Health risk Oriam

[WhileTheChief..]

Good interview with James Anderson in The Times from Feb this year....he grew up supporting Norwich!

James Anderson was out doing the shopping in Edinburgh’s Stockbridge recently when he was taken a little by surprise. “I was looking in the fish shop window and somebody said to me ‘come on the Jambos’.” It took him aback to be recognised.

Normally the Hearts director and Scottish football’s mighty benefactor is left entirely alone, the financial giant who prefers to blend into the crowd.


Anderson is high investment and low profile, happy to leave the limelight to club chairman Ann Budge. “To be honest Ann does a great job on that score and I think to a large extent thrives on it,” he says. “It was glorious going to Florence and seeing all those fans deeply enjoying it, wanting selfies with her etc. One or two people recognising me is fine, I don’t want any more than that.”

The Italian trip was for Hearts’ Conference League group game against Fiorentina in October, which justified yet another Anderson visit to the country close to his heart. He and his wife, Morag, have a house in Bologna and in December they made an astonishing £80 million private donation to the city’s Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, a transformational move which will turn the facility into an international hub for research and collaboration. The campus will be named after them.

The donation was so enormous and startling it inevitably caused discussion among Hearts supporters. Couldn’t he have instead given the money to the club where he has been a non-executive director since 2021 and a powerful figure behind the scenes since 2014, perhaps even funding a genuine assault on the title? Sadly for the Jambos it is not so simple.


“I’m not sure I could, in fact,” he says. “Firstly, the regulations surrounding donations to football are quite challenging. I really have no problem paying tax but the tax authorities are quite inquisitive, they really are, which I think is sad on a structural level because you are trying to do something that is helpful to whether you call it Hearts or Gorgie or Edinburgh or Scotland. There are various challenges.”


There have been many donations to academic, arts, education and charitable causes in Britain, the United States and Italy. And of course he has given freely to the SPFL. His £3 million of pandemic relief shared around every senior club was very gratefully embraced in 2020. Among those who expressed thanks were Celtic’s Peter Lawwell, who wrote him a letter, and Alan Burrows, then of Motherwell, who sent him a bottle of club-branded whisky. There was another £1.8 million donation to the SPFL in 2021 and this month he extended his sponsorship of the SPFL Trust Trophy into a third season. Glasgow City women’s team has been heavily supported. The £8 million he has given Hearts, so far, helped the Big Hearts Community Trust and helped build Tynecastle’s new main stand.


He is convinced that football is a powerful vehicle for good but not sufficiently recognised as such by national and local governments. As he sees it, clubs therefore have a responsibility to turn away from betting and alcohol companies as shirt sponsors. “Football being able to hang up a sign saying ‘we are good for our societies’ is the long-term prize,” he says. “In order to get that, and to convince everyone that it is so, you have to be prepared to turn down betting companies. And I’m not a ‘nobody should have a drink’ person and I find the banning of alcohol rather questionable, particularly given what you see at Murrayfield. But I think hard alcohol shouldn’t be our first [option as a shirt sponsor].”


The transformative effect of sportswashing makes him shudder. “My wife and I are amused by how often it might come up on TV that ‘Newcastle have done this in a miraculous fashion’.” He laughs. “Well we can all do that! I’m very uneasy about that sort of investment. Quite apart from the horrors of many of these regimes I think ultimately it undermines the thrills and the joys of football.” Manchester City leave him cold. “It holds no attraction for me. Increasingly I don’t find the English Premier League remotely interesting.”


Instead this Norfolk-born Norwich City fan has been sucked in by the Scottish game and would like to grow not only Hearts but the entire scene. “I think it is fundamentally about improving the calibre of the product,” he says. “Do we have the capacity to do that? Absolutely. We ought to get in a position with Sky Sports to show the Edinburgh derbies. The last one wasn’t on. Frankly it’s a much better atmosphere, and reasonable for all the derby tensions and the football, compared to much of the rubbish they show in the [English] Championship.”


Clubs like Villarreal, AZ Alkmaar, Atalanta, Eintracht Frankfurt and Napoli have inspired him and he feels that for too long significant forces like Aberdeen, Hibs and, yes, Hearts have done too little to really challenge the Old Firm. “I don’t think these clubs and any others who might eventually break into it have done a satisfactory job,” he says. “We must look at ourselves before blaming structures etc.


“Do I think we can at least be better? Yeah I do. And I think at that one has to be honest and say the existence of the Old Firm isn’t just a challenge in sporting and economic and cultural terms, it actually becomes a help. Because if they are doing well enough Scotland gets more access to Europe, and that matters. Aspiring to make Hearts’ revenues significantly higher on a regular basis can help you become more competitive. That’s what I think the project is. It ought to be plausible.To me, I want to help on that route.

“One of the other things that has really encouraged me is that there has been a popular response. The fact that Hearts basically sell out the ground each time and can comfortably afford to say we’re not giving the whole away stand to Rangers and Celtic is great.
“I’m delighted they still do for Hibs because I think that’s great from an atmosphere point of view. Edinburgh is a rich city. I am more upbeat about the ability to build a buoyant, large support, with a vociferous nature at Hearts than I would have been two or three years ago. I feel good about that.”


Becoming more active within the SPFL or SFA holds little appeal: too political, too time-consuming. Nor will he eventually take over as Hearts chairman when Budge steps down. “I think there are people, some of them already on the Hearts board, who are very well qualified and able to do that in the future,” he says. “It’s not that I absolutely, instinctively hate the idea. I’m not as good at handling publicity as Ann or other people but it’s more that I would like to continue to be involved [at directorial level]. I think the best that I can do for Hearts is to have the resources and any helpful insight I might be able to offer.”


His ambitions and generosity do not come cheap. “There is lots more to do,” he says. “One of the things I need to think about at the moment is that plainly it’s been a hard time in the sort of investments I’ve done for the last 18 months. At some point I need to think about rebuilding the income stream.


“It’s not desperate, I’m not trying to make that out, but if one is trying to do big things then you also need to generate.”

[Haymaker]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Is St George’s actually all that private? It is part of a Hilton hotel. Or do they get exclusive access to the hotel whilst the England camps are on?

I'm pretty sure it is exclusive but might be wrong. Friends of mine have stayed there for their licenses and I imagine when the teams are there it's only for them/people using the Park for the FA.

Sent from my SM-A426U1 using Tapatalk

[overdrive]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

I'm pretty sure it is exclusive but might be wrong. Friends of mine have stayed there for their licenses and I imagine when the teams are there it's only for them/people using the Park for the FA.

Sent from my SM-A426U1 using Tapatalk

I just did an experiment and you can book a room during the next international break, so at the very least there are randoms coming into contact with them in the hotel.

[Haymaker]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

I just did an experiment and you can book a room during the next international break, so at the very least there are randoms coming into contact with them in the hotel.

That's is weird. Unless they have a separate wing/floors?

Mind you I knew someone who worked for the Hilton hotel near Metlife/RB arena and teams just stay there like normal.

Sent from my SM-A426U1 using Tapatalk