The ongoing dispute between West Ham United and UK Athletics appears pretty clear cut. West Ham United, leaseholders at London Stadium, feel they have the legal right to stick two fingers up at UK Athletics who want to bid for the World Athletics Championships in September 2029 and have West Ham vacate the London Stadium for three weeks.
Apparently it would weaken the ‘London’ bid for the World Championships to move it to the summer.
So September is their preferred timing – at the end of the athletics season – but that would mean the Hammers would have to move out and the stadium revert to its ‘athletics’ configuration mid-football season.
The West Ham board feel they have every right to refuse.
And I’m sure they’re within their legal rights.
World record 800m holder Keely Hodgkinson even poked fun at West Ham – as the Guardian gleefully reported:
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“Hodgkinson, who won the World Indoor Championship 800m on Sunday, made her feeling’s clear on Tuesday when she responded to a story on X saying “London’s bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships is in jeopardy”.
“The GB team will bring back more medals to that stadium than West Ham have seen in their entire history,” she wrote, before adding hand over the mouth, laughing and heart emojis.”
Three weeks in September in 2029 could actually mean just one home game being postponed: With so many clubs in London it is hardly a drawback to start the season with three away fixtures: It has happened before and everything, of course, evens itself out later in the season.
There is a wider issue here in that the board seem quite happy-indeed it almost seems their default setting– to fall out with everybody over everything. Be it naming rights, never ending issues with the owners and payments, the ongoing dispute with tens of thousands of disillusioned, disgruntled supporters – the tenancy at London Stadium seems to have been filled with disputes and court cases as the acerbic owners manage to fall out with just about everyone.
West Ham’s board seem able to fall out with anyone
The difference between having the legal right and ‘the right thing to do‘ is enormous. West Ham’s deal at London Stadium is so preposterously good for the club that it would surely do no harm to consider being a little more accommodating: It just seems that this current board don’t have it in them to consider anything but their own self centred little board room view on life.
Which can be mighty tiresome as a lifelong supporter. Just once, perhaps, the current owners could make us as fans proud by looking at ‘the greater good’. Not these owners, not this football club. A shame.