The demon bowler who outplayed Mrs Thatcher

Press, 15 April 1980, Page 18

The demon bowler who outplayed Mrs Thatcher

By

DAVID LEITCH,

“Sunday Times,” London

When the British Olympic Committee voted overwhelmingly to ignore Mrs Thatcher’s “boycott Moscow” policy, the Prime Minister’s chagrin was apparent. Within 24 hours she sent a resignation letter to the Olympic appeals committee, of which, she was patron. »• The 8.0. A. had not been warned of this possible gesture in advance of its vote; nor had it been officially informed of it since. A spokesman said: “They wouldn’t-have to be told; they would know.”

Mrs Thatcher was the casualty of a deft proMoscow Games lobby guilefully promoted by Sir Denis Follows, the 8.0. A. chairman. In his (fairly distant) cricketing days, as captain of the Old Meadonians second XI, Sir Denis, nicknamed “the. Lob,” often destroyed apparently classier players by the supreme innocence of his deliveries.

Sir Denis expected the Thatcher power-play as soon as he heard that Soviet troops .were in Afghanistan. From the moment the'Prime Minister advocated the Games boycott, “from a position of amazing ignorance and without e x per t consultation.” Chairman Follows has martialled This forces against her; Hence the relentless TV appearances, the lobbying, the headlines after his harsh words on March 6 to the Commons Select Committee condemning the Government’s attempt to use athletes as “an instrument of foreign phiicy,” and, above all, the relentless punctilious letter writing. . ~ ; . At 71 Sir Denis looks bland as butter, a short

Jon in the “Daily Mail” figure whose unathletic shape recalls “Bibendum,” the Michelin tyre man. His style is bluff yet dignified; a knighthood and a C.B.E. testify to a ■ lifetime’s canny (usually backroom) administration; his manner hovers between the aldermanic and the episcopal. The air of consummate harmlessness is misleading; his taste for winning is undiminished. His mail on the Olympics issue, has taken a while to shift in the direction he approves. “Initially ten letters to one favoured boycott. A fortnight ago it /was three-two against going. Now its four for ; participating to every one against, and every third letter has a cheque, including quids from pensioners.” “I reply to all letters.” he says, “even those saying I’m a flatulent old wind-bag, or worse. “The Government has

misfired through ignorance and hypocrisy. They never

consulted the international administrators and specialists, most of whom have decades of experience. It’s as. if they made a decision about ante-natal care without getting any opinion from gynaecologists and obstetricians:” i ;

-Sir Denis also reckons he has been the victim of “an orchestrated, but not very well-orchestrated,” camp a i g n of misrepresentation. f‘They .tried to say I’d ; taken, a line saying I knew more about foreign affairs than M.P.s. I. didn’t. What I said was I knew more about international sports administration.”

For the Lincoln-born grandson of an engine-

driver bn the Midland Railway. Follows’s experience is formidably cosmopolitan, dating back to a first visit to Bucharest in 1930 as Nottingham University’s student

president. In turn he was president of the National, Union of Students and the International Confederation of Students. He attended the 1933 Student Games in Turin, and the 1936 Berlin Olympics, via life-long service with the Universities Athletic Union. During the war he taught administration in the R.A.F. — “perhaps the only round peg in a' round hole in the service”' — and a contact led this non-flying Flight Lieutenant to his highly successful post-war 16-year stint, building up the British Airline Pilots’ Association.

From there this nonfootballing figure won (another highly successful) ten years tenure as secretary of the English Football Association, succeeding Sir Stanley Rous, and defeating Walter Winterbottom, Rous's protege, for the job by a 50-20 vote in an election held in a cup-tie atmosphere. The result astonished almost everyone except “the Lob.” His career exemplifies the rewards of cunning, care, and the inexorable amassing of contacts, both humble and less so. People generally like him too — unlike the Prime Minister, he’s decided.

To exemplify the point he has clipped a cartoon which makes him vibrate with laughter. “It shows Maggie with her knickers in a twist over the games” he explains. “Met someone pie other night who was with her at school. Appears she wasn’t very popular.”