Former Chairman Bill Power Interviewed About QPR - Supporters, Players, Managers, Chairmen

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Interview With Former QPR Chairman Bill Power ('BP') - By Fan Site, 'WeAreTheRangersBoys'

"Bill Power talks to www.wearetherangersboys.com in form of Question and Answer"

(Q) I believe you overlooked Loftus Road from your bedroom window as a child, is this what got you hooked to the club? Were you able to see much of the match? Who were your playing idols?
A - I did and yes quite definitely it was the reason for my love of the Rs.
My parents came over to England at the start of WW2 and headed for the area were they knew most immigrants had set up, thankfully West London. I was actually born in Du Cane Rd Hospital whilst my family lived in the next block of flats ‘Denham House’ whilst they finished off ‘Mackay House’.
My dad used to carry me up to the top floor of Denham so we could look into the games although I had no real idea what I was looking at.
Then when we moved into Mackay House as a tot all I understood was when lots of people came to play in the park opposite my window or if those bright lights came on there was going to be a little party in my home and everyone made a fuss of me because I was the youngest.
My view, Yes I had a better view then than you get even now as the main stand was years away from being built. You could see the whole pitch bar about a yard of touchline on the SARd side.
I soon began to realise what it was all about and usually ‘bunked in’ or waited for the gates to open to cheer on my first heroes.
Its funny how your memory tricks you but I’m certain Brian Bedford scored from every corner we had and that Ray Drinkwater never let a goal in and Tony Ingham should definitely have been captain of England.

(Q) You left school and became an electrician? How were you able set up Datasat a satellite communications company?
A- Pure luck, I moved home and the very same week a young scruffy lad moved in next door. He had some drawings of a building site that he couldn’t read so asked if I understood them [he is dyslexic]. I explained what all the dots, dashes and lines were and he asked if I would be willing to help him for a week for an incredible sum of money. In all honesty I thought he was mad but I liked him and more importantly my kids liked him and his ‘special’ van.
So I went along to install a several 4m satellite dishes, which seemed very James Bond to me. Satellite TV did not exist at the time and we were actually building the first sites for BSB [Squarials].
We never looked back and so began Datasat and as things changed we just grew in the industry much to our and everyone elses amazement

(Q) What made you ring the club to offer an investment to the club?
A - Lee Cook had come in on loan from Watford and it was well publicised that he might be available for a small fee. I contacted the club to ask David Davies if they would let me buy him for the club. Unfortunately for us Watford looked like they might get to the FA Cup final at the Millenium so they took Cookie back. Watford missed out in the Semis but Cookie still got to the Millenium.
After our defeat in the play off final whilst me, my brother and our 5 kids queued for the bus back to the car park poor Cookie was stood right behind us looking even more dejected than we were.
A few weeks later at a fans forum in Slough Nick Blackburn asked if I would like to invest and join the board.

(Q) Being a lifelong QPR fan, how did it feel to join the board in July 2003?
A- I can only imagine playing for the club might have been better. It really was a dream for me. It doesn’t matter who you are, suddenly chatting to the players and boss that you had been singing and cheering on the week before was about as happy as I thought I would ever be.

(Q) Are you able to provide an opinion on previous board members, Chris Wright, David Davies and Nick Blackburn?
A- Firstly remember QPR is and always has been in my blood and so it was a bit of a job to listen to people who for them, I felt, were just doing a job.
I didn’t always see eye to eye with Nick and David for that reason alone, as much as anything we disagreed on, at least that’s what I think if I’m honest. Also I always had in the back of my mind the feeling that we could have come out of admin a lot more healthy.
That said, Nick had an incredible knowledge of football and used to give me a run down of virtually every player in the opposition side. Warning of what this or that player was capable of and he was never wrong.
David was a quiet man trying to do a very difficult job in the worst circumstances. Again I would say to be fair to him he could not have done anything differently and did make decisions based on reality rather than on what we as fans wanted with our hearts, which inevitably made him unpopular.
Having not known Chris Wright and meeting him with totally preconceived ideas of what he was going to be like, I can say I was wrong about him. He is a QPR fan without any doubt. The first hour of talking to him was taken up purely on how we were doing on the field and what we hoped for the rest of the season. He then accepted a deal that offered him nothing but kept the club afloat and I will always be grateful to him for that gesture to the club.

(Q) What effect has the ABC loan had on the club?
A - In my opinion it nearly killed us. I don’t like the phrase but, it has been like a cancer slowly draining us for years and thank god we now have a cure.

(Q) Could the loan have been avoided?
A - It’s hard to say. The old board are adamant that it was the only way for the club to survive. I was not party to the negotiations but I am just as certain that other arrangements could have been made.
I remember reading that this consortium or that consortium was trying to get control of the club and I think if those interested parties had sat down together instead of battling each other things would have been different and frankly when told the figures I was amazed how little would have been needed to get control. So if I seem harsh to the old board I would be as critical of the consortiums for not getting their act together.
The reality is we had the ABC loan which you can’t blame ABC for doing and it nearly killed us off.

