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“I
came here as an outsider, but I was welcome at The Den in a way I had
never experienced in football before. Before I first became a director I
suppose I had only been here about four times. But what I sensed in the
people and the atmosphere had made a very deep impression on me. There
was a warmth and a directness that reminded me of London before the
war.”
“The
same qualities used to be in football. They've gone now, gone from most
of our cities and gone from most of our football clubs. But they are
still in South-East London, and still in Millwall.”
“When
the club's crisis came, there was no other solution in sight except me.
I do not regard what I did as heroic. I did it because I wanted to do
it. But I would not have done it for any other club.”
“Millwall
was about a week away from extinction. We took the club off the hearse.
The lid had been nailed down and it was on its way to the burial ground.
That is unforgivable. Utterly unforgivable.”
“Directors
come and go, for a variety of reasons. But the football club should not
be affected by that. It belongs to the people. A director is only a
trustee, a caretaker. You have got to try and do your best for that club
while you are there, and sometimes your best may not be good enough.
That happens. But even if you fail, you have to fail in such a way that
you don't irretrievably damage the club. For Millwall to be in that
state was a betrayal of the people who had given so much to the club.
The supporters had not had directors as good as themselves.”
“We
didn't even have 11 players at one point. It was very hard to get help,
very hard indeed. It would have suited some people in the game if we had
disappeared. The supporters didn't believe what we said, and quite
rightly so. It had all been said before, they had had so many false
promises, they didn't relish another bunch coming along.”
“Everything
that happened in the first season gave them no encouragement whatsoever,
because we deliberately sat back, took stock and made all the
ground-work but didn't actually do anything to put playing defects
right.”
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“We
got a great stack of critical mail, which I replied to. Then in the
close season we went forward and started buying the players we needed.
John Docherty was one of the few people who recognised there was such a
thing as a Millwall player. He looked at the personality of potential
players as much as their playing skills. Lots of managers in football do
that, and many more say they do, but John really did. He had studied the
area and the club, and spent hours talking to people. John knew what he
was doing.”
“I
called the season-ticket holders together in the executive lounge and
told them what they could expect from me, and what I expected from them.
Just because they couldn't put up £200,000
did not mean they should sit on their arse. They could buy bingo
tickets, help with a bit of equipment for the gym, there was always
something. Everyone had to do what they could.”
"The
community scheme was already underway and there was never any question
of doing anything except expanding it, or rather, of letting Gary expand
it. I wanted to get
back to the time when the man on the terraces and the man on the pitch
saw each other as mates. I felt that if we could get people to
re-identify with the club, we might be able to do something about the
violence.”
“But
even if Millwall had not had the violence problem hanging over it, we
would have gone ahead with the work in the community because it is the
right thing to do. It should not be seen as extraordinary, whether done
by us or anybody else. What is extraordinary, is that these things have
not been attempted before.”
“If
I have a regret, it is that our facilities are not good enough to open
up properly yet. If we had better facilities, we would open the place up
24 hours a day. The conditions for watching football are no different
from when people lived back to back, before the war.”
“Why
is this accepted? A player does something in a half-second that you
drool over for days: one little bit that makes every thing else
worthwhile."
"If
we keep our cool, we believe that in three to four years' time we will
have a team whose talents will be the envy of the rest of England and we
will have amenities as good as anybody's. We will make Millwall what it
should be. That is what our people deserve. Until we get that, our
supporters have got every right to not be totally happy with us”.
"I
believe that if you treat people like human beings you have a fair
chance that they will respond in a |
responsible
manner. If you treat people like animals you have no hope of them
behaving in any other way. You are lucky if you reap what you sow, but
if you don't sow anything you are not going to reap anything. These are
my fundamental beliefs in life. I think they apply in football, and
particularly to Millwall.”
"In
the past, I think Millwall's virtues have been distorted and corrupted
by failure. But that doesn't excuse the violence. I think it explains
why some of it happened, but it does not excuse it. I truly believe
though, that if we can restore pride then we can hope to restore
responsibility. My fear is that out there is some bunch of idiots with
something to prove who will take us on.”
“I
know our people, they won't be walked over. They will find it very,
very, difficult to walk away from provocation. I don't believe our
people are going to go rampaging all over the place, they have got what
they want now. But they must not allow idiots to spoil it for them.”
“Ultimately,
I hope the great majority will discipline any small minority who
misbehave and threaten to spoil it for other people.”
"I
believe in the innate goodness of people. I believe that if you treat
people well, you create the best possible chance that they will respond
well. If you believe people are basically good, given the chance, then
you have to lead by example, and to trust them. You have to, and it is
right to do so. If it goes wrong, then the blame is shared by all of us.
We cannot distance ourselves from our people: we are our people. I live
in the world as it is, not the world as I would like it to be. If our
people let us down, they let themselves down. It would be all our faults
if this went wrong. And if that happens, we will face it honestly.”
“I
will not condemn our people, I am not frightened of them, and I am not
ashamed of them. No one will ever make me say our supporters are scum.
Never. Neither will I utter pious words about what I do and do not want
to happen. I hate violence, hate it and detest it, in any form. But you
have no right to say anything about violence unless you have tried to do
something about it, and having begun to do the things we are doing, I
think our actions should speak for themselves. I want our performances
on the pitch to speak for themselves, and I want our atmosphere and our
attitudes to speak for themselves. By those things, let us be judged.”
Reg
Burr, Chairman.
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