You may have thought that
clubs getting into financial difficulty was a recent phenomenon. The plight of Portsmouth, Luton, Chester City
and Halifax Town are well documented as well as many other clubs who have
entered administration over recent years, including Southampton, Swansea,
Crystal Palace and Derby County. But
this is not a new feature of a post Premier League English football industry,
as the circumstances surrounding Bristol City in the early 80’s, illustrates.
In 1975-76 the club
finished second to Sunderland in the old Second Division to earn promotion to
the First Division for the first time in over 60 years. They engineered an amazing escape from the jaws
of relegation in their first season. By
1979 they had their best league finish since the First World War when they
ended 13th. But the story
after that was one sorry tale after another as the club fell alarmingly into
freefall. Three successive relegations
followed and soon the debts mounted up.
But these were days when clubs’ finances weren’t common knowledge. The board tried desperately to put on a brave
face but eventually it became too much and the cracks started to show. One aspect which was undeniable was the
falling attendances. Their final home
game of the 1976-77 season saw a record 38,688 turned up to watch the
newly-crowned champions, Liverpool. Two
weeks before, 23,587 witnessed the visit of Leeds United. But barely 5 years later and there was just
6,586 turning up to see a game against Doncaster and even the arrival of a
local rival, Plymouth Argyle could only encourage 7,471 to turn up. It was clear the club would not be able to
maintain the spending of their First Division days. During their time at English football’s top
table, the PFA announced a change which would have disastrous consequences for
City.
In 1978 the PFA announced
that a player’s right to move at the end of his contract would be fully
recognised and a proper, more efficient procedure was put in place to accentuate
this. Clubs like City, relied heavily on
the transfer income some of their best players would command. But the prospect of losing a player who they
couldn’t convince to sign a new contract, sent shockwaves through many clubs
the size of City.
The club was desperately
trying to make the most of their playing squad.
In 1979 one of their most promising defenders, Gary Collier, moved to
Coventry for peanuts and this deal infuriated manager, Alan Dicks. Collier, the club’s Player of the Year in
1975, had already won England honours at Under-23 level and was touted as a
good prospect capable of playing for a big First Division club. As Coventry had escaped relegation on the
same day City had in 1977, they were a long way from being the sort of club
many people saw Collier potentially playing for. Bristol City were annoyed they hadn’t been
able to cash in on a young player they’d invested much time in, when a season
or two before they had more control over the player’s destination. The shockwaves forced Dicks to make some
decisions which almost sent the club into oblivion. They didn’t realise it at the time, of
course, but the consequences were fatal, but they lead to a famous incident in
the club’s history where several players sacrificed their own careers to save
the club.
Dicks, determined not to
have another ‘Collier-effect’ signed six of the club’s best players onto eleven
year contracts. His reasoning was that
this would give the club complete control over these players and if they still
decided to sell them, then they would no longer run the risk of missing out on
a fat transfer fee. It must be
remembered that these were pre-Bosman days
At the end of the 1979-80
season the club’s flirt with the First Division was over
Once they dropped out of
the First Division, the man who had masterminded their rise to the top, Alan
Dicks, was dispensed with. They drew the
first three games of the new season, then lost the next six and so Dicks had to
go. Enter Roy Hodgson. Hodgson was working in Sweden alongside Bobby
Houghton who had taken Malmo to the European Cup Final in 1979 where they lost
to Nottingham Forest. Houghton was
brought back to England by the City board and he asked Hodgson to help
him. Hodgson had been considering an
offer from Dallas but decided on City where he, rather ironically, claimed
“I had to decide whether to stay on in Sweden or not. Bristol City seems well organised so I hope
to able to concentrate on the coaching side with Bob”.
Unfortunately, in
hindsight these words seem incredibly naive but perhaps they’re a measure of
how much the City board were able to hide the problems inside. Houghton and Hodgson were confident in their
own ability, but just didn’t have enough magic to halt the slide and further
relegations ensued. Houghton seemed rather oblivious to the parlous state of
the club’s finances and the critical effect large long term contracts could
have in years to come.
The two enthusiastic
coaches were keen to talk a good game.
They’d transformed Swedish football during their 5 years there and
firmly believed they could resurrect City.
1980-81 saw a second successive relegation.
The club was in freefall
and the fans stayed away in their droves.
Only 4,832 turned up to watch a home defeat to Burnley in November 1981
which left the club 6th from bottom in Division Three This was the lowest attendance since the War
at Ashton Gate and a sign that things were going hopelessly wrong. But Houghton and Hodgson seemed intent to
paint a positive picture and in some way they were probably guilty of either
being duped by the board or simply choosing not to face facts. Hodgson would later admit.
“When we came the club was rock bottom and the first thing we had to do
was sell players. We ended up with a
junior team playing in a league of men.
