As I write this piece Google reminds me that almost exactly 28 years ago, Will Carling, the sometime darling of both rugby and the late Princess Diana, was sacked by the RFU as captain of the England Rugby team for saying that the RFU’s committee were “57 old farts”!

Some years ago, I had the unenviable job of attending an FA disciplinary tribunal to defend a player who had been red-carded for abusing a referee. A thankless task, but back then lodging an appeal enabled the player to continue playing until the hearing and, with a Cup Final the following weekend an appeal was the obvious course of action. The player arrived at the FA headquarters suited and booted to create the best impression.

We were met by the tribunal secretary, a heavy-set man who breathlessly escorted us up several flights of stairs to the top floor. The door opened into what looked like a courtroom save for a green baize Subbuteo table at the front so that the crime could be re-enacted by small speechless characters. But the most striking thing were the three gentlemen who would pass judgement sitting behind the table at the head of the room, resplendent in their blue FA blazers – I swear that their combined age was not less than 200 years - it might have been closer to 250!

Now, as a man who now receives a pension, I am not the least bit ageist, but our sport has been run for too long by people trapped in the past, and in their blazers.

We are told that the whole world loves the unique pyramid structure of British football, allowing a club to come from the bottom to the top - but it’s not really true. The current Premier League clubs don’t love it. They would far rather have a franchise system like the USA which would guarantee that they couldn’t be relegated – isn’t that what the planned European Super League of 2021 was all about? That assault on our game was repelled but it hasn’t gone away – the super clubs of Europe will bide their time, wait for a moment of weakness and then strike! Was that not what they did in 1991 when the Premier League was formed? Back in 1990, the Football League published its vision for the future ‘One Game, One Team, One Voice’ which had much merit and proposed a sharing of the money on offer with the clubs in the lower leagues – the big clubs countered with ‘The Blueprint for the Future of Football’ immediately followed by 22 clubs resigning from the Football League, forming the Premier League, and inviting the TV companies, sponsors and season ticket holders to pay more.

In those early days of the Premier League, the EFL were offered a percentage share of the Premier League TV income. The ‘old farts’, with a staggering degree of short-sightedness and belief in the game that they were responsible for managing and promoting, opted instead for a fixed sum – that sum is currently around £130 million per annum and is distributed among the EFL clubs with the Championship inevitably getting the lion’s share. Now I can’t remember the percentage offered but in the first year of the Premier League, the Sky TV contract was worth £304 million, today the UK TV rights are worth £6.7 billion so it’s not rocket science to understand that a percentage would have been a much better deal.

The failed Super League breakaway caused our government to launch an investigation into football governance – never again would such an audacious smash-and-grab raid be allowed. It was the last in a long line of such reports none of which, with the exception of the 1990 Taylor Report which led to major ground and crowd safety improvements following the Hillsborough disaster, have achieved very much. Who remembers the Reid Report, The Football Task Force (chaired by MP and Chelsea fan David Mellor), or The Burns Report? The latest in this long line ‘Football Governance – Time for Change’ was published early this year and promised many things – a regulator, increased fan involvement, strengthening of the owner’s and director’s test, and most powerfully, potential intervention in financial re-distribution, etc.

To head off this threat to their pockets, the Premier League quickly entered negotiations to share more of their TV money with the EFL. The deal tabled was a meagre doubling of the so-called solidarity payment (although there is no real solidarity – the big clubs really couldn’t give a stuff). Not surprisingly the talks collapsed because some Premier League clubs would not agree and so there has been no progress.

What will happen now? The government has threatened to intervene. UEFA, presumably prompted by the ‘big clubs' have threatened to exclude England from future competitions if they do. Really? Do we honestly think that UEFA (or FIFA), those fine upstanding institutions, those bastions of fairness and honesty, will alienate a flagship country (just look at the revenues of the PL clubs versus any other league in Europe to understand this)? But like before the UK government will back down and do nothing, they’ll pass some meaningless law which the Premier League, UEFA and FIFA will run rings around, say that they have done what was needed, and then move on to the next newsworthy cause.

But the EFL is important, and it deserves better. Without the EFL the Premier League will become as sterile as the other European Leagues with the winners pre-ordained and only the occasional upset. The EFL is the breeding ground for young talent (far better than most of the Premier League academies) or the place where young loan players can be developed so that they can find their level. We simply can’t allow the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ to widen any further – those charged with the governance of our game need to wake up and fight for all 92 Clubs that make up our professional game and not just the ‘Top 20’!