Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-330)
4 MAY 2004
Mr Trevor Brooking, and Mr Nic Coward
Q320 Rosemary McKenna: But you did not
answer the question about the attitude towards women. I think
that is absolutely crucial. I think "Footballers' Wives",
for example, is an appalling programme. Having watched one episode,
I will never ever watch it again. That kind of thing gives football
a bad name.
Mr Brooking: I think most footballers'
wives would say that is pretty fictional.
Q321 Rosemary McKenna: Is it fictional?
Mr Brooking: If you believe the
programme, that is worrying.
Q322 Rosemary McKenna: Is it fictional
or is it based on reality?
Mr Brooking: Again, like any professional
life, a very small percentage could happen. But I think it is
a dreadful suggestion, when I meet all the genuine people within
sport. For you to say that footballers treat ladies in a different
way from other men is an absolute nonsense.
Q323 Chairman: You do not agree with
that.
Mr Brooking: The behaviour of
most footballers, and the way they conduct themselves, is exemplary.
Chairman: I think we will be addressing
television a bit later in this session and I am sure we all have
our views on that.
Q324 Mr Flook: The West Country and the
South-West is not particularly blessed with top-flight clubs and
most of your emphasis, Mr Brooking, so far seems to have been
on what they are doing at the premier division. Second and third
division clubs who are less wealthy, how much help does The FA
give them? Is there a template, where you say: This is what you
should be doing and all of this should be a minimum?
Mr Brooking: All clubs at that
level have centres of excellence, which are trying to identify
talent, and then all clubs also have what we term a `Football
in the Community' programme. Obviously The FA also has its County
Associations, which are working on what you would call grass roots
football, certainly an area I would like The FA to continue to
work with. For me the starting point in any behavioural pattern
has to be with the youngsters. I believe a quality football coach
communicates better than any other person in their lives, other
than the family, and I think a lot of school football has, because
of a lack of financial support, drifted into mums and dads running
sides now. Sometimes the mums and dads really do some fantastic
work; sometimes they run it as a sort of professional club, reliving
the opportunity to be a manager, and then you get the shouting
and hollering and the fear factor coming into youngsters. In my
role in the development side of the game, I believe that we have
a big role to play in guiding the mums and dads in how they should
be conducting themselves on the line, so as they do not transmit
bad behaviour to youngsters, who then repeat what they hear on
the sidelines. I believe coaching through schools, giving better
guidance and support for those involved in junior football, can
be the starting point to work through the system. It is not easy
to change somebody in their twenties who has been brought up in
a culture where they do misbehave, but certainly we still work
very much with our county associations in grass roots football,
and certainly in those league clubs outside the Premiership there
is still a lot of good work going on; there is educational support
for any youngsters that are taken on during their training schemes.
It is actually just changing from a three-year to a two-year programme
which they call MACE now but that is linked in with DfES.
Q325 Mr Flook: Gordon Taylor of the Professional
Footballers' Association sent us some information in which he
says, "As far as I am aware, professional footballers are
the only profession who willingly have in their contract a commitment
to six hours a week community work." That is not quite true
because Rugby Football Union, particularly premier league, have
that, but does that work at the ground level?
Mr Brooking: I think you will
find in any club naturally you will have certain players who are
more obviously identified as being a good example, to carry out
work in the community. I think in some of the evidence to you
from the premiership and league clubs you have had examples where
very high profile players are doing a lot of good work. A lot
have been involved in recent weeks and months because obviously
you saw the recent report by Chief Medical Officer Professor Donaldson
about what is required in physical activity. A lot of the Football
in the Community schemes are involved in the anti-obesity programmes
now that are being introduced and a lot of players are going out
to local clubs and schools, their profile being used to try to
encourage youngsters to take more physical activity. A lot of
Football in the Community schemes also do a lot of work where
you can lock in with a local school for a term's work, where pupils
are given points for attitude, behaviour, getting homework in
on time, a whole range of skills linked in with their school work,
and at the end of the term those high scoring youngsters are given
free tickets to the local ground. So football is working very
much locally demonstrating what the club can contribute to the
community. Certainly I would challenge some of you, wherever your
constituency is, to try to get to the nearest professional football
club and to try to find out what community work in the game is
going on. I think you would be pleasantly surprised.
Q326 Chairman: Certainly in Manchester
there is marvellous work by both of the clubs.
Mr Brooking: Yes.
Q327 Mr Doran: This inquiry, as you know,
is about drugs and role models in sport and I am quite interested
in the issue of where responsibility lies in the various tiers
in football in this country. It is quite clear from the evidence
we have received from you, written and oral, that The FA sees
it as its responsibility to deal with the drugs issue and it has
in train a whole process for ensuring that drugs are dealt with
in the sport. At the player level, clearly there are responsibilities
on the player, which some of the cases we have talked about outline,
and sometimes they meet their responsibilities, sometimes they
do not. Where it strikes me there may be a gap is at the level
of the club, and I would be interested if you could spell out
to me how you see the responsibility of the individual clubs in
this respect.