We were not made aware of the situation before we arrived. The club had only just been relegated from
the old First Division. We thought it
can’t be that bad, we’ll get them promoted.
We were very confident in our coaching ability and thought we could turn
the club around”.
Further evidence of the
board’s efforts to paper over the cracks was the signing of Mick Harford in
August 1981. Harford, a big traditional
centre-forward had made his name at Lincoln City, earning him a big money move
to Newcastle, who were in the Second Division, at the beginning of 1981. After just 8 months Harford moved to Bristol
City for £160,000. It was a strange move
for the player, who left a Second Division club to join a club who’d just been
relegated to the Third. Moreover, it was
a suicidal move for City themselves, although no one really knew it at the
time. Yet around this time one or two
people started to ask questions.
Local journalist, Peter
Godsiff, had started to make noises about the fact the club had been spending
far more than they were bringing in and he even reckoned the operating costs
were probably five times the money earned at the gate. In October 1981 two local businessmen, Ken
Sage and Deryn Coller, got together to find out more about the club’s
finances. They attended an AGM and asked
enough questions to eventually persuade the board to conduct an independent
financial report. Actually, Coller had
managed to have a quiet word with Chairman, Archie Gooch, and he agreed Coller
and Sage would pay for the report. The
club had targeted gates of 8,000 to pay their way but they were struggling to
get anywhere near that. In October they
sold young striker, Kevin Mabbutt (Gary’s brother) to Crystal Palace for
£100,000. This was a big blow for the
club as they had pinned their hopes on the Mabbutt/Harford partnership. Clive Whitehead was then sold to West Brom
for £100,000. Whitehead had been an
instrumental part of the promotion side of 75-76 and the subsequent First
Division years.
The club finally admitted
their plight telling shareholders they’d made a loss of £400,000 the previous
year. In November, Gooch wrote in the
programme appealing for help. 1981 ended
with a defeat at bitter rivals, Bristol Rovers and City were 4th
from bottom having won just 5 out of 16 matches.. In January 1982 the bottom club, Wimbledon, turned up at Ashton Gate and
promptly came away with a 3-1 win. That
was the last straw for Houghton who resigned, and Hodgson took overall
management control.
Off the pitch the financial report had identified the
huge debt the club had and suggested various options open to them to deal with
it, including unloading the biggest liabilities, do a deal with creditors, do a
deal with the Football League, do a deal with the old company on the sale of
the ground and do a deal with the eight players who were on the biggest
contracts and comprised the largest part of the liability. It must be said the Football League were
unused to this sort of situation. Clubs
had gone bust before this, but they had generally fallen out of the league
first. Bristol City was a club who just
18 months before had been competing in the First Division. Now oblivion beckoned.
Hodgson’s first match in charge was a trip to
Peterborough in the FA Cup Third Round.
They won 1-0. His first two League
matches were creditable draws at home to Huddersfield and away at Newport County. In between those two matches, they played
host to Aston Villa in the FA Cup. Over
20,000 turned up for the game, a crowd not seen at Ashton Gate since the glory
days. Gary Shaw scored the only goal of
the game to knock City out, but attention soon reverted to their league
plight.
At the end of January 1982, City were still in the bottom
four, 2pts from safety when it all came crashing down around their ears. The Football League imposed a selling ban on
the club, mainly due to the fact they still owed Newcastle £100,000 for the
Harford deal. At this point the club
announced that eight players had to leave for the club to continue. These eight players became known as the
Ashton Gate Eight.
They were Geoff Merrick, Gerry Sweeney, Trevor
Tainton, Julian Marshall, Peter Aitken, Chris Garland, David Rodgers, Jimmy
Mann.
Merrick, Sweeney, Tainton
and Mann had been in the promotion side of 75-76 and throughout the First
Division years. Garland had been the
inspiration for their great escape in their first season in the top flight and
Rodgers had been the replacement for Collier, whose transfer to Coventry was
possibly the precursor to many of the problems.
The choice was
clear. The eight players must leave or
the club goes bankrupt. For a player
such as Merrick this must have been a desperate position. A local boy who’d only ever played for the
club. He was club captain in their
greatest post-war years, yet here he was now being asked to make the ultimate
sacrifice to save the club he loved.
Goodness only knows what went through his mind when he first discovered
the plight of the club. He had turned
down lucrative moves in previous years out of loyalty for the club and the
players he’d grown up with.
