Bill Tomlins

Ex-Chairman

A former general manager of the club in the 1980s, Bill returned to Luton Town Football Club in May 2004 as he put together a consortium to purchase the club after the Hatters had spent an entire year in administrative receivership following the brief reign of the controversial John Gurney in the summer of 2003.

Bill put together a consortium that consisted of former director John Mitchell, who had played for Fulham and Millwall in the 1970s, Derek Peters, a former financial director at Tottenham Hotspur Plc and the football club, who joined the White Hart Lane-based club in the 1980s and floated the club onto the stock market – making Spurs the first British club to ever be floated on the stock market, and Richard Bagehot, a lawyer who has worked in the sports and entertainment industry specifically for 27 years.

There are also two investors - Malcolm Gold, who has worked in the hotel industry, and Ken James, a banker who worked for eight years in New York.

On taking over the club, Bill said, "Football is not the flavour of the month and at the moment, getting funding for a football club is very difficult and you either need to be someone who will throw money at a club or be a group of people who will do that. But even when you have the money, the football isn't always good and the club can find itself in debt and that isn't a route we tend to go down and we will run this club within it's means and the funding difficulty was overcome because we saw the future was relocation and it has to be in a new stadium. As nice as it is to have been at Kenilworth Road and the history surrounding the place, the most important thing is the future. This club now, with it's restricted capacity, is very difficult to make it commercially viable and the Watson-Challis' had the vision to buy a piece of land with the purpose of relocating the club and we've made an agreement with them to use that land.

"Mike Watson-Challis we have had a long involvement with and in my time, Mike was a director on the board in the 1980s and we felt it was important to give him some sort of life presidency, which he has accepted. At the end of the day, this club, even as we speak, is losing £200,000 a month and this club was budgeted, even during the time of the receiver, to lose £400,000 a month and the receiver made decisions to reduce the wages and reduce the squad and part of our route will be picking up that deferment so the players get paid again and that is another £250,000 straight away.

"The two investors are Malcolm Gold, the owner of the Regal hotels, and he lives reasonably close and he is a football person as well, so he is a lovely addition to us here.

"Ken James is a banker, with eight years in the New York banking structure, so we have someone from the banking world, which will help us with relocating and further on."

With relocating to a new stadium the main priority for Bill and his new consortium, it was hoped that the club can move to the new ground by 2006.

Although the club were very successful at the beginning of Bill's tenure - earning promotion to the Championship in his second year as chairman after storming to the League One title - he soon felt the wrath of the supporters.  He had initially been criticised heavily in the media by manager Mike Newell, who felt that Bill wasn't doing enough as a chairman to hold onto the club's key players.  The sales of no less than five star players for around £8 million had taken their toll on the squad who, after just one season in the Championship (finishing 10th), were rock bottom of the Championship table by mid-April 2007 and heading back to League One.  He was lambasted by the fans for the lack of money spent on replacing the departed players and things turned even more sour when Bill sacked manager Mike Newell for gross misconduct after Newell launched another attack on the board of Directors.  It led to the fans singing, "Where's the money gone?" and "Sack the Board" amid angry scenes at Kenilworth Road.

Bill appointed Kevin Blackwell as Newell's successor, but he was soon departing the club himself, standing down from his position as chairman in mid-April 2007.  He left the club under a cloud of controversy after the Football Association launched an investigation into the club's finances after Bill admitted that Jayten, the club's holding company, made three irregular payments to football agents over player transfers.

Within days of Bill leaving, the club had a new chairman - David Pinkney - a Luton Town supporter and major shareholder and chairman of AA Warranty, and also a British Touring Car racing driver.

And so Bill left Luton Town after three years at the club and he left Kenilworth Road, it would be fair to say, a rather unpopular figure with the Hatters fans after the sales of many key players and popular manager Mike Newell had left Luton staring relegation in the face.

In November 2007, Bill found himself in trouble for alleged breaches of rules relating to player transfers and contract renegotiations between July 2004 and February 2007.

The club, Bill, ex-finance director Derek Peter and directors John Mitchell and Richard Bagehot were all charged.  Six licensed players' agents were also charged.

The investigation, which began in March 2007, found that payments made to the six agents, totalling about £160,000, by the club's holding company 'Jayten (also known as 'J10') Stadium Limited' were not disclosed to the FA on the required forms.  In addition, it was also alleged that services for the benefit of a Luton player, totalling approximately £7,000, were paid for directly by 'Jayten' but were not disclosed on the player's contract.

The charges followed an FA investigation after former Hatters manager Mike Newell claimed in early 2006 that illegal payments in the game were rife.  His allegations were shown to be right and his concerns - which had seen him sacked as Luton Town manager after he voiced these concerns - were proven to be well founded when club secretary Cherry Newbery identified the illegal payments.  She subsequently reported them to the FA.

The FA revealed their findings in June 2008 - and the results had huge consequences for Luton Town Football Club.  

The Hatters were found guilty of 15 charges of misconduct, concerning payments to agents between July 2004 and February 2007.  The Regulatory Commission found the club guilty of paying agents via a third party, but not of paying bungs and fined the club £50,000 and deducted them 10 League points for the start of the 2008-09 season.

Bill was banned from football for five years and fined £15,000.  Three other ex-directors were also punished and six agents warned. Derek Peter was fined £3,750 and a one-year ban from football. Richard Bagehot was fined £750 and John Mitchell £250.

It represented the worst-case scenario for Luton Town and the decision was a huge shock and came as a massive blow for Hatters fans.

It also seemed so unfair on Luton supporters – how many more times were they going to be punished? Not only had they had to contend with selling over £14 million worth of players in 2-and-a-half-years, three different managers, a 10-point deduction the previous season and two successive relegations, they now also had to accept that they could even lose their status as a Football League club.

Bill offered to help Luton's fight for justice and even publicly announced that he should be punished and not the Football Club.  He wrote a letter to 'LTFC2020', the consortium running the club, offering to help their fight, but they reacted angrily and stated his help would never be welcome and they would prefer that Bill stays away from the club.

He is now a rather vilified figure at Kenilworth Road.

Profile By:  James Garley