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

78 Management challenges One of the management nettles that needed to be grasped was the niggling that went on between Andy Norman, the Promotions Officer, and Frank Dick, the Director of Coaching (pictured with Olympic medallist Kris Akabusi). From time to time this niggling broke out into the open and was well characterised by athletics journalist Cliff Temple who, in 1987, described it thus: Dick‟s responsibility is to lead a (British) team (to a major championship) at the peak of its carefully orchestrated fitness. For Andy Norman, the priorities are different. He deals with individuals. “It doesn‟t matter if someone comes up with a points score at the end of the season showing we‟re the third best nation in Europe,” he says. “The only people interested in that are the coaches trying to justify their existence.” Dick would prefer to see a computer system, fed with information from his network of national coaches, to establish a pecking order for international competition. “I deal in practicalities,” says Norman. “I come into the office at 9am to find someone has just pulled out of a meeting. So I get on the phone and try to find someone. I haven‟t got time to enter into long selectorial discussions” The conflicts of interest between what Frank Dick described as the performance and the commercial sides of the sport needed an even stronger person to knock heads together and find the common ground as, there could be no doubt, Dick and Norman, in differing roles, were both genuinely trying to do their best for the sport. Despite the fact that both the AAA and the BAAB employed full time general secretaries, these were regarded primarily as administrators and all major issues and controversies ended up with the (honorary) principal officers, usually the chairmen. 1988 was a typical year of mixed fortunes and unwelcome pressure.