Brave New World?

Tory Goon

And so finally we get something more than ‘don’t worry about the debt’, one of those stock phrases that’s up there with ‘we all have to pull together’. Steve Hayes has finally come clean with his Plan A, which is essentially that the club is financially unsustainable and the only answer is to ‘up sticks’, leave Adams Park, and take up residency in a 17-20,000 seater stadium located somewhere near the M40. We’re even told that he will fight tooth and nail to give us a terrace (well another terrace in truth since we already have a perfectly good one). Adams Park itself will then be sold off and those debts that have been increasing exponentially finally paid off. There is no Plan B (there never is).

This shiny new HayesBowl will be provided by Wycombe District Council through an “enabling development” scheme, another stock phrase which is doubtless soon to become as well known as Hayes’s infamous five year plan to get us out of debt. Enabling development schemes have allowed Franchise to build an absurdly large stadium in Milton Keynes and, only this morning, I read that one underpins Everton’s move away from Goodison. In essence, the council build us a stadium so that Tesco (or whoever) can build a massive supermarket next door.

Except, of course, that only half of the stadium would belong to us. The other half is to be given by our tenants, London Wasps. You know, they’re the ones that piled into High Wycombe four years ago and who the council will apparently do anything in their power to keep, including it seems giving them half a stadium. Not bad for only four years here. Who knows what they could have got if they’d been here any longer?

But this promise came with a threat. Back me (because it’s the way forward), or I’m out of here, Hayes warned (one wonders if he’ll be taking his toys with him at the same time). Instead of a five year plan we are now presented with a two season plan. By the end of this season we have to prove to Hayes that we are worthy of his fatherly pat on the head. And not just us, but Wycombe District Council (by approving the enabling development scheme), and the community as a whole (through propping up the club’s failing conference scheme). The whole town is being held to ransom. If, at the end of this season, Steve is not basking in the grandeur that he has come to expect as his due, he will give it another year and then pull out completely. No more loan notes to bolster our mounting losses, no more fights to keep terracing etc. We’ll be left right in it.

Of course, Wycombe fans have a right to ask Hayes some pretty fundamental questions. Among them: Why do we have to move again? How do you know we’re financially unsustainable when you’ve never actually tried to get the club to live within its means? Weren’t you in charge when we amassed those huge debts? If we sell Adams Park doesn’t that mean we’ve lost our ground just so you can reclaim your loan notes that we didn’t actually ask you to put in to the club in the first place? And, of course, isn’t this essentially the same crude threat that was used when we had to get rid of the Constitution in 2004, a move which was supposed to lead to investment into the club rather than to crippling debts?

The simple fact is that the move is not intended to be in Wycombe Wanderers’ best interests. It is all about London Wasps. It’s no coincidence that the announcement of a new stadium came on the back of the revelation that Hayes is now an 11.6% shareholder and Board Member in Wasps. No conflict of interest there then! It is London Wasps that are under pressure from the RFL to expand ‘their’ stadium capacity, and Wasps who may have a reasonable expectation of filling three-quarters of a 20,000 seater stadium… once or twice a year whenever Gloucester or Leicester come calling. Rather, it is Wycombe (you know the current landlords) who would be rattling around in a stadium four times the required size. Who wants to go to a football match where you can have four seats each? Why do we want to put ourselves in a position where we play second fiddle to London Wasps? Isn’t this our town?

But to highlight the fact that Wycombe’s average attendance is well below 5,000 and to draw attention to the fact that we have rivals on all points of the compass is to be accused of negativity and of lacking ambition. This is not the case. Ambition needs to be tempered with a healthy dose of realism, something surely lacking in the cigar smoke-filled haze which surrounds Steve. He and the other Board members have, it seems, learned nothing from their failed five-year plan.

Rather than issuing threats for non-compliance to Plan A, Hayes needs to actually start to reign in the expenditure. We have too many backroom staff for a club with a fanbase of our size. Stop ‘preparing for the Championship’ and ensuring that we have a Championship setup for a League Two side. That can be done when we are on the brink of the Championship, not now. Stop employing more and more personnel both on and off the pitch – by the way laying off a goalkeeping coach for financial considerations and replacing him with another goalkeeping coach is not a cost-saving measure – and finally stop investing in ‘the infrastructure’, money which literally will have gone to waste if we demolish Adams Park in the next few years. Let’s start to live within our means? It would, if nothing else, make for a refreshing change.

Hayes told us on Thursday night that if he did decide to pull out after this season he would have to introduce drastic cutbacks. Here’s a thought. Why not introduce those cutbacks now a year ahead of schedule and see if we can manage to turn a profit. Ten or so years ago we managed to break even at a time when we didn’t have income from tenants, or a cup run, or a record breaking player transfer fee. We could try that again. Or we could do as normal and put down a new carpet in the Vere Suite.

As a parting thought, if Hayes genuinely cannot manage to run the club profitably, then perhaps we truly are better off without him?

27.08.2007. 19:54

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