Interestingly it was the
PFA who intervened to help rather than the Football League or The FA. The negotiations resulted in The Eight
ripping up their contracts and thereby dissolving their debt from the
club. Management now passed to a new
company, Bristol City (1982) Ltd and this ensured the jobs of other PFA members
and those employed by Bristol City were protected. During the longest week in the club’s history
there were daily updates in the local press and on the radio. Many supporters have spoken of the stress and
pressure of never knowing whether there would be a club to go and watch at the
weekend. The players came under
increasing pressure too. Merrick later
spoke of being bitter about his loyalty towards the club. “Loyalty is a complete and utter waste of
time. Loyalty is a dirty word”, he
said. The Eight were making the ultimate
sacrifice in football terms, yet some of them received abusive phone calls and
many fans accused them of holding the club to ransom.
It’s true you could argue
they would’ve received nothing anyway as the club had nothing, but they would
still have had a debt against the club and this would’ve caused the new company
problems when they were trying to move on.
According to Coller, The Eight walked away with £10,000 but they were
unemployed and for a player of Merrick’s age he would never find another
professional contract. Many of the other
creditors had to accept much lower settlements just to make sure the whole deal
went through with some of them taking as little as 10% of the amount they were due. But then had they refused that, then the club
would’ve gone bankrupt and they would’ve got nothing.
The club began a massive
advertising campaign to get people to invest in a share issue which would
purchase the ground. They needed to
raise £600,000 and everywhere around the city you could see stickers “Support
Bristol City Football Club, Now or Never”.
Coller revealed
“at one minute past 12 on Wednesday 3rd February the club
was going into liquidation if the players had not signed that document”
Coller and Sage found two
other people willing to raise £12,500 each to come up with the £50,000 needed
to set up the new plc. Coller later
spoke of the stress he was under too, as he nearly lost his house and his wife
who thought all the hours he was spending in meetings were actually being spent
with another woman. At the beginning of
February 1982 the new BCFC (1982) Ltd was incorporated and set about buying the
ground, making the club the tenant. They
had to act fast as there were rumours flying around of other interested parties
who would buy the ground and not necessarily for the benefit, or future of the
club. The directors kept putting in
money to get the project up and running and Coller admitted to funding the club
to a personal total of £70,000 for the first six months. A sum which was all he had in the world.
6th February
1982 and the first match at Ashton Gate for the new club. Fulham were the visitors, who were sitting in
2nd place in the table behind Chesterfield on goal difference. Bristol City were a much changed side from
the previous match.
30th January
1982 away to Newport County – Moller, Stevens,Williams, Aitken, Boyle, Sweeney,
Tainton, Mann, Chandler, Harford, Musker
Next match at home to
Fulham – Moller, Stevens, Hay, Newman, Williams, Nicholls, Musker, Bray,
Chandler, Harford, Economou, sub: Smith
In a strange coincidence
the Fulham side that day contained Sean O’Driscoll, who is the current manager
of Bristol City. It also contained Ray
Lewington, who now works alongside Roy Hodgson with England, and of course
Hodgson was the Bristol City boss that day.
Hodgson’s programme notes
for that game are particularly revealing
“Last Saturday’s match at Newport came at the end of one of the most
traumatic weeks in the history of Bristol City.
The events off the field overshadowed the normal week’s training.
Everyone at the club was uncertain about the future and the game at
Newport was played under the shadow of redundancies and closure of the club.
It was hardly ideal preparation and I must admit I was a little worried
about how the players would react as we were going across the Severn Bridge.”
City fans have spoken
about their team being “full of kids”, yet they received a rapturous welcome
from a relieved home crowd of just over 9,000.
The game was a goalless draw which, given the circumstances leading up
to it, was a great achievement for City.
In the week they were beaten at Plymouth but then travelled to Walsall,
who were 6th, and came away with a 1-0 victory. It was their first win in the league since
early November (9 matches) and was the start of a run of 3 wins in 4 matches. But the optimism didn’t last and they went
through March and April without another win, a run of 12 games where they
picked up just 2pts. They lost 6 games
in a row, scoring just once. Mick
Harford was sold to Birmingham City and goalkeeper, Jan Moller, had moved to
Toronto Blizzard. When City lost at
Chesterfield towards the end of March they only had 12 available players. By then City were 2nd from bottom
and another relegation seemed on the cards.
4th May 1982 they went to Huddersfield and were thumped 0-5
and this consigned them to a third successive relegation, which was a record at
the time.
15th May 1982
at their final home game of the season, 1,034 turned up to see City beat
Chester City 1-0. Hodgson was sacked and
went back to Sweden. His replacement was
Terry Cooper, who had been part of ‘the great’ Leeds side of the 60’s and 70’s
and had recently been player-manager at Bristol Rovers. Cooper is credited by City fans as reviving
the club by working miracles in finding youth players, doing loan deals and
scouring free transfers to keep the club going on a shoestring.
The following season
(1982-83) got worse before things began to improve. They lost 6 of their opening 10 matches,
including a 7-1 hammering at Northampton.
