The fan-led review of English and Welsh football presents a once in a lifetime chance for all stakeholders to come together to actively safeguard and strengthen the game we love. Make sure that your voice is heard, too.
Dear Members, Below, you will find a template letter to MPs asking for the complete implementation of the recommendations of the Independent Fan-Led Review of Football Governance, chaired by Tracey Crouch MP. It was drafted by Martin Calladine, author of The Ugly Game. For more information about the fan-led review and its 47 recommendations—which strengthen the voice of supporters in the game, protect football’s heritage and the pyramid, and provide genuine independent regulation—read the final report. In addition, you can read our own arguments in favour of the review’s principle aim of establishing an independent regulator and the Football Supporters’ Association’s (FSA) overview of the review. Most MPs will have an email address but, if you have the time, a letter will likely have more impact. Feel free to adapt the letter to reflect your own views. If you live in the following constituencies, please find your MPs email address listed:
Batley and Spen: kim.leadbeater.mp@parliament.uk
Colne Valley: jason.mccartney.mp@parliament.uk
Dewsbury: mark.eastwood.mp@parliament.uk
Huddersfield: sheermanb@parliament.uk
You can find the name and contact details other MPs here: https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP
[Date]
[Your address 1]
[Your address 2]
[Postcode]
[Your MP’s name]
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Dear [Name],
I’m writing to you to ask you to read and support Tracey Crouch’s review of football governance.
[Something about why you welcome and support the findings of the review].
As a long-time supporter of football reform, I was worried that the review wouldn’t necessarily deliver the kind of far-reaching recommendations necessary to save the game from itself. But I am very happy to say that I was wrong; it is a clear-sighted, evidence-based document that cuts right to the heart of the game’s problems.
I’m not just writing to you to praise the review’s work, however. I am concerned that its central recommendations – the creation of a strong independent regulator and a club licencing regime – will inevitably attract pushback from the wealthiest club owners as well as senior administrators in the game, all of whom would see a loss of influence and prestige as a result.
They will doubtless urge caution, delay and the dilution of the recommendations. And of course any government will be wary of creating a new industry regulator. But the fact is that the people arguing against the review are, not to put too fine a point on it, the very people who got us in such a mess that the review was necessary in the first place.
Many of them had a direct hand in the proposed Project Big Picture and the European Super League, and all of them are part of a broken system which produces vastly unequal financial distribution, undermines fairness and drives reckless spending. They have had decades to stop unsuitable people buying and running football clubs – priceless community assets – into the ground and they have manifestly failed to tackle the problem.
In my opinion, the Crouch review is the single most important and progressive set of reforms in English football history.
I urge you to support its rapid and complete implementation and to oppose any attempts to delay or water-down its recommendations.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to hearing from you.
Many thanks.
Kind Regards,
[Your name]
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