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

44 The home straight? A particularly ticklish issue related to the future AAA of England. Until the infamous “Southern Counties EGM”, drafting had proceeded on the basis that the managing Council of the BAF would include representatives of the four home countries of the UK and that the existing three regions of England would be represented through the AAA of England - they would not have direct representation. The logic of the decision taken by the clubs at the “Southern EGM” should have been that England as such would not be represented and that the three English regions would take their places on the Council alongside Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is not what happened as direct regional representation was added to the existing formula and England was kept in as well. This replicated the Welsh anomaly on the BAAB, where the Welsh men had both a direct seat and indirect representation through the AAA; which was regarded as wrong and had been addressed by the Turner Committee. It also gave rise to the more practical dilemma as to the function of the AAA of England as the regional responsibilities within England would be devolved directly from BAF to the three regional associations and not to the English AAA. It could be seen that there would need to be an exclusively English entity to select and manage the English Commonwealth Games team every four years and to arrange various English championships (but not the main AAA Championships as this would be handled by BAF through its commercial remit), but what else? Bill Evans explained that England’s role would be a “co-ordinating role” within England. It was hardly necessary to maintain all the paraphernalia of a AAA of England to fulfil this co-ordinating role but, by now, it would have been an impossible task to persuade the AAA to vote itself out of existence. A curious consequence of this turn of events was that the English lost their opportunity to control the BAF. McAllister had proposed that the English votes on the managing Council (AAA of England plus the three regions) would out-number all the others put together (effectively continuing the “caretakership” that the AAA had conducted successfully). However, the formula eventually adopted in the BAF constitution gave the English only 20 votes on the Council out of a total of 47. Nonetheless, with 20 out of 47 votes the English would be in a very powerful position to effectively dominate the BAF and it is surprising