FORUM

...the chairman Percy Harper was suspended from football for allegedly bringing the game into disrepute after questioning the FA Council's capabilities, as well as those of the Football League's management committee, in an article published in the matchday programme*.

The suspension, along with punishments handed to two other directors, exposed a deep schism in the boardroom with another director, F. Broomfield, publicly contesting Harper's assertion that the club was in deep financial crisis. The chairman's reinstatement upon appeal forced Broomfield and Truett to resign. "I find it impossible to work with the present chairman," said Broomfield, with Harper's autocratic style subsequently drawing criticism from all sides.

Yet with the benefit of hindsight and compared with the humdrum existence which followed throughout the 1950s, they must have seemed exhilarating days. In peacetime Palace first plummeted under Harper's chairmanship and then stagnated under that of David Harris and Arthur Wait. The 1948-49 season was the worst the club had ever endured, with the better players steadily sold off and Jack Butler unable to restore order from the dug-out. The sense that Palace's fans had been offered false hope prevailed, not for the last time. Harper had held court at his home in Sanderstead in the first season after the conflict and pledged that the Glaziers would spend heavily to emerge from the doldrums as genuine challengers. The problem was that Harper, a visionary in some respects, had no means of finding the money he had promised.

In his autobiography Soccer Rebel, Jimmy Guthrie, a former Portsmouth favourite who had arrived as a player-coach in November 1946, wrote: "Harper had big ideas for Palace. He wanted to introduce speedway and greyhound racing at Selhurst, but the local residents petitioned against speedway because of the noise and the Football Association... refused to sanction the presence of greyhounds... He hit the newspaper headlines with stories that Palace would spend a million pounds to get into the First Division, but there was little money put on the line. He thought we should recruit players from amateur clubs, as this would cost only £100 for each player and the club he left. The idea was sound but, again, there was no money. Meanwhile, Harper was selling off our best players."

...Harper prompted yet more confusion by dismissing the manager, Irwin, just hours after spending an apparently pleasant evening in the company of the entire backroom staff at Selhurst Park...

* Supporters who purchased the sheet issued for the game against Luton Town on 30th September 1944 found the whole of the reverse taken up with a statement by chairman Percy Harper. He expressed his views on bringing greyhound racing to Selhurst Park, as well as criticising the entertainment tax the club had to pay. That got him into trouble with the Football League and the FA for considering it was time those incumbent made way for younger men.

treefrog wrote: ↑Fri Apr 02, 2021 7:27 am to even make a quality case to carry it in.