Mr Coward: Trevor has outlined
the more general responsibilities of clubs, particularly through
the academies and the centres of excellence on the general way
that a player should behave, what it means to be a professional
footballer. Trevor has also outlined the Football in the Community
scheme. That is another example of that relationship between ourselves
and the players' union, the PFA, which we think works very well.
Certainly the clubs themselves and the players' union both see
the need to ensure their players are given the best possible chance
to understand their duties. That is by way of answering your question
as to what community responsibility there is on clubs. Clubs do
fully recognise their responsibility. I do not think the game,
as Trevor has said, has enjoyed in any way the stories that have
been arising around the sport. We have an incredibly successful
sport, a sport which is loved by millions, but a sport therefore
which understands its responsibilities, so when clubs see negative
stories they are very well aware of them and want to address them.
As I say, there are many partnerships. Despite what we read about
what may go on between the various organisations in football,
there is a huge amount of work that goes on at many levels. It
is one of our jobs to try to join up all those various aspects.
Trevor has mentioned what we see, for instance, happening at academies
and centres of excellence with clubs. We want to make sure that
County FAs are communicating with parents, so that, as Trevor
explained, those parents coming together to create a small community
round a football club realise how important that is for those
kids that are coming into their care. Child protection is a serious
issue—and we are very proud to say we have trained 60,000
people in our awareness programme. That is something football
has done because we understand our responsibility that comes with
our incredible significance in modern society.
Mr Brooking: There is also the
Football Foundation—and you probably know the background
to that anyway—where the funding has three partners, The
FA, The FA Premier League and Government, contributing £60
million a year back into the game. For every £1 Government
has put in, they have got £5 back from that funding, and
some £350 million has gone into the game through the Football
Foundation. That I think is clubs and football recognising that
they have to contribute to grass roots. Having said that, of course,
it was also about a year ago recognised that some £2 billion
would be needed to bring changing facilities and pitches up to
the quality they should be, so even that £350 million, we
have to accept, is not going to go very far. If we are going to
bring lots of youngsters through—and girls' football now
is the fastest growing sport in the country—where are they
going to play? Where are the facilities? Where are the referees?
Where are the volunteers and the administrators? We have to be
thinking that now. That is why we are trying to work with Government
on the comprehensive spending review because we have to be anticipating
and preparing for that now, because when children come out of
school there is not going to be anywhere for them to go if we
do not invest very quickly.
Q328 Mr Doran: We are running short of
time and, although there are a number of questions I wanted to
ask you, I am going to have to curtail my contribution. The one
area that does concern me is the issue of drugs. The most high
profile case recently has been the Rio Ferdinand case. There are
two issues there that concern me. One is that there does not appear
to be any responsibility on the club to deliver the player for
testing. I would like you to comment on that. The other is the
aftermath of the case. If I could summarise it, putting my legal
hat on, a player has breached The FA rules by not attending for
testing, he has gone through the process and has been punished.
As a lawyer with some experience in employment law, it seems to
me that he has put himself in a position where he is unable to
fulfil the terms of his contract, but my understanding—and
I only understand this from the press—is the player continues
to be paid his usual wages throughout the process of his suspension.
It does not seem to me that that sends the right messages about
the consequences, if you like, for someone who has breached the
rules. I understand that this whole affair would have had devastating
effects on Rio Ferdinand's career, there is no question about
that, but the fact that he will continue to be paid a massive
salary, despite the fact that he has breached his contract in
this way and created massive problems for the game of football,
strikes me as deserving some investigation.
Mr Coward: To deal with the first
element, the general point is we, The Football Association, on
behalf of the game, believe we have a very effective doping control
programme, from the education process through to the collection
and sampling process and through to case management. Not only
do we say that but UK Sport says that. We are the UK's leader—and
this is UK Sport telling us. This is echoed by Lord Coe and others
who have given evidence to you, by our international governing
body, FIFA, and our European governing body, UEFA. We work together
with some key agencies in this area, one of which is UK Sport.
UK Sport carry out the collection process for a great number of
sports in this country, well, the UK, including obviously ourselves
the English Football Association. That includes athletics, swimming,
rugby league and others. It is UK Sport who carry out that same
WADA accredited, IOC accredited, ISO accredited process at every
sport they carry out. That is what we are effectively contracting
in from them. We are very satisfied that when the UK Sport team
arrive they carry out a process which is best in field, best in
class. We rely on them, therefore, when they arrive at a ground,
to deal with the communication process, the notification process,
and, save for the admittedly one very high profile case to which
you have referred, this process has worked fantastically well
for ten years. One of the key messages with which we have had
to deal with from our review group is: "If you have a great
system that is actually serving your sport well, don't change
it unless you really do think it is going to make it even better."
