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

72 The BAAB goes bust events that generated the income in the first place). Nor had they recruited financial expertise to manage the money and control the costs. When the AAA did its own budget for 1986-87, it too did not look very rosy and so began an investigation into the system itself. The two treasurers (Mike Turner and I; and I had been elected only a few weeks before and began to wonder what I had got into) were asked to compare figures and come to a joint conclusion on the situation. The AAA took the view that the commercial income from TV and sponsorship should first be used to meet the costs of the events concerned. Out of what was left, agreed grants to the Celtic Associations (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) should be paid and any final residue shared between the AAA and the BAAB in the ratio 2:1; and out of which the two organisations should have to cover their own costs. The 2:1 ratio was an assessment of the relative values of the AAA organised events compared with those of the BAAB and was, by and large, accepted as reasonable. The BAAB, on the other hand, took the view that any final balance to be shared should be after specific amounts were allocated to the BAAB and to the AAA to cover their administration costs and that the BAAB’s costs of coaching and its overseas international commitments should also be guaranteed. All this assumed that the income would come in as expected and that the costs would be as estimated. By mid-1987, the BAAB was running into cash flow problems. The AAA was paying over monies to the BAAB according to the old formula but the BAAB simply did not have enough cash to carry it through the period of the year (the summer season) when costs are at their highest. Panic phone calls were resulting in advances being made but this could not go on. The BAAB Treasurer, in conjunction with the auditors, prepared an updated budget for the year which revealed that the hoped for surplus had turned into a likely loss of £283,000. This resulted from a combination of underestimates of costs in the original budget, lower net income from the promotions and inadequate cash flow. The writing was on the wall as the loss would completely wipe out the BAAB’s reserves and leave it with an overall deficit of around £150,000. According to the constitution of the BAAB each member association had to contribute to any financial deficit in proportion to the