Cabin Pressure Website about Michael Wood The English Web Designer, Developer, Writer and Publisher

January 2011 and website www.boyfrombrazil.co.uk send Michael Wood and Jason McKeown to talk to the Bradford City joint chairmen Julian Rhodes and Mark Lawn. What came back — a 9,000 word interview — was read by 4,500 people in two days and presented some interesting insights into running the football club.

This is how it happened.

It was Jason’s idea, not mine, but I approved it immediately

Over the last decade or so BfB has had little or no contact with Bradford City and so when Jason McKeown decided he would ask if he could have a word with joint chairmen Mark Lawn and Julian Rhodes I — Michael Wood — had trepidation.

It struck me that we had got along fine without talking to anyone at the club in an official capacity thus far and that in talking to them we crossed some Rubicon I was not keen to do. That we would be somehow less independent of the club from then on.

That was balanced against the huge faith I put in the judgement of Jason brings to BfB. He has an unerring sense for ways of taking the site to get the answers we want and ultimately that was what we decided the interview would be about.

We had talked about things like the club forgoing stability, about the progress of training facilities, about the priorities the club has and we had become blue in the face. It seemed that the only solution to this circle of conversation was to go to the horse’s mouth.

My first question would have been why don’t you feck off?

What is the purpose of an interview? To challenge the subjects views? Often it is and thoughts of Paxman’s grilling of Michael Howard — the same question asked 17 times — came to mind. Some comments after the interview aired asked why we had not been more challenging? More Paxman-esque. To that I note that we had decided that because we were in search of answers to the questions we asked each other that the best way to do that was to get Mark Lawn and Julian Rhodes to state their position on the thing we were interested in.

So questions were written to get answers.

After the event some people have said that the chairman lied. To that we could not say. Certainly at the time we did not feel we were lied to nor did we feel that Lawn was not forthcoming in what he said — on the contrary he shared far more than expected — but if untruths were told then they are on record now and can be validated against.

Normally, we take it in turns

Valley Parade on a Tuesday afternoon in the wet. We were shown to a box overlooking the field which had failed to host the Burton Albion game at the weekend. I worried for a time that we had no question on that, no question on many things which were relevant to the day, and hoped that our aims of creating an overview by interview was going to work.

Julian Rhodes would not be attending having an alternative meeting which did not worry us — most of the focus of the public face of the club is Mark Lawn — but as Lawn revealed that he and Rhodes took it in turns to negotiate on new players and as Jon Worthington signed that day it seemed that Rhodes may have been off bringing in a player.

This struck me as revealing. This idea that the daily operations of the club are handled by the chairmen in turn, or perhaps that they are at all. One doubts that Geoffrey Richmond allowed Rhodes’ a turn in player signing.

Nervous, at first

Lawn was nervous, more so than we were, and perhaps that reflected what he had to lose should the interview go poorly. His dealings with supporters became a focus of the early part of the interview and the chairman talked about The City Gent specifically. Perhaps he calmed down and felt freer to speak when he believed that there was not trap in waiting to be sprung in conversation, just questions which he could answer.

And he answered all of them, and most of them on the record although a few things could not be repeated outside the room. There was nothing Earth shattering off the record but some things which were said would perhaps have reflected Lawn in a better light were they to emerge.

As it was information about Lawn’s concern with Taylor’s style of play, with his views on Martin Allen’s application for the City job, on the players made for fascinating discussion and showed a side of the chairman we had not seen nor anticipated.

Certainly he is brash, certainly he is passionate, certainly he is single minded.

Tongues were bitten

Many of the things that Mark Lawn believes will improve Bradford City both Jason and myself disagree with but reading back on the interview I doubt it would have been improved if 1,000 words had been dedicated by our thoughts and not his.

The questions we had were answered, and some of the answers we did not agree with but having something written down, something that showed the marked difference between plans that had been put into place and things that just happened was, I believe, extremely productive.

Lawn’s need — his plea even — for supporters to involve themselves with the club beyond a position of criticism lingered in the mind as the interview concluded.

And that was that

There was a strange end to the interview. The questions done we started to talk and as men do when together we talked about football, about following Bradford City and it became self evident why Lawn would have become involved with owing the club. He has more passion than most boardrooms, but commitment and sentiment in people at the club has been talked about before and we all recall the results of that discussion.

The results of this discussion — and in the interests of full disclosure — were a couple of free tickets to the Crewe game gratefully received with times being tight and all and an interview that is revealing, provides an insight and perhaps contextualises events at Valley Parade at the moment.

Lawn comes out of the interview well, in my opinion, and perhaps that will influence his and the rest of the club’s feelings over transparency and openness with supporters. Not that there is a deliberate obfuscation of the running of the club just that in the absence of answers from the club supporters create answers themselves.

Jason and I thanked Mark Lawn at the end of the interview and meant it. I hope he does it again sometime.

The interview can be read on BfB