Bramwell Speaks Out

SOME hot breaking news.

I understand that Chelsea are set to axe Gustavo Poyet, Dennis Wise, Michael Duberry, Ed de Goey and Graeme Le Saux.

Manager Gianluca Vialli has realised that to sit at the top of the Premiership costs money.

So, rather than set dangerous precedents, the Italian wants to use the rest of the season to discover whether the same results can be obtained with a smaller and less expensive squad.

And Vialli has warned his players that Chelsea will not be appearing at Wembley should his side reach the FA Cup Final in May.

The fancy team suits would push the club over the revised budget.

The inspiration for this Chelsea revolution has been recent events at Blackburn Arena.

Blackburn Hawks fans could at least be forgiven for thinking there are startling parallels where similar hot breaking news has frozen the spirits of the diehard support.

For, finding their team flying high at the top of the English League, the club has sacked five players and pulled out of the end-of-season play-offs.

In the eyes of many supporters, Arena general manager Des Finlay is the villain of the piece.

And it is beyond dispute that he and his employers, rink owners Peel Holdings, are their own worst enemies by maintaining a stubborn head-in-the-sand attitude to controversy.

Their silence is, quite simply, an insult to the team's paying public.

However, as in any raging argument, there are two sides to the story. So there may well be a good reason for the timing of the sackings, after the transfer deadline when the players involved could not find new clubs.

There may also be a legitimate argument for denying the team and fans the chance of silverware in the play-offs.

But to deny those supporters the chance of informed debate is both naive and counter-productive.

For if those fans were aware of some of the financial realities of ice hockey life, their natural anger might just be tempered.

Firstly, although the Peel Holdings organisation is hugely wealthy, it is a public limited company answerable to shareholders.

If I owned shares in a property company, I would not be too keen to discover that my annual dividend was being affected by the results of the Chester Chaffinches chess team.

The long-standing attitude has been that ice hockey at Blackburn must strive for self-sufficiency.

This season the average paying attendance has been around 300 spectators at approximately £4.50 a time. That includes the 44 Hawks season ticket holders.

Around 4,000 free tickets are delivered to local businesses each week in a bid to introduce the sport to new punters. The response has been poor.

The weekly wage bill for players was around £2,500 - comparable to Solihull and not far behind Milton Keynes who had aspirations to join the Premier League. Last season, £28,000 was ploughed from the rink's operating profit into the Hawks. The budget for this season was increased but had run out by December, with no subsequent increase in gate revenue.

Player power at the start of the season, when a boycott was threatened if wages were not increased, is blamed as one of the contributory factors.

The sport in Britain has always struggled to balance the equation of wage demands and limited appeal. Its history is littered with spectacular financial flops.

And the truth is that the Arena took a bit of a gamble this year by budgeting for another £25,000 in the pay-roll.

But that has failed to attract the crowds.

So the bosses were faced with a stark choice.

Push the boat out, throw good money after bad and try to buy the support of the Blackburn public at the risk of disaster. Or tighten the purse strings, continue to invest in junior development and safeguard the future of the club, even the rink itself.

These type of decisions are never easy and cold, calculated logic is often devoured by the emotions of the sports nut.

And I would not defend some of the methods of the Blackburn Arena management for one second.

But, unfortunately, Blackburn Hawks cannot be compared to Chelsea Football Club.

So, while the the sky is the limit for supporters of other sports, ice hockey lovers should be aware that the sealed lid of reality will always contain their dreams.

Neil Bramwell is the Sports Editor

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.