long period.) As each
deadline lapsed, Shackleton was given more time to come up with the goods. Shackleton was
allowed as much scope as he wished to string the club along, while Ingleby was left in the
cold. Through all this time, the club was allowed to drift downhill. On the pitch division
three looked a realistic prospect; off the pitch, simply nothing was going on to stop it.
At this time, he looked not just arrogant, but complacent. Where was the
sense of urgency? I recall another moment which shows this complacent side. When
interviewed about our shabby relegation from the first division in 1995, Teasdale said
that he’d never thought for a minute that we’d go down, right up until the day
it actually happened. This was a scandalous admission. He should have thought it. He
should have considered this worse case scenario and done everything in his power to strive
to avoid it. Simply denying the prospect of relegation in a season when we so often
occupied the relegation places is breathtakingly remiss. Why does the image of an ostrich
with its head in the sand – not the first time that comparison has been made –
come to mind? Failing to address the prospect of relegation, how could he ever take steps
to avoid it? It went beyond complacency to hint at incompetence. It also demonstrated
Teasdale’s isolation from the supporters. We’d all thought it. We’d been
thinking it was on the cards for months. None of us were surprised when we went down.
Returning to the Shackleton Fiasco, Teasdale later claimed that it is very
easy to see the flaws in the Shackleton bid in hindsight, but at the time it looked a good
deal. This is nonsense. Many supporters at the time pointed to the absence of any
substance in the bid. A lot of people saw right through it from an early stage, and said
so, and were later turned out to be utterly right. Teasdale seems to have forgotten this
bit.
Of course, it all worked out in the end. Teasdale could claim the delays
were justified because in the time we might have been getting into bed with Ingleby but
were instead being whispered sweet nothings by Shackleton, Kilby rode in to save the day.
Let us not mistake this for strategy. This was good fortune. Teasdale wasn’t steering
the process towards this takeover by a third candidate. He was wasting time and Kilby sold
his company, had the dosh and decided to get involved. We were lucky. Suppose Shackleton
had been even more persuasive? Suppose he had magicked that down payment from some
gullible backer and kept us hanging on while the team went further downhill? It
doesn’t bear thinking about.
In fact, if you want to cut short arguments about the worth of
Teasdale’s time in charge, simply look at what’s happened since. The most
obvious thing is that, when we could have been going into the third division, we’re
now in the first. The club has shown signs of a willingness to listen to supporters. It is
more professionally run before. Commercial operations have expanded greatly. The new
regime was shocked at how little money the club shop was turning over, and appalled at
some of the lame stock on sale, and is doing something about it. Now turnover is rising,
and is targeted to rise further. Come to that, we have targets. We have a club shop in the
town centre, something which had been advocated for years. We had an excellent video of
the history of Burnley FC. (The old lot used history as an excuse, when they weren’t
complaining about what a hard job it made for them; the new regime realise that the things
that make us support Burnley are important in keeping us involved, as well as being a good
way to get folk to stick their hands in their pockets.) We have the excellent £35 child
season ticket as the focal point of a range of initiatives aimed at locking children into
supporting Burnley. In response to a survey which revealed that only half of local kids
claimed the club as theirs (and in the face of years of untrue ‘everyone supports
Burnley’ platitudes) we signed Ian Wright. Ingleby, though unsuccessful in his bid to
take-over, was persuaded to serve on the board. I can’t see this gesture as something
Teasdale would have been capable of.
While things are by no means perfect now – and if they were, what
would we have to talk about? – the club now has immeasurably improved since
Teasdale’s time. Some of us used to get frustrated because we thought it wasn’t
just about lack of resources, but about creativity and imagination, strategy and a bit of
willingness to involve people. We have been proved right. It is frustrating that it was so
long coming, and that the old regime was never capable of delivering these qualities. At
best, it can be argued that Teasdale built a steady platform from a low point which made
later progress possible. But, long while he remained in charge, this ceased to be enough.
That we were capable of more has been proved only since he stopped having anything to do
with the leadership of the club. The days of drift are over.
Teasdale ultimately was a good wartime chancellor. At a time of crisis, he
was a good steady hand to have on the tiller, but that’s as far as he went. There is
a time when solidity is what you need. Then there comes a point where you need more
willingness to explore potential. Where we’re going is not somewhere that he could
have taken us. Still, it would be churlish not to wish him a happy retirement, and hope
he’ll be watching the Clarets as we continue to progress in the years ahead.
We’ve moved on.
