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Your support makes all the difference.Football chairmen are not traditionally among life's militants but this afternoon they will take their banners and placards to demonstrate outside the London offices of Carlton and Granada in protest at the failure of ITV Digital to honour its contract with the Football League.
They will be accompanied by a truck bearing the slogan: "Football League Health Warning. Carlton and Granada Can Seriously Damage Your Sport". Over the following 12 days representatives from six different clubs will picket the offices of the two television companies which jointly owned ITV Digital and which the Football League is suing for breach of contract.
The Football League's spokesman, John Nagle, said it was intended to maintain pressure on the two companies which failed to pay the £178m balance on the three-year contract signed in June 2000. "Although we now have a new deal with Sky, this should show the outrage felt in the game about ITV Digital's failure to meet its obligations. The idea came from the chairmen's AGM and was very strongly supported. ITV will also have to screen the protests, although for some reason we appear to get much better coverage on the BBC and Sky."
The support for the demonstration is not unanimous. Wigan, for example, were adamant they would not be involved, while Theo Paphitis and Simon Jordan, the chairmen of Millwall and Crystal Palace respectively, were highly critical.
"It is an extremely redundant exercise and must be music to the ears of Carlton and Granada," Paphatis said. "It's completely irrelevant. I certainly will not be going because I have more important things to do. I will see them in court."
Jordan, a critic of the League's freshly negotiated four-year deal with Sky which would guarantee First Division clubs £500,000 a year rather than the £2.7m under the ITV Digital contract, said: "I don't see the new money as a bonus. It is a disappointment but we are all last-chance Charlies. Personally, I won't be going because I think it is undignified." Jordan will send his club secretary instead.
Peter Jones, the vice-chairman of Plymouth Argyle, who were forced to suspend ground improvements to Home Park in the wake of ITV Digital's collapse, said the demonstration was worth staging. "I don't know if I'll be waving a banner but I will be there," he said. "It will have more impact than doing nothing.
"Whether I'm confident that we'll be successful in the court case [which opens on 26 July] is a more difficult question."
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