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I’m idly reading through the sports pages in the Saturday papers when I come across an interesting article.

“NO MORE FORMULA ONE… EVER!

“Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone, the two men largely responsible for the worldwide circus that is Formula One announced yesterday that they will sell all their interest in Formula One and pursue other outside interests…�

And then, elsewhere:

“Rumours abound the conference world of football that the two men who wield power in Formula One have purchased Rushden & Diamonds Football Club. It’s being reported from Irthlingborough that Bernie Ecclestone has paid approximately £25 million for the club, which includes naming rights, sponsorship deals and Nene Park. A news conference is expected to be announced for later today…�

I think to myself, “What the hell am I going to do without Formula One? Watch IndyCars? What could be more ridiculous than watching IndyCars!�

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Then I forget all about it and go on with my life. Until that afternoon when I just happen to be watching SkySports when the anchorman throws to a live press conference, featuring Bernie and Max, and Michael Schumacher.

Bernie kicks things off: “Ladies and gentlemen of the press, thank you for coming today. We’ve assembled you all to make an important announcement. Well, actually, two important announcements. The first announcement merely confirms something that Max and myself carried out, with the assent of the teams and manufacturers, several weeks ago. It’s been obvious to us that the challenge, the spirit and most importantly, the fun of Formula 1 has gone out of the sport.

“I’m sure you’re all going to ask me why we didn’t do things to improve the sport and make it more appealing to the millions of fans around the world. Well, we could have tinkered with the rules, made some changes at the edges. But it has become clear to us that the physics and the sheer competitiveness of the sport meant that the administrators, being Max and myself, would need to run full-tilt just to keep still. It’s obvious that this is not a palatable long-term solution.

“So we’ve decided to bow out of the Formula One business and pursue other interests. Which comes to our second announcement. The leading example of our other interests is our decision to purchase Rushden & Diamonds Football Club. We completed settlement of the purchase this morning, and under the terms of the sale contract, we now own everything to do with the club, which includes naming rights. Therefore, we are pleased to announce that, from henceforth, Rushden & Diamonds Football Club will be known as F1 Power!

“Further, we are pleased to announce that all twenty drivers that competed in the current season of Formula One, which as you now all know will be suspended indefinitely, have signed contracts with F1 Power and will form the core of the team. Jean Todt, Sir Frank Williams and Ron Dennis form the coaching staff, and Flavio Briatore has agreed to act as our chief scout with a brief to travel the world seeking out the finest talent to join our new adventure. To tell you more about our bright plans for the future, let me introduce the new chairman of F1 Power, Mr Max Mosley!�

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I’m gobsmacked. This is unbelievable. Bernie Ecclestone, Max Mosley, Jean Todt, Sir Frank Williams, and Ron Dennis, not to mention the twenty drivers on the grid this season, are all prepared to give up the fame, glamour and fortune of Formula One for conference football! Are these guys off their rocker?! :eek:

In the meantime, Max Mosley, using his best barrister voice, is addressing the floor: “Thank you very much Bernie. And again, I’d like to echo my new Director of Football’s welcome to you all here at the new ground of F1 Power. We have decided to relocate the club to here in London, within a stone’s through of Highbury. While Arsenal is busy building Ashburton Grove, we have already are in the finishing process of completing our own stadium, which will be called F1 Glory, in honour of the wonderful champions this sport has produced in over 50 years of excellent motorsport.

“You may be wondering whether we’re off our rocker. Well, clearly the answer has to be ‘no’. We’re walking into this with our eyes wide open and we know that it will be a tough haul to the top of the pile. But we aim to make it into the Premier League in at most, six years. So let me introduce to you the captain of F1 Power, Mr Michael Schumacher…�

“Thank you Max. It’s a great honour to be the first captain of a new club, and I’m sure that I have the complete support of all my team-mates. It’s going to be fun, that’s for sure. We’re going to be working as hard as we always do whenever we take to the track and we know that we’ll be playing for keeps when we get out onto the field. So we aim to be as good as we can day in and day out. Thank you.�

Michael hands the microphone back to Bernie, who says: “Now, we have named Mr Mansour Oijeh as our day-to-day manager of player affairs, but Mr Oijeh has informed us that he will not be able to maintain the role for too much longer, given the state of his other investments. Therefore, we are casting the net wide to recruit an appropriate person with the right credentials to lead F1 Power, the newest and greatest club, into the future.�

As the press begin to shout their questions at Bernie, Max and Michael, I leap back to the papers and sort through all the job pages. While I’m in a steady, well-paying job, it’s always been my dream to manage a football club and just last week, FIFA, through the English FA, finally forwarded to me my coaching accreditation. Surely that is some type of credentials Bernie’s looking for?

