Will the real Barry Hearn stand up – and go away

The recent bout of sunshine has brought Preview Percy out of his close season hibernation and he's fed up with the moveable feast that is Barry Hearn...

Let me get a couple of things out of the way first. The Olympic Stadium – I haven’t a clue whether we should move there or not. This is simply because for all the statements that come from the club which tell us all wonderful it will all be when we get there, nobody is allowed to say how such Nirvana is to be achieved due to “confidentiality”. Fair enough but until I have enough information on which to base an opinion I’ll hang on until forming one.

Secondly, I have no axe to grind with Leyton Orient fans per se – to be honest I struggle to reach mild indifference as far as they’re concerned. No, it’s Barry Hearn who gets on my nerves.

Hearn is a man of principle, it has to be said. The trouble is that he seems to have more than most in that department – and they tend to change pretty frequently. Throughout the whole Olympic process, at various times he has been in favour of taking it over for his club, in favour of Spurs taking it over, then nobody taking it over.

Until recently the place was said to be "totally unfit" for football before the most recent change of mind saw Hearn revert back to his opening position of wanting to move in, apparently totally oblivious to the irony of his club making a move into another borough. Presumably his gracious invitation to the club already located in the borough in question to share the place is designed to disguise that particular logical inconsistency.

Hearn’s latest pronouncement does rather plumb new depths though:

"I had a Martin Luther King moment. I had a dream. We are a community club and we tick a lot of boxes. We are debt-free and have a sensible business plan. I looked at the Olympic Stadium and said 'why not?'. If our dream is shared by those people that are in charge of the Olympic facilities, who's to say what can be achieved? Is it about money legacy, or the real ethos of the Olympic Games, which is the community aspect?"

Now I realise that the world of sports promotion is prone to hyperbole and that those involved are not exactly backward in blowing their own trumpets. However to compare oneself to a Nobel Peace Prize winner who spent his life – and indeed lost it - campaigning against injustice when your contribution to the world in which we live includes 'Snooker Loopy' is a bit crass, to say the least.

Still, he’s doing it all for the "community" which must make it alright surely? Well pardon me for being suspicious, but whenever I hear someone wealthy use the word "community" my sensors start to twitch. You see, all too often that word is used to cover a multitude of sins.

You know the sort of thing: "Yes, we’re building the nuclear waste plant two feet from your baby’s window but the risk of polonium poisoning is minuscule when you consider the wider benefits to the community" (translation – yes it’ll be full of radioactive waste but the council is getting shedloads of money for allowing them to build it there).

Now I’ll admit I’m one of life's more cynical coves so I took a step back from it all thinking "maybe it’s just me". However I’m not alone in holding this opinion. My ally is a surprising one (or, more accurately if you’ve been paying attention thus far, a totally unsurprising one). Speaking a few years back guess who said:

"At the end of the day if someone is misguided enough to think I'm going to risk my personal fortune for a football club then they should be in a funny farm. I'm going to put enough in to keep it going and hopefully to have some fun myself. It's quite selfish. I'm doing this for Barry Hearn. I'm not doing it for the fans. The number of chairmen who say 'I'm doing it for the community' - to be honest that's a load of b******s. I'm doing this for me and I think that's the fans' best hope. I'm never going to fall out of love with me."

For all Hearn’s blustering about the effect of West Ham United moving a few hundred yards closer to Brisbane Road (and if I were an Orient fan I’d feel a bit insulted at the suggestion that I wouldn’t already be able to find my way the extra 0.9 miles to the Boleyn if I wanted to) the suggestion has to be that Hearn’s interest in the whole affair is governed more by the sentiments expressed in his 2006 interview than his 2012 pronouncement - especially given the fact that it’s a matter of record that Hearn would be the major beneficiary of any sale of Brisbane Road.

If Leyton Orient do go out of business after any move that we make it won't be our fault – though we’ll make a damn good diversionary scapegoat. Hearn constantly states that their current attendances do not make the club a viable prospect but conveniently omits the fact that we’re on their doorstep already.

He's fond of quoting the old "Tesco moving next door to the corner shop" analogy. However given we moved into the Boleyn well before they nicked Brisbane Road, perhaps a better comparison would be the grumpy old sod who moves next door to Tesco, opens up a crap corner shop that nobody uses then complains when they move to the house on the other side.

I have a dream, my a*se...

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