Interview ~ Ivor Beeks

WWFC Chairman, Ivor Beeks.

WWISC: I’d like to start by thanking you for agreeing to take part in this interview.

Ivor: I don’t know why it’s a problem? I tell all my staff the same thing really that the door is always open; people only have to pick up a phone to speak to me. Perhaps we’ve not conveyed that message strong enough in the past. We are now making sure that people know the message now and perhaps maybe this will be the start?

WWISC: You’ve been chairman at Wycombe Wanderers Football Club for quite sometime, in fact longer then I’ve supported Wycombe Wanderers Football Club, so how did you originally become involved?

Ivor: I’ve had a company in Wycombe now for thirty-six years and when I was young I supported Wycombe and I’ve been to see Bishop’s Auckland, Pegasus and all those matches. The semi-final of the FA Amateur Cup the game at the Arsenal and of course 1957 I saw that. Then I suppose as one does with teams and those involved in sport I drifted out but then I got back into it in the mid-eighties by watching Wycombe. I’d expanded my business and I’ve been reasonable successful in business and I have a love for Portugal. I was out there and so was the team when Brian Lee was chairman and I had a phone call asking me if I’d like to play a game of golf with Brian Lee and Monty Seymour. That was back when the Wanderers was run by management and I said that I would be happy to have a game of golf. Well we played golf and it wasn’t until the eighteenth hole that I wondered "why are these two fellows playing golf with me, is it just a game of golf, or is there something else?" We’re coming up to the eighteenth and Brian Lee says, "I suspect you’re wondering why we’ve asked you to play golf with us" of course I answered "yes". He said, "well, the committee" which also included a pal of mine John Roberts who was at Winter Taylor’s, "want to change things around and have a limited company and your name was one of those suggested as might be interested". I said that I don’t know, I need to think about it. I’d need to look at balance sheets as I wouldn’t want to get involved with something that perhaps might have a major problem but I stated that I was seriously interested in football. He said that he’d send me all the details when he got back which he did. I looked at it and I said, "yes I would be interested" but I insisted on one or two items that I really needed to be put in place and one of those was that at the time they were going to change the constitution so that directors stood for three years and I said that you can’t do anything in three years, you need a minimum of five years and I wanted to bring in two people with me as well as I wasn’t going to take over an existing team, I wanted a fresh team. They agreed and the rest is history.

WWISC: Are you still actively involved in your property development company or have you passed the company on and semi retired?

Ivor: I am still very actively involved in my two companies. I have a hotel company in the centre of Wycombe and my own company which builds houses, contracts and commercial work. I have two sons in the business, two other directors and I have my wife and we are a family ordinated business. My sons really are my best friends, we have a great relationship, they are excellent in business and so are my two other directors. What I did was change things around about three years ago and I now have a different board of directors apart from my wife and myself who’ve been running it and I shall be retiring in four weeks time from that business. I will be sixty on 24th November and I shall retire from the company at that time although I shall remain a share holder.

WWISC: Will you be devoting more time to Wycombe Wanderers Football Club or is that something else you’ll be stepping back from? 

Ivor: The changes that we have made to the board room here were made because we felt that it needed a change again. That brought about fresh ideas and a fresh impetus and I have resolved to try and spend more time here because running ‘three’ companies is pretty difficult including a variety of other things that I do in the locality. So ‘yes’ I do intend to spend a bit more time here but we do intend to change things around a little bit.

WWISC: When the ISC was first formed it has been documented that there was friction between the ISC and Wycombe Wanderers Football Club, from your perspective what caused these problems? 

Ivor: I don’t particularly like the word ‘Independent’ because to be honest I think we are all one family and I always wanted and I’ve been open about it that I believe that there should be one supporters group channelling their efforts into doing the very best that they can do. I think we went through a period where there were two supporters clubs and perhaps the football club went down the wrong road in as much as that they gave more support to the Official Supporters Club then they did to the Independents. Now successive chairman have made great strides to actually make sure that its not an ‘us and them’ situation and I hope that the club have made great strides to also ensure that. I think that if I look at it objectively it would now mean to me now that we have ‘two’ supporters clubs that both perform a duty for the supporters and whilst that’s there we should not get involved and try to say that there should be only ‘one’. What we should be doing is actually supporting both groups to the best of our ability and NOT supporting one more than the other. I have seen my role recently as trying to change things and I believe that Sharon Deighton did an awful lot in bringing Wycombe Wanderers Football Club and the Independent Supporters Club closer together and I did try when she was chairman to get her more involved. I spoke to you and the Officials after the AGM and we were both sorry that Mike Greatwood had gone because I think that he’s done a lot in bringing the club closer to the fans and we don’t intend to give that up. 

