Former Sheffield Wednesday chairman’s loans at Hillsborough have cast £4m lifeline for Chesterfield into doubt
A £4m lifeline for Chesterfield has been withheld until the Football League has ruled on whether the investment, from the former Sheffield Wednesday chairman Dave Allen, is permissible.
Allen’s proposed investment, which was agreed by the club last month at an extraordinary general meeting, at which his identity was kept secret, represents a vast sum of money for the League Two club. Eight years ago Chesterfield fell into administration with debts of £1.6m, before a supporters’ trust led a takeover.
Allen’s investment was sought in order to push forward plans to build a new stadium. However there are serious complications, since Allen remains a major creditor of Sheffield Wednesday, with £2.1m loaned to the Hillsborough club.
The 67-year-old casino magnate has only recently reduced his shareholding in Wednesday to less than 10% – a threshold at which investors are forbidden from taking significant stakes in other clubs – and the league was made aware of the outstanding loans. Discussions took place at Tuesday’s league board meeting, which was dominated by talks on the insolvency of Southampton’s parent company. No decision was reached on Allen’s loans.
Rulemakers fear the size of such loans could allow individual lenders to exert influence. That would be problematic if they then also controlled another Football League club. In a similar case, an unidentified lender took over a Championship club and the League ordered his loans to a second club to be repaid. But the size of Allen’s Sheffield Wednesday loans – currently repayable next May – might make early settlement difficult for the Owls, thus imperilling Chesterfield’s lifeline.
Pain in Spain
Spain’s joint 2018 World Cup bid with Portugal has been modified into an almost go-it-alone campaign following the public expression by Fifa’s president, Sepp Blatter, of his objections to cross-border bids. Seen as the biggest European rival to England 2018, reliable sources say Spain’s proposal now extends to holding only a single group match in Portugal. That will cause embarrassment if there is no public admission of the plan to all but erase Spain’s neighbour from the equation before the formal submission of bids next month.
Bath cold on Rec plans
Bath Rugby’s time at the Rec looks ever more likely to come to an end. The ground’s owner, the Recreation Ground Trust, delivered a submission to the Charity Commission this week that was strikingly similar to one already rejected by the government watchdog. The commission has jurisdiction over the Rec since the trust is a charity. It has resisted previous requests for short-term extensions to existing arrangements regarding the temporary, 2,000-seat East Stand. There were only vague promises of future improvements in the trust’s latest request for a 12-month extension; insiders say more detailed plans were scuppered by a lack of enthusiasm at the club. Bath have much to lose – already run at a loss, a reduction of paying customers from 10,600 to 8,600 next season would be catastrophic – but they have made no secret of their search for another site.
Girls interrupted
Viewers will be unable to see live coverage of England’s world-champion cricketers during the ICC World Twenty20 group stages in June. The English women, who returned triumphant from the World Cup in Australia last month, are one of the few genuine success stories in British sport outside of the Olympics and every one of their World Cup matches that took place at the North Sydney Oval was available live to viewers here. Yet when the Twenty20 tournament takes place in this country their efforts will be crowded out by the simultaneously-staged men’s event. The International Cricket Council’s host broadcaster, ESPN Star, will not attend women’s group-stage matches and intends to show only the semi-finals and final live and in full. That is because when its deal to cover the men’s event was struck in December 2006, the ICC had not scheduled a women’s tournament. Sky and the BBC will send cameras to cover the women’s event, but both will only broadcast news clips and highlights.
matt.scott@guardian.co.uk