Missing Votes Found, Beachill Gets Place on Board

Martin Bronstein casts a wary eye on the announcement of the new PSA Board.

The press release from the PSA, the men’s professional players’ organization was the usual Howard Harding format.  The first two paragraphs told all you really wanted to know:

“Englishman Mark Chaloner, the former world No7 who was President of the PSA, becomes Chairman, while fellow Englishman Lee Beachill, the world No10 from Yorkshire, joins the board as Vice President.

"Welshman Alex Gough, the world No20, takes over the position of President.  The remaining board members are Jack Herrick (USA), Robert Graham (England), Martin Macdonnell (Ireland) and Tony Hands (England).”

Then followed the usual  tiresome  purple prose telling us how wonderful everybody was and just how, really, they all deserved the Nobel prize for works to humanity.

I’m afraid dear reader, a slight odour arose as I read it.

Let me briefly give you the background. To start with, Gawain Briars, the PSA chief executive,  is not exactly popular with  his members. Indeed some member actively dislike him.  It is alleged by many players, and I have spoken to many, many players on this subject, that Briars, being a lawyer (or ‘Solicitor’ as they say in the UK) wrote himself a 12 year contract.  The players believe that they cannot afford to get rid of him because of this overlong contract.

Last December at the PSA AGM held in Bermuda,  there had been moves to  vote Jack Herrick off the board and replace him with Lee Beachill.  The reason was that  Herrick was a firm supporter of Briars and that without him for support, Briars’ position would be weakened.

Voting for the board by PSA members had taken place before the Bermuda meeting. All the players and others who knew what was what told me that this was a fait accompli, a done deal, it was in the bag, that Herrick would be out and Beachill in.

Somehow, somewhere all the careful planning by the Beachill movement had come to nowt. According the Briars, Beachill had not amassed enough votes to be elected to the board.  (Now please read that last sentence again.) When asked to examine the votes, the meeting was told that they had been left in Cardiff (The Florida of Wales?).

Lee Beachill  didn’t exactly  say the count had been  fiddled, but told me in no uncertain terms that they knew they had done enough canvassing to get sufficient votes to get him elected to the board.

Now, five or six weeks later, they suddenly find the votes and Lee Beachill  is now a vice –president while Herrick has been demoted  from Chairman to ordinary board member.  As far as I can see, Briars, sensing rebellion in the air, brokered a deal whereby Beachill would be  given a seat on the board if Herrick was allowed to stay on as a board member.

None of the above information was included, or even alluded to in Howard Harding’s press release. And that too is understandable.

From what I hear from my source, Deep Split Throat, Briars might start looking for other ways to earn a living.

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