They finally won a game when they beat Wimbledon, 4-2 at home yet there
was only one club below them in the whole League . Having only won 2 matches in the first half
of the season, they turned things round and finished a worthy 14th. The following season they had something to
cheer about at last as they won promotion from Division Four.
It was a nightmare ride
and one which few clubs have ever experienced.
It was the first and only deal of its kind as the Football League
changed the rules afterwards. Whether
you believe The Ashton Gate Eight held the club to ransom, what cannot be denied
is that they sacrificed their careers and home lives to make sure the club
continued. Had they not done so then people under the age of 30 today may never
have heard of Bristol City. Think about
the recent incidents at Portsmouth or Glasgow Rangers and consider whether
those players were prepared to rip up their contracts. In addition to the Eight, the four directors
are also worthy of remembering as they worked tirelessly, regardless of
personal cost both financially and mentally, to keep the club going. Deryn Coller, Ken Sage, Les Kew and Ivor
Williams
What Happened Next
Geoff Merrick (aged 30) – Never played professional football again,
but had a brief spell at Gloucester City.
Gerry Sweeney (aged 36) – Moved down a division to York City but
only made 12 appearances before playing non-league football at Gloucester
City. Later managed City in 1997
Trevor Tainton (aged 33) – Moved down a division to Torquay, but
made just 19 appearances and dropped out of league football at Trowbridge in
1983.
Jimmy Mann (aged 29) – Moved
up a division to Barnsley then brief spells at Scunthorpe and Doncaster before
dropping out of League football at end of 1983 at his hometown club, Goole
Town.
David Rodgers (aged 30) – Moved down a division to Torquay, playing
just 5 times before an even briefer spell at Lincoln and then to non-league
with Forest Green Rovers.
Chris Garland (aged 32) – Was re-employed by City for one more
season, before dropping out of league football with Gloucester City and
Minehead.
Julian Marshall (aged 24) – Moved up a division to Blackburn Rovers
but never played for the first team.
Joined Worcester City in 1983
Peter Aitken (aged 27) – Moved down a division to York City, but at
the end of the season left league football to move to Bath City then Trowbridge
Town and Forest Green Rovers.
And what of the players
who came in for that historic game against Fulham;
Allan Hay (aged 23) - Joined in 1979 had already played
several games during 1981-82 season.
Left in August 1982 for York City
Rob Newman (aged 18) - Signed as an apprentice in October
1981, became club captain. sold to Norwich in 1991, played in team which
finished 3rd in Premier League and beat Bayern Munich
Alan Nicholls (aged 18) - Made his debut in this game. Broke
his leg a year later and retired only 22
Wayne Bray (aged 17) - Only spent 2 years at the club
before moving to Bath City
Jon Economou (aged 20) - aged 20 for this game, promising
midfield player left in 1983.
Russell Musker (aged 19) – Started at the club as an
apprentice. Moved to Gillingham in 1984
To understand the
emotions which went through the club and its supporters at that time, here is
the view of BBC commentator, Jonathan Pearce
From the top flight to the bottom in successive seasons, it was Milton's 'Paradise Lost' in football terms. Bankruptcy loomed and a survival plan was dreamed up. The old club would be wound up and a new company would take over the club's title and fixtures. The League approved but it could only happen if eight players agreed to tear up their contracts.
The professional careers and the home lives of those eight heroes, many of whom I'd known since the age of 12, were the acceptable collateral damage for the suited boardroom money men who'd allowed the chaos to loom in the first place.
My dad, who worked for the club, continued on for a couple of years for a pittance. His love affair had turned sordid.”
But Bristol City
survived, although they have yet to make it back to the First Division/Premier
League they reached the League Cup Semi-Finals in 1988-89 and have won the
Johnstone’s Paint Trophy twice, in 1986 and 2003 and have been beaten finalists
in 1987 and 2000.
Bristol City has never
forgotten ‘The Eight’ and the Supporters Club has erected a plaque in their
honour. On 24th March 1982
there was a special match at Ashton Gate between Ipswich Town and Southampton
where a crowd of 6,020 turned up to help raise money for them. At the time both clubs were in the top five
in First Division. The players concerned
have since spoken about their experience and have all said they were completely
unaware of the financial state of the club, although Peter Aitken said he ‘was
not surprised’ given the falling attendances and salaries of some of the
players. There is clearly some
bitterness amongst The Eight who feel they still receive bad press from some
quarters. Given only Garland played much
league football after 1982, the whole business was clearly something they never
got over.
Sources - Deryn Coller Story 1982 http://www.bcfc3lions.co.uk/page106.html
Marxism Today April 1982 http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/82_04_02b.pdf
Bristol City Fans Forum (otib.co.uk)
bbc.co.uk/sport
My wife for programmes and memories
