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

42 THE HOME STRAIGHT? Work continued on perfecting the BAF constitution and this was now entrusted to solicitor Charles Woodhouse, a senior partner in Farrer & Co, a very distinguished and upper crust firm of London solicitors with offices in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and who counted the Queen amongst their clients. Farrer & Co had acted as solicitors to the AAA for a number of years Charles Woodhouse had acquired a large portfolio of sports governing bodies as clients and was well known in sporting circles. He himself had played cricket to a high standard. A tall, quietly spoken and resolutely diplomatic individual, Charles Woodhouse did not want to offend anyone and always looked for the compromise solution; commendable but not always useful as we shall see. He was already solicitor to the AAA and the BAAB and also advised the Women’s AAA. He was now asked also to act for the putative British Athletic Federation, creating the possibility of conflicts of interests as the respective interests of, in particular, the BAF, the AAA and the BAAB would not always coincide, especially in the area of commercially valuable contracts. Charles did not see this as an insuperable problem and the sport was happy to accept it as, at least, there would be only one (and a trusted) solicitor co- ordinating what was a quite complicated reorganisation. Charles Woodhouse was preparing the legal formalities that would be needed. An entirely new company was to be formed called British Athletic Federation Limited. It was to be incorporated as a company limited by guarantee (as opposed to having shareholders) and this was a conventional form for such organisations. As a company it needed a memorandum and articles of association. The memorandum sets out the objects for which a company is formed and this was straightforward enough. The articles of association define the way the company is to be managed and would need to contain watertight rules about the composition of the managing council and its powers, who were the directors, responsibility for the company’s finances, who could vote and so on. The AAA was already a company limited by guarantee but its existing memorandum and articles of association would need to be altered