(Q) How did we become more in debt after coming out of administration?
A- Only one party makes a profit out of administration and that is the administrators, everyone else takes a knock of some degree. The legal fees for our admin in my unknowledgable opinion beggared belief. That said it was pre my time so exactly were the money went I’m not sure, but the funds left over did keep the club alive in the immediate aftermath of admin.
Unfortunately, as you point out in the question, at the cost of owing a lot more than when we went in.
What will forever niggle away at me is whether Admin was the right way to go, again with hindsight and no real knowledge of the exact predicament I will always feel having met the man that a deal could have been done with Chris Wright.

(Q) You were asked to be chairman of QPR, how did that feel?

I was embarrassed as on the one hand I did not feel I was capable of doing the job to the level it deserved but on the other it was the biggest honour anyone had ever bestowed on me so I went off to the toilet and cried.

(Q) How did you get into contact with Wanlock and Barnaby Consortiums?

The club as ever in recent years was struggling with finances and Gianni suggested we go down to Monaco and speak to an old friend of his Antonio who thankfully jumped at the chance of joining us. Antonio then introduced Carlos Dunga who also invested. I would like to say Carlos was an absolute gentleman, an extremely courteous man who I wish every success to in his present job.
Antonio very unselfishly accepted a deal that helped the club before himself and again I offer some thanks to a departed chairman.

(Q) Did you have a 3- 5 year plan on and off the pitch?

A - Contrary to some observations we had plans but with the best will in the world they were always changing.

(Q) Did we freeze at the Play-Off Final?

A - Absolutely NOT, I know we always watch the Rs with blue and white tinted spectacles but we outplayed Cardiff the whole match. Clarke had Earnshaw in his pocket and we were in no danger until some lad whose name I will never want to remember comes on and gets his once in a life time goal with no time left for us to gather our senses and hit back.

(Q) Which players did you have a particular fondness for?
A- Five players stick out for me. Brian Bedford was my first hooped hero then the greatest player we have ever had Rodney followed closely by our 2nd best Stanley and 3rd best Sir Les and finally Magic Hat.

(Q) Express what the promotion season was like, to you as a life-long QPR fan?
A- STRESSFUL to the point of being physically sick before most games.[/b]

(Q) What are your outstanding memories of Hillsborough?
The match was a blur. I was annoyed with the Wednesday officials who were about as unwelcoming as a rattle snake in your xmas sock and with the tannoy announcer who for some totally unknown reason took such pleasure in announcing how Brizzle were doing. But when the final whistle went it was down to the changing rooms to sing and dance with the boys and then on to the pitch. Words fail to describe the feeling of looking from the pitch at 8000+ fans deliriously happy singing their hearts out.
Whenever I watch the DVD of that match I can’t help but laugh at the antics of the ‘security’ man who reacts with a just a degree less impartiality than you might expect to Kevin celebrating his goal.
A day I will never forget.

(Q) Were we ever going to sign Denis Wise?
A- I have to own up to a bit of nepotism here really, Denis is a friend and also a massive QPR fan and I was very keen to get him to us because I knew what he was like and what he could bring to us with the added bonus of knowing that he was keen to one day be our manager. He moved on and has continued to succeed in his chosen profession.

(Q) What was your relationship like with Ian Holloway?
A- Ollie was a great character and a great motivator who sometimes drove me mad.
I would always ask how the boys were for this or that game and it was always, oh he is not 100% and I got a problem with him, never what I wanted to hear which was that every one was 125% up for it and rearing to go but again looking back it was not me he needed to get up for games it was the team and he did that.
In fact one evening in Redcar before we played Hartlepool we were all [officials not players] sat around celebrating his birthday and I asked the dreaded question, now this was just after getting some great late winners and point saving goals in the last month and playing the best football for years.
Ollie got very defensive and said he was worried about the game when I piped up that as a fan I could justify in my own mind how we could beat Manchester United the next day never mind Hartlepool. We almost came to blows but he rather shot me down in flames by reminding me that that was why he was paid to be the boss and I was a fan. We won the next day 4-1 so I will always argue I was right on that day we could have beaten Manchester United J
I still send him the odd text to wish him well on big occasions.

(Q) How did the buying/loanings of players work? How restricted were we financially?
It was very difficult and mainly due to lack of funds a matter of goodwill on behalf of the club loaning us a player.

(Q) You resigned the board on 9th September 2005, how did that feel?
I was devastated, one of the saddest days of my life but at the time it was the only thing I thought I could do.

(Q) The papers reported a boardroom coup, was this correct? For example, Dunga travelling over Japan to get the majority vote?
It’s always a lot more dramatic in the papers; no it was nothing like that. We did have a heated debate which was totally normal but one which at the time I could not be persuaded to agree with and things were said in the heat of the moment that caused upset both ways and so I felt resigning was my only course of action.

