Tony Ward is obviously not following the sport as closely as he thinks.

His belief that the sport has shown a "total lack of protest and even comment" is way off the mark.

Why does he think the Association of British Athletics Clubs (ABAC) was formed? What does he think they have been trying to do over the last four-five years since the sham of the Foster Review was foisted onto the sport?

Docility and apathy may be the chosen position of a majority, as in national politics, but ABAC and others have consistently voiced and published their concerns. They have met variously with the stakeholder, UK Sport and the governing bodies, UKA and EA over issues of governance, lack of democracy, funding, grass roots development, coaching and long term strategy.

But with no shareholder stake and voting rights by the clubs, as was the case under the highjacked AAA's, UKA Ltd could and does do exactly as it pleases with no accountability. ABAC have, nevertheless, effected some changes with regard to insurance and the attempted effort by the administration to impose a membership scheme. Some of us were also influential in the eventual removal of the senior management of UKA by bringing notice and criticism to government level.

He is also forgetting the very significant 'egg in the face' for this unelected administration, when they lost massive numbers from the Road Runners sector of the sport who make up around 1000 clubs of the approx 1400 athletics clubs in the UK who went off and formed and aligned themselves to their own Association of Running Clubs (ARC) once they realised the government’s imposed sport's administration was purely interested in the potential income from the many hundreds of thousands who make up the running fraternity, yet with no equitable return in benefit for the running clubs themselves..... and ARC was an offshoot from ABAC

He also forget those, including journalists and former members of the government, who have produced reports and articles criticising and questioning the waste of public money in trying to grow a tree from the top down!

And so back to the proposed UKA's new, Vice President: Steve Backley who will undoubtedly be "voted" in. He's a name but he'll have no vote on any decision and no power, as Mike Winch his predecessor found to his frustration which eventually caused him to resign!

The President and Vice President’s unpaid roles are meant to be the "moral authority of the sport" to represent the sport and to ensure that the administration does the right thing. But in reality they're just well known powerless figureheads to shake hands with government officials and dignitaries and carry the pretence of democracy within the sport. Aristotle would, no doubt, have approved!