By Dr John Evans
H L Broadhurst seeks to denigrate Noel Kelly’s years in office as being years of failure and stagnation. This description, in fact, scarcely accords with reality, and any objective view of the decade 1977-1987 sees it emerge as the most glittering in the first half century of the existence of Nuneaton Borough FC.
“On the park”, as they say, the first team was highly successful. It performed well in the Southern League and qualified for founder-membership of the Alliance Premier League, the first national semi-professional league ever formed in this country and now (as the GM Vauxhall Conference) the official feeder league to the Football League Division Four.
Whilst in membership of the Alliance Premier League the club twice finished in second position, in 1983-84 and 1984-85. Indeed, had the APL’s points system been the same as that of the Football League the club would have been champions in 1984. These two seasons – during which the club was vetted for Football League membership – saw the club rate higher in football’s hierarchy than ever before (or since).
They attracted top-class semi-professional players, of whom fourteen moved on to full time professionalism, thirteen to the football league and one to the West German Bundesliga. All moved for substantial fees and these, together with the “sell-on” clauses negotiated by N Kelly, kept the company going. It is one of the cruel ironies of the current situation that the temporary “interim” board (July 1987 onwards) have only been able to continue because of substantial sums of money which have come to the club as the result of first or subsequent transfers of players signed and /or transferred under N Kelly.
Noel Kelly’s Contributions
Noel Kelly not only injected over £130,000 into the club over an 8-year period, he had as many as six of his workforce carrying out essential works on the ground at any one time. He also supplied 1,000 litres of paint, plus brushes and other labour to apply same, new goal posts, extension to boardroom, refurbished VP club, fit out home and away dressing room , complete with all new shower units.
Noel Kelly’s company also supplied, fabricated and fitted all safety crash barriers to league standard in Cock and Bear Stand, with the exception of some segregation all of the above work was free of charge.
Examples:
J Shooter, whose profligacy after February 1987 sent the club into deep financial difficulties was only saved in May of that year by a fee of £32,000 paid in respect of Richard Hill* by Northampton Town (who had just sold him on to Watford). Thus Noel Kelly’s shrewdness saved his immediate successors from disaster.
In the realm of semi-professional soccer, much prestige (and money) is acquired by clubs who battle their way through to the first round proper of the FA Cup – the oldest soccer competition in the world. Since NBFC’s formation in 1937, the club has appeared in the first round proper on seventeen occasions. In their first forty four years the club made ten of these appearances, and between 1977 and 1987 (the Kelly era) they made a further seven appearances. Since N Kelly was removed from the scene such success has ceased.
Apart from the FA Cup, the FA Trophy (solely for semi-professional clubs) carried the most prestige. In the competition’s twenty odd years NBFC have reached the quarter finals just three times – all under N Kelly. The last of these occasions was in February 1987. The start of J Shooter’s brief stewardship of the club virtually coincided with the club’s elimination from the tournament for that season, at the hands of a club from a lower league.
During the same period the club twice won the County Cup. It also won the Midland Floodlit Cup on several occasions and twice made European tours as competitors in the Anglo-Italian cup. Success was not only achieved at first team level, the club set up the best youth and reserve system outside the Football League. Reference has already been made to the large number of players who moved into the Football League, many of them joined the club as juniors.
In 1986 the club set up the first (and until 1989, only) YTS trainee scheme for young footballers outside the football league. Under the auspices of Jimmy Holmes (referred to with such spiteful and undeserving contempt by Harry Broadhurst) four local sixteen your olds joined the club under the Manpower Services Commission-financed scheme. This was so successful (particularly the work-experience section) that the club was singled out for praise by the organisers at a Midland regional meeting held at Villa Park and attended by all the Midland Football League Clubs.
The YTS scheme carefully promoted, should have been the key to the club’s future. In the spring of 1987, however, J Shooter and his supporters, who by then had hijacked the club, decided not to apply for a confirmation of the scheme into the second year. His successors, the newly formed “interim board”, then allowed the scheme to founder and long before the four lads’ two years were up the club had abandoned any pretence at running the scheme properly, although they confirmed to pay the lads – in effect doing nothing.