WWISC: It has been well documented that Wycombe Wanderers Football Club made £150,000 profit last season, if that had instead been a £½ Million loss how would the club have covered that loss?

Ivor: We have an overdraughts facility which we cannot go over and we would have had to curtail our activities during the close season. We probably wouldn’t have been able to do the stand, we wouldn’t have been able to refurbish the Vere Suite we may have had to have a mortgage on the training ground so there are various areas where we could have cut back. You set your stall out at the beginning of the season an hopefully you actually exceed that. I know an awful lot of clubs that set their budget to actually make a loss and hopefully they’ll either sell a player, have a good cup run or gate might improve. You know it’s a movable feast this football club or all football club are because things don’t work out exactly as you’d planned. I mean that’s why its so interesting, you don’t know if you’re going to have a run in any of the three cups, you don’t know where you’ll finish in the league although you can guess at where you think you might be and set your budgets accordingly. We’ve had to do that ourselves over the past few years and I think we’ve been quite successful at it although we’ve not made profits we’ve not mad huge losses either.

WWISC: I’ve seen today that Stoke City lost almost £1¾ million loss last season.

Ivor: You can look at any football club and I’ll tell you that we are as well run in that department of not losing too much money. We don’t want to lose money, break even would be fine for us to be honest, we’re as good as any and better then most. If you look at the Deloitte and Touché report in season 1999/2000 we were second in our division with only Gillingham better then us, but then they sold players. We have a fairly tight hold on the budget but that’s not to say we couldn’t do better.

WWISC: If a player becomes available that Lawrie feels he needs are there still funds available for him to use?

Ivor: What we said to Lawrie was that there is a ‘pot’ of money to deal with transfer fees and by way of taking on players within a wages budget and I think that perhaps people have been on his back because what he’s done is tried to look at the market and say, "who can I get for the money that I’ve got, and what can I get the best of?" Now I think he’s done a really good job and there is a certain amount of money available. We’ve just bought another player and of course we bought Currie but that’s not to say that if the right player came along for the right price and perhaps we have a decent run in this or another cup or our finances to a turn, I would say that there is a possibility that something would be made available but he knows the situation, he knows what he’s got and I have to say that he’s done a first class job at whatever budget we’ve set and quite often working inside them.

WWISC: A number of changes were made to the board of directors recently, what was the thinking behind that?

Ivor: The thinking behind the changes on the board were that, that board had been together for thirteen or fourteen years and everybody is getting older. We felt that we needed a new impetus and some fresh ideas. The great thing that Brian Lee and his management team did all those years ago was recognizing that the club needed to be taken on another step and I think that this board has done exactly the same thing, its recognized that the current team needs changing round and it needs to go to the next step. I’ve said on numerous occasions now that our aim is the first division, we set a mission statement to get into the first division but we need to perhaps to change the way we look at things, the way we focus on things to be slightly different. I had a meeting with David Sheepshanks a little while ago and from that meeting I realized that we have to change things around and so did the board and great credit to those directors who stepped down and in particular Brian Lee who’s been associated with this club for an awful long time but he recognized again that, yes it was time to step down and the thinking behind it was ‘lets have another whirl, lets have another go and lets see if we can take it to the next step.

WWISC: How does the club actually raise funds?

Ivor: The football club is well thought of in every area, the Football League, The Football Association, our suppliers and our bankers. Our bankers have sufficient trust in directors that they are prepared to grant an overdraughts facility of £X amount of money to support the club in what its trying to do. So we don’t have to much of a problem as we have a pretty good track record in what we do and how we do it. Not only that we have regular monthly board meetings, we know our figures each month. We are a club that is on-top of what we’re trying to do and we know exactly where we are at any given moment. We don’t actually end the year and ask if we’ve made a profit or a loss, we know each month what we’re doing.

WWISC: If someone were to approach Wycombe Wanderers Football Club looking to purchase the club, what processes would be put into action to either accept or reject such an offer?