(Q) On a much more serious note, are you able to talk about the plane crash back in August 2006?
Did you ever fear for your life, in the moments preceeding the crash?
This is another thing that probably seems a lot more dramatic than it actually was. Don’t get me wrong, it was a truly horrific event. But it happened so quickly there was no time for anyone to panic, One minute from landing we flew directly over my home and I had hardly stopped thinking about that as we banked to land. One second I was looking out the window at the landing strip on the horizon and after a sudden bang and the plane veering sharply over and nose-diving all that I could see coming up at me was ground.
All that nonsense about your life going before you is exactly that nonsense but its odd because from realising ‘oh god this is it’ and telling everyone to ‘hold on, we’re going down’ I had about a second to think and I could almost write a book about the thoughts I had then but essentially I cursed myself for being in the plane anyway because I had in the last 6 months stopped flying overseas because of having recurring vivid nightmares of being in a plane crash.
I said to myself ‘Bill you don’t want your last thought on earth to be of you swearing at yourself’ and then happily I thought of my 2 boys and thought how I would miss them. I then had another go at myself again for being selfish and thinking ‘they’re the poor buggers who are going miss you, you’re gone’, I really did then think how lucky I was to know how much my kids loved me and I really was quite happy then to meet my maker with that thought. It was almost serenely peaceful then for a millisecond and then we landed a little heavier than normal…!!!!!
When you consider over a year later and I am still in constant pain and receiving treatment it probably gives you a measure of the damage we all suffered and I can only re state what every person has said from the Firemen and Medics who arrived first, the Surgeons who treated us and even the Air Accident Investigator ‘we are living proof that miracles do happen’.

(Q) Bearing recent events in mind, do you regret ever going to Swindon Town?
Yes to the club but not the fans, they treated me like a member of their family and were very kind to me as were so many Hoops after the accident, I must say that was really touching to receive so many well wishes from people who I had never met but wishing me well and thanking me for doing what I know everyone of them would have done for their club had they been in the position to do it.

(Q) Would you like to be involved with QPR again, in some capacity? Of course I would love to come home. I still talk to Gianni a lot, at least once a week and more often usually offering my opinions whether he wants them or not on whatever is the latest thing needing a decision. I’m arrogant enough to think that now and again he takes a bit of notice J

(Q) Bill, would you disagree strongly with some fans who believe that Gianni Paladini has screwed up during his period as Chairman including his handling of attracting two multi-millionaires to invest in the club?
Until you are in the position of chairman of our wonderful club you have no idea of the stress it is going to cause you and this was something I warned Gianni of when he first took over.
I’m certain he has made just as many errors as any of us chairman have made in the past. We are all human and in the heat of battle it is being able to make any decision right or wrong that is important, you can’t sit on your hands and inevitably some will think an action is right and some will think its wrong. But the one thing you cannot do is nothing and Gianni has had to make a lot of decisions knowing that he would get flak from one quarter or another and has been man enough to make them.
As for attracting Bernie and Flavio I would complain and say it was about bloody time. Men of their stature must surely be beating down every teams door every day to pump millions into clubs and I can’t believe it took Gianni so long to sign them up.
Possibly one of the most defining moments in our clubs history.!!

(Q) Do you think under your Chairmanship, you could have reduced the annual losses from the levels reached by Gianni Paladini (as you spoke about when you first took over)?
I think we were making excellent progress towards balancing the books but there are so many reasons why this can change that purely looking at financial figures from any given year can not possibly show the whole picture.
I would agree sometimes that you have to speculate to accumulate. Under me I thought it was better to build up team morale and go for success that way than spend on players. Was I right, who knows? That lot down the road have done fairly well buying success.

(Q) Would you have replaced Holloway mid-season, for example?
A- There were times when I felt like replacing Ollie with a Gorilla, it would have been a lot more reasonable to deal with. But that is a typical example of what you can never prepare yourself for as chairman of the club you support.
Ollie was just doing his job and letting me know we needed this new player or that. As a fan I wanted to say yes to everything but as chairman you can’t make the popular decision you have to stand back and make what you feel is the best decision for the future of the club. It was a tightrope to walk that had no safe end to arrive at.
As for when Ollie left the club, who knows? That’s one thing no one can ever say was right or wrong. If feelings were so stressed between Ollie and Gianni that things had got to such a point, well as I mentioned above what you have to do is make a decision one way or the other.
What I do know is Ollie is a fantastic manager and will be a success for however long he decides to stay in the game and Gianni would not have lightly took the action he did.

(Q) How difficult is running a club like QPR?
Just read my ramblings above and you get a feel of 1% of the problems of running the club.

(Q) Your personal hopes for the club in the near future?
Oh my, I am scared to say as I don’t want to be a jinx but like everyone I would love to see us challenging at a higher level and the odd visit to Wembley would be the icing on my dream cake.

(Q) Do you still watch the R’s
I’m afraid I am only up to going to home games at the moment and even then it leaves me physically exhausted for days but I look forward to following us home and away in the future.

(Q) Looking back, would you have done anything differently?
Hindsight is perfect so of course there would be things I would have approached differently knowing now what I didn’t then.
But I have no doubts that at the time I made decisions they were right when taking account of the information I had available at the time.

- We ARe The Rangers Boys - Interview with Bill Power