The second point in relation to the employment issue, each professional
footballer, as you will know, is employed on the basis of the
collectively bargained employment agreement that exists between
the employers and the employees, the clubs through their leagues,
and the union. It would not be right to go into the particulars
of any one case but these are, just like any other employment
issue, primarily down to the employer.
Mr Doran: Perhaps you could say whether
The FA is concerned about the message that it sends.
Chairman: I am sorry, we are running
very late and we have Alan still to ask questions.
Q329 Alan Keen: I will be as brief as
I can. I do not know whether you have seen our agenda, Trevor,
but it says, "Trevor Brooking, Director of Development and
a player (to be confirmed)". I am sure that refers to the
fact that you had not confirmed your attendance rather than that
more research was being done into whether you were a player or
not! I am glad Frank gave you the opportunity to mention Football
Foundation: I know there are problems with its funding at the
moment and you have said how vital it is. There is a saying football
supporters have, "I wouldn't go up the end of our street
to watch XYZ United," but when I saw Sky News last night
I almost wished I had gone half way down our street to see the
Broncos play because a wonderful fight on the pitch went on. I
have great respect for rugby league, but if that had been a football
player I would have been ashamed because I care greatly about
how people look at our great game. I would like to ask you what
The FA intends to do about the bad impression that the game creates
with players diving on occasions to try to gain a penalty. Sometimes
they dive because they have been tripped up and it is a genuine
penalty. What plans do you have to try to eradicate that?
Mr Brooking: You probably have
a submission from The FA refereeing department, which is trying
to clamp down on obvious dives. It is not easy on occasions and
it is throwing a lot of responsibility on them to get decisions
right: Is there contact or is there not? I have to say, from my
own experience, from the playing and dressing room point of view,
most players find it pretty appalling to try to cheat in that
manner. I think the media and TV could do us all a great service
by highlighting the obvious incidents because the "name and
shame" philosophy I think is a good one in this area. I do
not believe it contributes anything to the game. It is a bad example
and it is something we want to clamp down on. Naturally, you can
get cautioned for the obvious offences and referees are making
it clear that they want to clamp down on that, but, again, as
I mentioned, clubs have to play a part, they have to give a steer;
managers have to make sure they do see the incident or they do
look at it on the video and have a word with the player and not
say, "Oh, I didn't see the incident, I can't really comment."
We have to get a collective responsibility all around the table.
Q330 Alan Keen: I agree the diving or
not diving when there is contact or not contact made with a player
in the box is probably the most difficult thing to eradicate,
because it is impossible even with television close-ups to know
exactly what the situation is. There is one thing which is easier
to detect and I will give you the example of Makele: you did not
need to be a boxing expert to know that the way that he fell had
little to do with the power of the blow or push on the back of
his head. Could I come on to something I think could be eradicated
and I would like to know your views on it. You may say an MP has
a bit of a cheek insinuating that players are liars, but how many
times in a game where it is not always so easy to know, but the
players themselves know: a player in a white shirt, a player in
a red shirt, "Our ball, ref." It is watched by young
kids, they think it is the thing to do and it is live. It is the
thing that would be the easiest to eradicate. The penalty area
incidents are difficult, but this, "Our ball, ref,"
have you given any thought to this since you have been in your
new position?
Mr Brooking: I believe the key
area for me in my role must be to start with the very young person,
if you can eradicate or improve or dilute that taking place in
junior football in schools and get guidance for the mums and dads
and those running the team. That is when they are at their most
impressionable age, you are quite right, and if they watch it
on TV then they go out and repeat it, but somebody has to be out
there spreading the message that that is not the way to compete.
I do believe in my development role I have to start at the grass
roots and that age category. Having said that, you cannot just
ignore what is going on in the professionals' game and it is something
to try to work on with the clubs through disciplinary process,
to make sure that we turn that round. As you know, we have reviewed
our disciplinary processes over the last few months. You could
not change it half way through the season, but next year it will
be much quicker, so there will be much more reaction to incidents
and players will be suspended much earlier than the dragged-out
cases we have seen this season. I think that will in turn make
it a much more effective system and hopefully get the message
home much earlier and quicker. Then hopefully by that time players
will start to learn that they are better playing for their side
than being suspended for one-third of the season.
Alan Keen: Thank you. We are running
short of time, so we will have to cut it short.
Chairman: I am sorry; it just shows how
very important and interesting the evidence we have received is,
but we are running very late and, while I am sure lots of people
have more questions to ask, it would be discourteous to our other
witnesses if we were to continue this session. Thank you very
much indeed.
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