Ivor: Well you know that can’t happen, because we’re limited by guarantee and in order for that change to take place the members would have to vote for the change. It is inevitable that at some time that change is going to have to take place. We cannot sustain higher division football without a cash influx. And in order to achieve that I’m absolutely convinced that we shall have to become a limited company with shares. I would hope that in the near future Brian Kane who is one of the directors who recently came on board and who I hope will shortly be back from America and he has some great attributes as regards business acumen and for taking the club forward. He is now vice chairman and when he comes back we’ll look at this and see what is the best way to take the club forward and probably change the constitution. As you know we can’t do that unless we come back to the members, so if somebody came in at the moment and said, "I’ve got a £million and I want to take the club" over he couldn’t do it. But I am conscious that at some stage we’ll have to take the club down that road.

WWISC: If changes were than made to the constitution would any meaningful safeguards be implemented to protect the club from abuse such as asset stripping?

Ivor: First of all, they’d have to satisfy the current board before we put it to the members and I guess knowing the current board there would be lots of questions to ask because we all have put a lot of time in here and at least three of us have put in between fourteen and fifteen years in here for nothing and when I say nothing I mean for NO financial gain at all. In fact we’ve all put money in at some stage or the other in our various different ways. We certainly wouldn’t want to see all of that lost to somebody who came in and was hoping to get rich quick in five minutes. I genuinely believe that there are people out there who are as passionate about this football club and about football in general and about where we want to take this football club and to support it in the ways and the means that we know that they can. So I believe that at some stage we will find the person OR persons to go down that route and protect the football club so that we will know that it will always be there. Having said that you can look at eighty-nine other football clubs who have got shares and in the main they are ok! Those supporters haven’t got protection about their football clubs but the people in the main who are running those football clubs are very passionate about their clubs and what they’re trying to do. There is always a minority and we must make sure that we’re not in that minority.

WWISC: The thing that worries most supporters is what happened to clubs like Brighton and Doncaster. We know that they are a minority but it’s the minority that stick in your mind.

Ivor: Well that’s the vetting process that I suppose we’ll have to go through. I don’t suppose that you can put a cast-iron situation in place but what we need to do is ensure that league football will always be played in this town at the highest level. I happen to believe that High Wycombe can entertain a First Division club and I think that would be absolutely great.

WWISC: The fan base seems to have begun to improve.

Ivor: It is! And I think that it could increase more. When I look at Crewe, Stockport and Grimsby and clubs like them and think, "well if they can do it, why can’t we". Wimbledon have been up there and they have a fan base similar to ours and probably sometimes smaller than ours. I’m convinced that we can be a first division club.

WWISC: The supporters clubs had built a good working relationship with Mike Greatwood who for whatever reason is now no longer at the club, is somebody prepared to step into the roll that he had created which involved private meeting with the supporters clubs with ideas and suggestions going back and forth?

Ivor: It was absolutely tailor made for Mike Greatwood because he felt that the club needed to get closer to its fan base and he was absolutely right. Now what he has said is that he is prepared to do specific tasks or jobs if we want him to so it may well be that in the fullness of time we may well say "Mike could you carry on doing this?" as he started it, it may well be the ideal situation. I haven’t spoken to him since the AGM but he did say to me that he would be prepare to do that. What I can say is that know we have started I wouldn’t want to see the opportunity slip away. We are going to have one less board member because we’re not going to appoint another board member at this moment in time. So it’ll mean that it’ll have to fall to one of the other six, now if that’s got to happen, then it’ll have to happen because we cant go back to the situation where the communication was not taking place.

WWISC: The Independents and the Officials were having meeting with Brian Lee, but so far this season we haven’t seen him.

Ivor: The reason you haven’t seen Brian and he’s asked me every month "do you want me to talk to the supporters clubs?" and I said that at the moment Mike Greatwood have taken that mantle over so it seem a bit pointless two of you dealing with it. Now that may well me another option and I only spoke to him last Saturday and he said that if we wanted him to come back and get involved again he would be happy to do so. 

WWISC: There’s been a lot of talk in the media lately about a players Strike, what would be the position of Wycombe Wanderers Football Club should this occur?

