[expatriate]

Owd Bob. i accept your point about the question being legitimate. Equally, you must accept i will respond to things as I read and see them.

Coming to the question of why eric sold the club to oneil, and why oneil has refused to accept a share issue. I think it was not a case of eric refusing - so much as my refusing to pay the price he asked. When he told me that he would not compromise, I asked to look at the books so that i could make a judgement about whether his asking price was fair or not. A bit like doing a survey of a house before you buy it. At that point I had already told eric that i could not be chairman or manager or ceo, so if i bought his shares, the money would really be for the club, not for his pocket. Eric then refused access to the books of the club, and the next thing we knew is that the club owed lots of money to lots of people, but mostly to the tax man. This part of the story is quite well known. Coming now to oneil, i dont know for sure why he refuses the ASSF offer (remember assf only came into being when oneil was coming on board). I assume he has two reasons. Firstly, if he is the major shareholder, he does want to lost that position by someone else coming on board. secondly, i assume his actions speak louder than words, by which i mean he does not want assf to look at the books.

if you think I have missed a point, by all means say so. In oneil's programme notes, he did not say why he refused the offer. He only said that he wanted "unconditional" cash. Of course i then turned around and offered to match his unconditional cash. I am still waiting for an answer.