Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid . . . . . .

By Neil Ravenscroft
September 3 2003

The rise of Chelski under their new sugar daddy, Roman Abramovich, has made a lot of fans jealous. This sort of thing can end in tears, though.

A lot of the younger element amongst our supporters will not have been around (or, at least old enough to take notice) when Walsall aquired its own sugar daddy.

Barry Blower was running his second "Save Our Saddlers" campaign against a ground share with one of our neighbours and was looking around for a possible buyer for the club.

Someone mentioned to him a newspaper story about a young multi millionaire businessman who wanted a league club, name of Terry Ramsden.

To cut a long story short, Ramsden duly bought the club, sacked the popular manager (Alan Buckley) and brought in a mate of his to run the team (Tommy Coakley), while promising Christmas turkeys to all of the pensioners who came to games.

Eventually, we were promoted, despite some strange managerial decisions by the said Mr Coakley, and brought some decent players in for our season in the (then) second division. Forbes, Dornan and, especially, Alex Taylor were certainly good enough for that Division.

However, along came a stock market crash and Terry Ramsden was wiped out. To be fair, he hung onto the football club for as long as possible, but it had to go eventually, leaving us with some expensive contracts we couldn't afford to pay and two successive relegations. It was one of the darkest periods in the club's history.

So why start thinking about this today?

Well, there I was, listening to Talk Sport this morning at 10 to 7, when Alan Brazil starts on about how good it was to have back in circulation a certain high rolling gambler and race horse owner, who is on his way to getting his fortune back. Yes, Brazil knows personally that "really nice guy", the one and only Terry Ramsden.

He really wouldn't want to get back into football again would he? He wouldn't be looking at buying an unfashionable 1st Division team and taking it to the Prem, would he?

On consideration, I think I'd feel a bit more comfortable if he didn't. Once bitten, twice shy, as it were. Mind you, he might like to invest in the building of a new hotel in Walsall, mightn't he? You know, an investment in a growing business . . . . . . .

I'll get my coat.