Ivor: I don’t think that it will put Wycombe Wanderers Football Club into any particular position. They will strike if the television cameras get involved and we don’t really have to many television cameras down here but I don’t really know what the position is regarding our players. My guess is that they may support their union and if they do then it will be down to them. I happen to think that its possibly illegal because their contract is with Wycombe Wanderers Football Club and the professional footballers contract is with the Football League. I don’t really think it will get to that point, I’m convinced that a deal will be done as a strike is no good for football, defiantly no good for football at all. But I can understand where the player are coming from, they are a union that needs to be seen to be doing things together but as I say their contracts are with this football club and its not us whose putting them into this position where they feel that they have to strike. It’s the Football League and the Premier League that decided that they didn’t want to pay the money not Wycombe Wanderers Football Club.

WWISC: It always seems to come down to the Premier League.

Ivor: I’ve convinced that the Premier League will put sufficient pressure on to get the thing settled as I don’t think that its in anybodies interest for a strike to happen.

WWISC: WWISC has recently incorporated support for the Safe Standing campaign into its constitution as we believe that supporters should have freedom of choice on how they watch football. Would Wycombe Wanderers Football Club in the event of promotion have any plans to install seating in standing areas before it became compulsory?

Ivor: I can categorically tell you, and you make sure that you print this. We have NO intention, its not even been discussed about changing the home supporters end into seating arrangements. But if we were to go in the First Division and the rules of the First Division state that we HAVE to be an all seater club, then we have to follow those rules because they could actually say, "Ok! You don’t want to abide by the rules than you go back in the Second Division", now I’m sure that the supporters wouldn’t want that at all. So, we have no intention at the moment of changing the standing and I think people should have a choice of whether they stand or they sit. But then I don’t make the rules, somebody else makes the rules and we have to make sure that we abide by them and that I can assure everybody we will do. As I already said we’re a well thought of football club because we actually do what we’re supposed to do and don’t try to flout any of the laws. If at the end of the day they say that we can have a standing area then its something we would have to look at and certainly have to talk to the fans about.

WWISC: Recently Wycombe Wanderers Football Club supported the two up two down between Division Three and The Conference, I have been asked through our Nation Representative to pass on the warm thanks from very many supporters of both conference and football league clubs who were impressed with Wycombe Wanderers Football Club standing almost alone for something they believed in. Do you have any thoughts to pass on the those people?

Ivor: I am a great believer in the pyramid system that’s how we came through and into the Football League. I know how difficult it was with one-up one-down, we got ninety-seven points and so did Colchester and we had to stay in the Conference. I haven’t forgotten where we’ve come from and neither have the rest of our directors and neither has Wycombe Wanderers Football Club. Having said that we’re a Football League club now not a Non-League club, but I do passionately believe that there should be more than one-up one-down. Whether its two or three, there should certainly be more then one and it was Wycombe Wanderers Football Club that tabled the motion, nobody else, and I believe that Wycombe Wanderers Football Club that voted for the proposal and non of the others like Kidderminster, Cheltenham, Macclesfield and Lincoln. They’ve all been in The Conference. I know there are more and I don’t believe any of them voted for it. Even Rushden & Diamonds, I heard that they didn’t even vote for it either. Brian was at the meeting and he reported back there was only one and it was us! Now that should send a message to all those other people that we are prepare to stand up and be counted and to make sure that if possible there will be more then one-up and one-down. I personally think that its good for football. There are seven Conference clubs that have been through the Football League five of which are in the third division at the moment, its good for competition. The Lincoln’s and the Colchester’s who were relegated to the Conference and won their place back in the Football League, I’m convinced that they are better sides for that experience. They might disagree but I think they are and all credit to those non-league clubs that are banging on the door of the Football League. I say "you carry on doing it and you will always have the support of Wycombe Wanderers Football Club".

Editors Notes:
I must thank Ivor for first of all forgetting about the interview and then rushing around to Adams Park to do what I believe to be one of our best interviews so far.
Hopefully some peoples questions have now been answered and all those in the Valley End at least know that for as long as Wycombe Wanderers Football Club are allowed to have a standing terrace it will remain. 
Personally it was pleasing that although we are now an established and well respected Football League club we haven’t forgotten our roots and stand shoulder to shoulder with those who are now trying to emulate Wycombe Wanderers Football Club the same way as we always spoke about Wimbledon.