Athletics in the UK: The Rise and Fall of the BAF

7 The Birth of BAF - Introduction offer the Sports Council either representation or observer status there. It clearly felt that this would be going far enough. Jeeps’ committee, in its report, was critical of the way in which athletics lacked an organisational structure and recommended “ a unified and cohesive strategy for the development of the sport ”. “ We can conclude ”, said the committee, “that the structure is not being used to make the best possible use of people and other resources or to provide a unity of purpose” . Quite! Around the same time, a new topic had arisen which directly touched the administration of the sport, not to mention its very ethos. Athletics was trying to come to terms with what was rapidly becoming the outdated concept of amateurism but which had been a cornerstone of the sport since Victorian times. Big money was starting to raise its head and “shamateurism” was rife. So, in its traditional way, the AAA had set up a committee to look into this. This committee, chaired by Dr Bill Evans, secretary of the Welsh AAA, had produced its report in September 1980 and recommended legitimising payments to athletes. On 28 th February 1981, the AAA had held an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) of its member clubs to discuss the Evans Report on amateurism and, somewhat surprisingly, the clubs present rejected it by a narrow margin (117 votes to 101). Amongst the points made during the debate were that the AAA could not change the rules itself as the IAAF had jurisdiction; that it would be crazy if England and Wales but, perhaps, not Scotland accepted the new rules; and that, even if the rules were modernised in the ways proposed, the system of multiple governing bodies in the UK was in no state to manage and control the commercial forces that would be unleashed. Ironically, the British Amateur Athletic Board had already been lobbying the IAAF to modernise the international rules concerning payments to athletes and had tabled a formal resolution with the IAAF to that effect. Despite the fact that the points made at the AAA EGM were valid, it was a considerable embarrassment to the BAAB that its most influential member had rejected the idea. The International Athletes’ Club (IAC), which represented those most affected – the athletes - threatened to go to court to overturn the EGM decision but backed down after a promise by the AAA General Committee to look at the issue again.