Football: Banks may curb FA power

THE GOVERNMENT is ready to blow the whistle on the role of the Football Association as the supreme authority for the national game following the cash-for-votes scandal that may have seriously damaged England's bid for the 2006 World Cup. Events at Lancaster Gate have caused alarm in ministerial circles and if there is no clear indication from tomorrow's full council meeting that the FA is prepared to undertake a massive programme of modernisation and reform it is likely that moves will be made to implement a new regulatory body for the professional side of the game.

The enforced resignation of the chief executive, Graham Kelly, and the censuring of the chairman, Keith Wiseman, have reinforced the view held by the Minister for Sport, Tony Banks, and members of football's Task Force that there is a need for tighter and more formal control of a commodity that is now seen as of great national importance because of its economic, social and political implications.

The government game-plan would be to make the FA responsible to an independent body with executive power of regulation along the lines of those which oversee the denationalised gas and electrical industries. The feasibility of establishing such a body is at present on the agenda of the Task Force.

A strong, professionally run higher authority for football, led by a US-style commissioner, would certainly appeal. Banks has consistently made it clear that he sees a massive shake-up of Britain's unwieldy and fragmented sports administration as a vital part of his agenda. The FA, festooned in blazers and suffused by bureaucracy, is a prime target for such reform.

Whatever has been said publicly there is no doubt that the unauthorised attempt to obtain the backing of the Welsh FA for Wiseman's bid for the Fifa presidency in return for a pounds 3.2m "loan" has caused the Government embarrassment in view of their unequivocal support of the 2006 campaign.

A successful bid to bring international sport's most prestigious event here would be seen as a crucial boost for New Labour at the next election, with the momentum carrying it well into the Millennium.

An unlikely scenario of the discredited Wiseman remaining in office after tomorrow's meeting would certainly set more alarm bells ringing at Westminster. But the Southampton coroner Wiseman must be aware that he is virtually dead and buried, although he ignored a vote of no- confidence by the FA executive committee, and his survival seems an impossibility, despite his promised full explanation to the council.

The Chelsea chairman, Ken Bates, has been conducting a high-profile campaign, which, has included fresh allegations of loans being made to FA staff, notably Kelly, and would relish taking over the chairmanship, albeit on a short-term basis.

Despite his unabashed self-aggrandisement Bates is likely to get the backing of most Premiership representatives but he has got up the noses of the old boys' brigade from the Shires, who, with members of the armed forces, schools and universities outnumber the professional votes on the FA at a ratio of nearly five to one. David Sheepshanks, of Ipswich, very much a reformist, will declare his intention to stand for the chairmanship tomorrow, but may face opposition from the Sheffield Wednesday chairman, Dave Richards, who was defeated by Wiseman when Sir Bert Millichip stepped down in 1996.

Richards had been the preferred choice of the Premiership clubs by an 18-2 majority at that time but Wiseman, who then manoeuvred himself on to the FA council, managed to secure their backing and was swept into power. Tomorrow those backers will have little choice but to condemn him.