Chair of the FSF

Malcolm Clarke has been a match-going football fan for 45 years. He is a season-ticket holder at Stoke City who also has a strong allegiance to York City, where he spent his teenage years. Fortunately they haven't played each other too often in that time!

He joined the FSA National Committee in 1996 after his 'retirement' from a senior management position in the NHS, becoming its Vice-chair and then Chair, before the merger which led to the FSF.

He is a self-employed management and quality consultant, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is also a 'quango man' being a member of the Information Tribunal and the General Social Care Council, the regulator for the social care professions.

He would like to see a similar external regulator for football. He is fed up of corruption and incompetence in the running of the game and the way in which the views of football fans have been ignored at every level.

My Role...

As Chair of the FSF, I have an overall responsibility, along with my fellow officers, for the proper Governance of the organisation, and for ensuring, as far as that is possible in a largely voluntary organisation, that we keep on track for achieving our goals and targets. I believe that we are becoming more professional in our approach and are demonstrating that despite our limited resources, we can produce high quality material and arguments to represent our case.

As part of this, I take a particular lead in our negotiations with the football authorities and other agencies, and in representing us at various events and functions to which we are invited, each of which is potentially an important opportunity to promote our views. I also undertake much of our media work. We are continually improving our lobbying and PR work.

Our liaison with the football authorities used to be at a large single meeting at which each was represented, along with other bodies such as DCMS and the Football Foundation. These were increasingly becoming shouting matches which made little progress was made and some of the senior executives of the authorities stopped coming.

These meetings have now been discontinued and replaced with separate meetings with the three main authorities. Two of them, the FA and the Premier League, provide financial support to help with travelling costs, loss of earnings and preparatory work. In each case, the quality of the meetings has improved greatly. Although we do not, of course, agree on many things, there is now a more focussed debate, with senior representation from the authorities. It may still be difficult to point to clear outcomes and changes from these meetings, but at least there is a more constructive and in-depth dialogue.