Camden New Journal - by PAUL KEILTHY Published: 11 October 2007
Sideline for soccer kids in money row
Youth league tells its clubs – accounts are frozen
A BITTER row over allegations of improper accounting at Camden’s biggest youth football league has left 90 youngsters unable to play and led to a call for the involvement of banking investigators.
The management committee of the 1,500-strong Camden and Islington Youth League told a meeting attended by representatives of all clubs last Thursday that the league’s bank accounts had been frozen while they requested assistance from Nationwide building society in examining its books.
League honorary secretary Delina Connor told the meeting at the Methodist church, Archway: “The committee has issues regarding monies going unaccounted for, and monies being misused.”
She said the committee, which has changed its membership following an emergency meeting in September, had found anomalies in the previous season’s accounts including a shortfall of £4,199 and no evidence that league insurance, for which every player pays as part of registration, had been taken out.
But as the statement was being made, parents of players from the six teams in the Islington Tufnell Youth club staged a protest at the club’s suspension of their former club secretary, Gill Magwood, from the committee – a decision Mrs Magwood is appealing against.
Parent Trevor Mistlin said: “It is our kids that are being punished for something that an adult may or may not have done. “My son is a child, he’s done nothing wrong – neither he nor the other children. If you want respect you must back down on this.”
Dave Magwood, who took over as club secretary from his wife, urged the committee to re-admit Islington Tufnell and allow its players, whose ages range from under-9 to under-14, to resume their season. “This is about children who want to play football who are not playing football,” he said.
However committee member Louise Wright said that for as long as Gill Magwood was associated with the club it would remain suspended.
League treasurer and fixtures secretary Noel Browne also protested at the meeting, during which a vote was called to elect an acting treasurer in his place while the bank’s audit takes place.
He said he had been called to a committee hearing and had given a full account of his handling of the books, resulting in ‘exoneration’. Ms Connor disputed his account.
Mrs Magwood said on Monday: “I have been unjustly accused without evidence or proof.”
The league falls under the jurisdiction of the London Football Association (LFA). On Friday the LFA’s chief executive David Fowkes said that he would call an independent board to discuss both the appeal from Mrs Magwood against her removal from the committee and the appeal by her husband for reinstatement of Islington Tufnell Youth.
He added: “If a league management committee makes a decision entirely within the wording of their own rules then that is a matter for them. If there was any evidence of theft in any case in any league, that organisation would have recourse to the police.”
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