It’ll Be Off

I’m not sure of the legal ramifications of this post’s title. And given my legal advisor specialises mainly in employment law, and is largely imaginery, he’s not being much use. Still, not to worry, if Warrington ever challenges it, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that I’m right.

Warrington popped up in the Non League Today paper, in an article so vacuous that people become visibly stupider just by reading it. And while it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to hit the oh-so-high standards we achieve here at It’ll Be Off (with the BPA tour piece a definite for inclusion in John Pilger’s next anthology of investigative journalism articles) it isn’t too much to ask a journalist to point out inaccuracies, lies and misinformation, is it?

Well, clearly it is. Warrington seemed to blame everyone but himself for the collapse of the Invision deal, without once recognising the fact that he failed to pay in the region of £50,000 promised to the league and its members (To quote ‘The Big Lebowski’, “Where’s the fucking money, shit-head?”). The reasons for this fiscal shortfall? Some absolute bollocks about DVDs that I can’t even be arsed to try and understand. Nothing to do with your shit product that no one was interested in then, John?

It seems that Warrington has prior for this. In 2003 he was behind a subscription broadband channel that aimed to provide coverage of Conference football. It soon folded leaving all (both?) the customers out of pocket. You’d think that the experience would have put him off, wouldn’t you? I mean, if a higher profile league with far more potential customers can’t sustain this sort of product, then how exactly did he think he was going to make it work at NPL level?

Yet despite this, a bemused John Warrington whinged to Non League Today, “Repeated attempts by our company to get to the negotiating table with the league have been met with no response.” and further claimed that due to ‘breach of contract’ he was looking to recoup the £25,000 he’d already paid to the league. It’s flabbergasting, really.

FC United are lucky in that they have a superb operation in FCUM.tv, and enough fans to make it worth while. Not all clubs at Unibond level do. There just isn’t the interest at this level to make a dedicated channel worthwhile. And Warrington can bitch and simper all he likes about not being provided with footage to make his highlight DVD (and who the fuck was going to buy that, exactly?) but the fact remains that he’s stiffed the clubs out of £800 each. Nice one, John.