Well worth the effort

THIS is not how it was advertised in the brochure. John Boyle, erstwhile tycoon of the travel industry, will bring to an end five years as chairman of Motherwell tomorrow evening, hurt by criticism and chastened by an adventure that has been more turbulent than anything his customers have experienced in seven years of flights to the Mediterranean.

The man who founded Direct Holidays in 1991, and later banked 42m from its sale, certainly has made more dignified departures in his time. When he is voted off the board at the Lanarkshire club’s annual general meeting, it will not be a case of kicking off his shoes and making for the emergency exit, but neither will it be quite the sign-off he had hoped for.

Boyle is the man who, in an unprecedented experiment, intended to revolutionise the club, slashed admission prices, hiked up the wages and promised that, with the help of some imaginative appointments, ‘New Motherwell’ would attract 8000 season ticket-holders and challenge the Old Firm. Hold on to your hats, he said, for a hell of a ride.

Now, with his feet back on terra firma, even he would admit that it has been more like a journey to hell and back. Crippled by a wage bill reputed to have fed players such as Don Goodman and John Spencer up to 9000 a week, Motherwell went into administration 18 months ago and were spared relegation only because First Division champions Falkirk were not equipped to replace them.

The single consolation for Boyle is that he can at least claim to have spared Motherwell the agony of extinction. For every critic of the project that has left the club with a queue of creditors banging on the front door, there is another commending its architect for his ambition and, more recently, his readiness to write off that which he is owed, a figure that amounts to the best part of 10m.

As Boyle prepares to relinquish his role as a director of the club, the most significant of several boardroom changes to be announced tomorrow, a poll on a Motherwell website has been asking fans how he will be remembered. At the last count, 48% of more than 200 voters said they looked upon his tenure "favourably" because "he tried to do his best for the club and lost an awful lot of money in the process". Some 40% said "unfavourably", with the rider that "his heart was in the right place". Only 12% took the view that he was the worst thing ever to happen to their club.

Boyle has been demonised in the press, not least by the players who were made redundant on that black day in April of 2002. Karl Ready, who claims to be owed 400,000 in lost earnings, insisted that the chairman had ruined his life. In driving Motherwell to the precipice without regard for the warning signs, the Lanarkshire businessman adopted a high-risk strategy that was to prove costly.

Boyle, though, would argue that it was he, and not the club, who stood to lose from the venture. About 95% of the debt that remains to be paid off is his. He had little or no choice but to go into administration - insolvency dictated as much - but his subsequent decision to waive what he was owed underlines the scale, however ill-advised, of his investment.

"His heart was in the right place," says Bryan Jackson, the club’s administrator. "He didn’t come in to make money, that’s for sure. And he always said that administration was not a device with which to get his money back. Obviously, he would have liked a return, but appointing me was to save the club, which would appear to be working."

Even their dangerous flirt with relegation, perhaps the most serious consequence of the club’s drastic cost-cutting, has not persuaded supporters to turn against the man who made it all necessary. While his wealth has made him an easy target in the press, the lifelong Motherwell fan still takes his seat in the main stand at Fir Park without fear of abuse.

If Boyle was guilty of anything, they say, it was ambition. Had he been self-interested, he would not have agreed, albeit under considerable pressure, to pay out of his own pocket the players who had been insulting him in the newspapers. "He waived what he was owed so that we could offer something reasonable to our creditors," says Jackson. "It was good of him to do that. He didn’t need to. We could still have come out of administration, but it would have been an awful lot tougher."

It is easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to describe Boyle as naive. Precious few were complaining about his plan when it was hatched, and the surprise collapse of television revenue certainly didn’t help. Maybe we will never know which was flawed, the ambition or the strategy devised to fulfil it. Were Pat Nevin and Billy Davies the right men to be appointed chief executive and manager respectively?

"When you see some of the big crowds they still have in big matches, you do wonder if it might have been possible," says Jackson. "It had not been tried before, so you could say that it was a brave thing to do. If nothing else, the way it all ended gave Motherwell, and the rest of Scottish football, a welcome wake-up call."

Motherwell will not allow it to happen again, and certainly not if those who have suffered are involved. Jackson, for one, has spent so long caring for the crippled patient that he will struggle to walk away if, as expected, creditors accept his offer and normal trading resumes in the new year. As the Lanarkshire club finally moves to within touching distance of breaking even, it will pain him to leave responsibility for it in someone else’s hands.

"It will be quite tough to just move on, after everything we have been through. The first thing for me is to finish the job I was brought here to do, and if the directors were interested in offering me a continued role at the club, I would consider it. I would be very flattered."

Those who have lived through the crisis, including Boyle, are perhaps the best equipped to avoid a repeat of it. His tenure as chairman may be over but, with a 76% stake that interests no prospective buyers until the club are out of administration, he remains their majority shareholder. Only when a suitor of whom he approves emerges, namely one from Lanarkshire with the club’s interest at heart, will Boyle fulfil his promise to sever all links.

In the meantime, his rehabilitation goes on. A passionate fan, a respected entrepreneur, and now a man with the chance, however temporarily, to start again, with a clean balance sheet and painful experience to boot. "Lessons have been learned," says Jackson. "Since the club have gone into administration, we have made decisions together in terms of wages, and there have been no disagreements about what needed to be done. A lot of people assume that there needs to be a new broom, but John Boyle is better and more astute than anyone else you might find."

Maybe he can set in motion for Motherwell what Chris Robinson has at Hearts, another club almost paralysed by their board’s earlier ambition. Stewart Milne, too, has seen the error of his ways at Aberdeen. Better Boyle, if only while he finds a replacement in his own mould, than another white knight, riding in with an impression to make on supporters.