Dennis Signy on the almost QPR-Brentford Merger
(From Vital QPR a couple years ago)
The Brentford Take-Over Saga
Dennis Signy OBE speaks to Vital QPR once more, about his time within Brentford and the possible take-over by Queens Park Rangers in 1967.
Signy who previous spoke to Vital QPR concerning his time under Jim Gregory and Alec Stock, now moves to speak about Rangers potential acquisition of Brentford in 1967 as well as John Lyall agreeing to manage Rangers.
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The biggest story of my career over 60 years in newspapers and football came in 1967 ... the QPR bid to take over Brentford.
The headline story went round the world yet, strangely for me, I did not write a word on the subject. I was general manager of Brentford at the time - in fact, I started the whole saga.
It was a chance remark I made to Jim Gregory that sparked off the soccer sensation of 1967. Billy Gray was my team manager at Brentford - having turned down an offer from Alec Stock to join him with Rangers - and he and I were standing in Ellerslie Road waiting for my wife to arrive for a game against Carlisle United, when we saw Jim.
The previous Saturday Bernard Joy, the famous ex-centre half who wrote so authoratively over the years for the Evening Standard, had produced a feature on the old theme of ground sharing and had linked Brentford and QPR as logical clubs to tie up.
Jim asked: 'How many do you think we'll get tonight?'
I told him: 'I don't know - about 18,000. If you were playing at Griffin Park you'd get 30,000' (in actual fact the gate was 19,146).
From that casual remark we progressed to a discussion on Joy's ground-sharing theme and, when Jim Gregory said that he might be interested in pursuing this further I said I would mention it to my chairman, Jack Dunnett, Brentford's MP chairman.
I did - and that started the train of events that led to the eventual take-over bid. The two chairmen went into the appeals of ground-sharing but moved on to discuss the possibility of Rangers buying the Brentford ground - capacity at the time 38,000.
Various idea were thrashed around by the two wealthy chairman, including Brentford using Griffin Park on alternate weeks as tenants of Rangers.
Homely Loftus Road, as I recorded at the time, was Rangers' 16th home and I dubbed them as veritable gypsies of the soccer scene in historical parlance - the happy wanderers.
I remember sitting in on some of the preliminary discussions as a modestly paid journalist who had moved into football management and knew more about headlines than balance sheets. I did understand, though, that both clubs were losing money heavily.
I was fascinated hearing sums of thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds being bandied about between the Mayfair solicitor who was my chairman and the self-made millionaire from Rangers.
It was like Monopoly - with real money. I used to smile at being asked to intervene with important decisions.
The discussions evolved into this: - Rangers were to buy Griffin Park for £220,000 and were to sell Loftus Road to he council for £310,000. The £90,000 surplus was intended to be used to improve Griffin Park. I was to be in publicity and fund-raising projects.
What was not known even when the story broke in the newspapers and on radio and television was that the two clubs were UNDER CONTRACT. After he breakdown of the merger talks Jim Gregory had proposed to Jack Dunnett: 'We'll buy you out, shares, ground, the players, the lot'.
The deal was announced on Jim's 39th birthday. Alec Stock was to be overall manager and Billy Gray and Bill Dodgin the coaches. I, the ideas man of the project, was bombarded by telephone.
The Daily Mail headlined: 'Fans call it a sell -out'. The Daily Mirror: 'Goodbye, Brentford' .
The next crowd at Griffin Park was a best-of-season 10, 650 and the fans left us in no doubt what they thought of the idea. 'Who done it? Dunnett dunnit' was the poster I remember.
To cut it short, it never went through and I resigned some weeks later and Billy Gray followed me out of Griffin Park when Dunnett handed over to new chairman Ron Blindell.
Would it have been such a bad thing? I recall Alec Stock's words: 'This would be a great thing for us. If agreement is reached it will mean that we have a first-class ground for what is already a first-class team'. Jim Gregory said: 'Economically it was a good proposition for Rangers'...
www.qpr.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=118356#ixzz1vDa9J5Rv