The scandal of the YTS scheme was one of the two most shameful acts perpetrated by J Shooter and company, whom Harry Broadhurst lauds so much. You only have to look at the facts and how important to the clubs the YTS schemes are, i.e. just some of the players who have become big stars in their own right: Tim Flowers (Southampton) Tony Adams (Arsenal) Lee Sharp (Manchester United) Paul Davis (Arsenal) Steve Redmonds (Manchester City) Darren Morgan (Millwall) David Rocastle (Arsenal) Paul Gascoigne (Spurs) Paul Ince (West Ham) Dale Gordon (Norwich) Paul Merson (Arsenal). There are of course many more in the lower divisions and semi-professional football.
The other great scandal was the failure to object to the club’s forcible demotion from the APL (GM) to the Southern League.
One of the main problems here was that J Shooter had made a fool of himself with the APL committee. He went to see the committee during the spring of 1987 and took with him set of schemes and plans for a £500,000 development for Manor Park. All went well until he was asked one simple question – “where is the money coming from?” Incredibly he had no answer. The committee drew its own conclusions.
To return to Harry Broadhurst’s malicious accusations, and the evidence which refutes them. During the Kelly era, the Football Association regularly invited the club to stage major games on its account. The club twice stage the FA National Sunday Cup Final and in 1986 put on a semi-professional international game, England v Eire. Never before (or since) was the club asked to put on such prestigious events. Clearly the FA did not agree with Harry Broadhurst’s view of the organisational capabilities of the club and the people who ran it.
In any case, claims of mismanagement put forward by a man who was suspended sine-die from football for his own misconduct are scarcely to be given credibility by any reasonable and fair minded person.
In one of his major criticisms of N Kelly, Harry Broadhurst actually outlines what was, in reality, a prime reason for the club’s success – stability. The “Golden Years” of the mid-eighties were achieved when the club was headed by three men of knowledge, ability and integrity. At that time the club had:
- the longest-serving Chairman in its history (Noel Kelly)
- the longest-serving Manager in its history (Graham Carr)
- the longest-serving Secretary in its history (John Evans)
This partnership was only broken when the manager was, not surprisingly, lured away to employment by a football league club (Northampton Town FC). The secretary followed him to the same club 18 months later and the chairman was unseated by his enemies within a further four months. From that date one can chart the sad demise of NBFC.
The period 1977-1987 was one of consolidation generally for the club. The ground was purchased for £25,000; its value now exceeds £5 million. The ground was vastly improved by the erection of new floodlights (£25,000) and extensive development of the terraces. The total spent on these schemes was over £100,000. Harry Broadhurst terms it “decay”.
No other club of NBFC’s stature attracted so many world famous personalities to the ground during these years. N Kelly brought Muhammad Ali to a Midland Floodlit Cup Final to the great delight of the many local fans who had turned up to greet him. On another wonderful night George Best turned out for NBFC in a friendly against Coventry City which filled the ground. Many other famous sports personalities have also been our guests, of whom Ian Botham, Colin Milburn and Graham Kelly were just a few.
NBFC spearheaded the drive for a National Semi-Professional League during the 1970’s and were proud founder members in 1979. In that year several people were elected as life members of the APL for their services in setting up the competition. Since then only one name has been added for services rendered to the league. That name is Noel Kelly, and his election by the leading lights of English Semi Professional Football perhaps indicates more than anything else the enormous gulf between reality and the wild suppositions compounded by Harry Broadhurst.
On every count and on every side, the allegations of Harry Broadhurst – himself suspended sine-die from football and football management – emerge as mere fantasy, the products of spite and envy.
In conclusion, it is perhaps relevant to chart the progress of NBFC since N Kelly was removed from the helm in 1987. Rated as the second most powerful club outside the Football League in 1985 and still in the top twenty in February 1987, its collapse has been remarkable.
Forcibly demoted in June of the same year, largely due to the ineptitude and indolence of J Shooter’s “board”, the club was relegated from the Southern League (Premier Division) twelve months later following little success by the interim board. By February 1989, the club had settled in the middle of the Southern League’s Midland division – a most inferior competition.
In football’s non-league pyramid the club has in two short years crashed from a place in the top twenty to one that was scarcely in the top one hundred and fifty. This has been the most rapid decline of any club of NBFC’s quality in post war football history. Is it any wonder that a majority of the company’s shareholders find themselves totally out of sympathy with Harry Broadhurst and J Shooter and favour the return of N Kelly?