Sir Bert Millichip: Sir Bert Millichip, who has died aged 88, was honest, loved football and was generally genial. In his 15-year tenure of the English Football Association, however, he became a controversial figure, notorious for the spectacular volte face and the bizarre gaffe.
His nickname "Bert The Inert" was widely embraced. Yet he clung on to power and would gladly have continued after his 82nd birthday, in August 1996, had he not been opposed.
There was never any doubt about his physical powers. Whether he was mentally alert to the same degree became an increasing problem. Soon after the 1996 European Championship finals in England, bitter controversy broke out over whether Millichip had nodded through Germany's bid to hold the 2006 World Cup finals. Officials of UEFA, the European body, in which Millichip headed the referees' committee, insisted that he had, but there were no minutes to prove it. Frederick Albert Millichip grew up in the West Midlands and was educated at Solihull School, Warwickshire. Before the war, he played centre-half for West Bromwich Albion's third team. After the war, in which he served as an anti-aircraft gunner, seeing service in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, rising from private to captain, he became an Albion director and eventually, chairman, while practising as a solicitor.
As chairman of the FA from 1981, he found himself plunged into one controversy after another. Those years saw the appalling Heysel disaster, in 1985 - when he was quick to advocate the withdrawal of all English clubs from European competition - the problem of hooliganism and the breakaway of the major clubs from the Football League. In few of these areas did he give cogent leadership. When he advocated the banning of fans from clubs playing away from home, even Graham Kelly, the chief executive of the FA, disagreed with him. His advocacy of the use of the birch on football hooligans was ridiculed. And when he might have intervened, in 1993, to end the disastrous reign of Graham Taylor as England's team manager, reigniting hope of qualification for the 1994 World Cup finals, he stayed silent.
His behaviour over the choice of Taylor's successor was stranger still. When the name of Terry Venables was suggested Millichip announced that Venables would get the job "over my dead body". Venables got the job a mere 10 weeks later. After the Hillsborough disaster Millichip dropped another of his bricks. Some 96 innocent Liverpool fans had been crushed to death against the perimeter fence, but Sir Bert - who became a knight in 1991 - opined: "No-one in football is in favour of taking the fences down." Gaffes followed thick and fast. As for the formation of the Premier League, which came into being under the FA's umbrella, he insisted: "I should remind people that the Premier League wasn't brought in by the FA. A deputation told me they wanted to break away from the Football League. Initially, many of us had reservations, but look at the Premier League now. The rich have got richer, but the poor have got richer, too, and it is my determination to see that success at the top means a regeneration all the way down to the grassroots." All of which begged the question of the Football Association's role, which was to hold the ring, rather than to throw in its lot with the richest clubs pursuing their own commercial interests.
In 1950, Millichip married Joan Brown. They had a son and a daughter.
Frederick Albert (Bert) Millichip, born August 5th, 1914; died December 18th, 2002.