2018/19

Going Places

Written by: Jon Howe
Photograph by: Lee Brown
9-entrance7.jpg

A few years ago I worked in a manufacturing plant that had parent ownership on an ambitious and forward-thinking European level, but on the shopfloor, in the thick of it, was deeply ingrained with a local, old-school working class culture.

As a management team we tried to implement a number of efficiency improvements, such as introducing a Japanese workplace organisation method called 5S (other lean manufacturing methodologies are available). This involved a huge cultural shift that aimed to change the way people thought. In essence, people dismissed it as basically ‘good housekeeping’, but it went far beyond that.

5S was built on five Japanese words that translated as ‘tidiness, orderliness, cleanliness, standardisation and discipline’. Again, most people thought all of those words meant the same thing, but the programme was essentially a project in identifying waste, getting rid of it and making sure it didn’t appear again. This wasn’t just materials and product, but also processes and activities; basically streamlining everything in terms of dead inventory and inefficient actions to identify what was draining resources, costing money and stopping the business being more productive. It sounds tedious and dull, and for long periods of time it was, but it was a huge project that people bought into slowly, until it became a concept that influenced all areas of the business and improved people as well as the business itself.

I’m reminded of the 5S philosophy, years later, each time I stare out of the windows in the concourse area of the North West Corner at Elland Road. I moved my season ticket from the Kop to this stand before the 2013/14 season and immediately identified a pallet of railway sleepers stored on top of the turnstile block outside. Nearly five years later they are still there, showing no evidence of having moved an inch or, indeed, having any purpose whatsoever.

A key part of the 5S programme was to undertake a comprehensive and ruthless assessment of materials and equipment on site to establish what was actually needed. Anything not used for more than a defined period, anything you couldn’t justify keeping, anything you were ‘saving just in case’ was a waste cost and was thrown away. We were travelling light, we were flying, we had no time for baggage. We were going places.

Which brings me back to this pallet of sleepers. I can think of no earthly reason why we need them today in 2018 and, having studied Elland Road and its development in forensic detail, can think of no reason why they will have moved from that position on top of the Entrance 7 turnstile block perhaps since the early 1970s, when that particular stand was built. Doubtless there is a member of the ground staff who can correct me, but for now let’s pretend that’s true.

I’m sure you’re reading this thinking, ‘Jon, it’s just a pallet of sleepers’. But it’s not just a pallet of sleepers. At half-time of the recent Bristol City game I stood with my friends in a slightly different position underneath the stand and looked out with regulation despair, as we considered another 2-0 deficit, how short our life is in relation to the universe and its infinite probabilities and our life choices in general. On the other side of the flat roof above the turnstile block was an ‘Entrance 7’ sign that had once stood proud and erect but was now lying flat on its side, apparently unable to withstand a Fotherby-charged wind of change from the late 1980s. Its blue paint was peeling and weathered by years of enduring LS11’s interminable climate. The crumbled and forlorn black tar that was unearthed at its root when the sign finally gave up the ghost and toppled over was still lying by its side like a faithful Collie. It was a deceased ‘Entrance 7’ sign. It was an ex-‘Entrance 7’ sign.

The ‘new’, improved triangular ‘Entrance 7’ sign that replaced it loomed large with fresh paint and robust structure, lording it like a Victorian bully in short pants, ruling the roost and sneering at its fallen adversary, who just had to lie there and take it. Every day. Forever. I had never really noticed the ‘Entrance 7’ sign, somehow transfixed by the eternal presence of the pallet of railway sleepers. But there it was, bold as brass. A problem had occurred whereby a sign had fallen down, or was agreed to be taken down, and a decision was made by somebody somewhere that a bigger more resplendent sign was required to replace it. ‘But we’ll just leave the old sign there. Nobody can see it up there, so it’s no problem.’

Except that thousands of matchday fans can see it, at least 23 times a season, as they stare out in wistful contemplation and melancholic hopelessness. And to many people — okay, maybe just me — it somehow symbolises the rotten stasis of Leeds United Football Club. The pallet of sleepers and the ‘Entrance 7’ sign are somehow symptomatic of a wholesale lethargy, maybe even an obsession with the past, but certainly they’re a visual reminder that there is a culture of sluggish indifference and the club is far from the world class organisation it has ambitions to be.

Of course, I am perhaps doing a disservice to Andrea Radrizzani here. Much work has been done to decorate key areas of Elland Road both inside and out, and it may be that a clean sweep of the West Stand and corner stand facilities is on the list for summer 2018, to reflect the luxurious accommodation in the East Stand and the impressive tarting up of the Banqueting Suite. It is also true that there is probably little motivation to improve facilities too much in the West Stand when its overdue demise is most likely the next major development of the stadium. Unfortunately this is a common thread through various eras and generations, none of which have been able to construct a situation where such a structural evolution would make financial sense.

So in the meantime, cramped, dark and draughty concourses, chipped Formica counters, single glazed windows, peeling paintwork, sub-zero flat beer and Meal Deal fucking Two are the order of the day, and the proud facilities we will subject England fans to when they wave the team off to the World Cup in June. A timelapse video from 1974 to today would show little discernible difference at the end of it.

It may seem petty and irrelevant, and of course it is, but if a culture change is to be effective, and god knows we need it to be, then you can’t just walk past examples of idle languor and believe that it doesn’t rub off on people. I’m not just talking about the pallet of sleepers and the ‘Entrance 7’ sign, but while we love Elland Road warts and all and wouldn’t change it for the world, you look around at huge parts of it and it doesn’t say ‘we’re going places’, more ‘we’re happy where we are, thanks. We brought a flask’.

I’ve not studied this too closely, but I’d wager there isn’t another club in the top two divisions of English football that has, stored on site, random materials that could be carbon dated back to that club’s very inception. Pullan’s Builders were known to store building materials at Elland Road as they piled up layers and layers of construction waste to form what became the original Spion Kop and Lowfields Road terracing in the 1920s. I guess it’s quite possible that the railway sleepers have therefore been stored diligently for all this time, ready to be revealed in 2019 to play a key part in our centenary celebrations. On the flipside, maybe they are the life-draining source left by the gypsies that cursed Elland Road in the 1800s? But either way, at what other professional football club with a multi-million pound turnover would the pace of change be so slow that something lays untouched for more than twenty years, and possibly more than thirty?

Upon being appointed manager, Howard Wilkinson famously breezed into the club and claimed that people were using the success of the Revie era as a crutch to lean on. There was an obsession with the past that made it easy to overlook the shortcomings of today, putting up with standards you knew weren’t good enough. This was in 1988, and thirty years later you could argue a similar mind-set exists, albeit evident only in a microcosm of the West Stand facilities and a kind of ‘Fuck it… that’ll do’ mentality that leaves things untouched for several decades, all the while believing someone else will deal with it.

The bigger picture, and the point I’m trying to make, is that a similarly wasteful culture still exists at Leeds United at several different levels, and some with more overall influence than others; Andrea Radrizzani has at least tried to address some of these, but with variable success. In fairness, Radrizzani has never actually come out and said ‘we’re going places’ or similarly bullish rhetoric to that effect. But it’s something we want to hear, to see and certainly to experience. This season has shown that we’re not there yet, even if the desire is. As Robert Snodgrass once said, “How can you say you’re aiming for promotion and then sell your captain?” Likewise, how can we say we’re going places and then ignore a pallet of railway sleepers and a fallen ‘Entrance 7’ sign hiding in plain sight? Makes you think doesn’t it? ⬢

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