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Anyway, I scramble through the ‘jobs advertised’ section of the papers looking for the ad Bernie’s saying they put in the daily newspapers for a replacement manager for Mansour Oijeh. In the meantime, Bernie has begun accepting questions from the floor:

“Richard Grey, Southampton Daily Star. You’re seriously trying to tell us that you’ve flogged off the entire Formula 1 industry bit by bit and now you want to settle down to run a football club in the Conference?�

Bernie answers smoothly, “Yes. Yes, I do. Because you’ll see it’s true when our team runs out to take the pitch against Leigh at F1 Glory on the 12th of August. Next question.�

“Sarah Winterburn, football365.com. It doesn’t worry you that you’ve put probably a thousand people out of work by your decision to sell up and look to your other investments?�

“Thanks, Sarah, for your question,� says Max, with his typical diplomatic approach to everything. “The reality of Formula One is that you needed to be the best of the best to make it to the top. When you’re striving to make your man the essential one-tenth of a second faster than everybody else, you need to put together a team of the best people at their jobs. All ten teams strove for perfection, from the driver on down to the most junior mechanic on the team. While it’s not nice to be out of a job for any length of time, you need to realise that these people are bright, motivated and able to be the best at their chosen career path. I’m sure that they will all find meaningful employment very quickly. In fact, I can give you this guarantee right now. If anybody who can show they worked for a Formula One team who has not been able to find continuous and ongoing employment in the next three months, please, approach the club and we’ll assist you in finding employment. We’ll also help you financially to the best of our ability. You can’t beat that, Sarah, now can you?�

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“Ross Davies, Manchester Evening News. Michael, can I direct this question to you? Thank you. Bernie and Max refer to you as the first captain of the club, but you’ve not been exactly the favourite driver amongst your colleagues? I needn’t remind you of your stoush with your new team-mate Jacques Villeneuve back in 1997, nor have you been great mates with Juan Pablo Montoya recently. How do you expect to be treated?�

“Well, Ross, it’s like this,� smiles a confident Michael Schumacher. “We’re all professionals at a club that is managed professionally. I do not expect my new team-mates to like me. But I do expect them to give me their respect and to give the club and its fans their all.�

“Callum O’Loughlin, Dublin Standard. Bernie, you’ve appointed yourself Director of Football. Do you hold any coaching accreditations to hold such a position with the club? Is everything to do with F1 Power officially sanctioned by the Football Association?�

“Callum, we have made sure that every ‘i’ has been dotted and ‘t’ has been crossed. We’ve been fully sanctioned in every way, including all our coaching staff, by the Football Association. Come the first day of the season, we’re ready to go. Now, if you don’t mind ladies and gentlemen, we have work to do. Thank you for attending.�

But my mind is already elsewhere. I’m sitting at my computer banging out a quick curriculum vitae listing my best points and how I think I could control the egos of twenty ex-Formula One drivers put into the deep end of English football…

About a week later, I’m hard at work at my normal day-job when my personal assistant buzzes me on the intercom system to say, with a shaking voice, that Bernie Ecclestone was on the other end of the line. Punching the appropriate line, I say, “Good morning, Mr Ecclestone.�

“Call me, Bernie, Dixie. Look, I’ve had a flick through your curriculum vitae, and I have to say, I’m impressed, which doesn’t happen very often. I’d like you to come down for an interview later today, if possible.�

“I’ll just check my calendar, Bernie. Yes, this afternoon is good for me.�

“Great. I’ll send the limo around to pick you up at 5pm.�

The next few hours pass in a whirl. The limousine duly comes to pick me up at 5pm and 20 minutes later, I’m in Bernie’s office with Max Mosley and Bernie fronting me. For an hour they pepper me with different questions all aimed at seeking my suitability for the priceless opportunity that dangles before me. Then, with the obligatory farewell that they’ll contact me when they reach a decision, I’m whisked home in Bernie’s limo.

Time passes…

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Then I take a call from Bernie who congratulates me and tells me that the job is mine for the taking. I’m there!

The next day I’m paraded before the media as the man handpicked by Bernie and Max to lead the club into the promised land of the English Premier League. The first step, as Bernie and Max tell me over a congratulatory glass of champagne, is to lead F1 Power into the bottom rung of the Nationwide League, being the Third Division, of course.

To help me do it, Bernie and Max tell me that I have the astonishing figure of £8 million to spend on new players. And, while I like to keep all my new charges on-side (especially Michael Schumacher), some of the ex-Formula One drivers were, well, better at Formula One than football.

The first thing to do, after the media parade, is to cancel the four game trip to Switzerland arranged with the help of Peter Sauber. While I appreciate his kind gesture in setting us up with some interesting games, I really think that a home tournament is the way to go, so I invite a couple of provincial Spanish clubs and an Italian bottom division club to the inaugural F1 Cup. But to get a sense of team unity and to find out exactly where our strengths and weaknesses lie, I decide to contact non-league Accrington Stanley, still living amongst the glories of its illustrious past and see whether they’re interested in being the first club to play on the newly-hallowed turf of F1 Glory, our oddly named stadium.

Then we might take a quick trip down to Portugal and particularly Lisbon to take on Sporting Lisbon B, if they’re willing, before we begin our season by hosting Leigh RMI.

Once these formalities are out of the way, I decide to conduct a quick, informal training session to start gauging where our strengths and weaknesses may be, and after that’s finished I count the number of inflated and useable balls we have left over. Unfortunately, as always seems to be the case, not too many, and I hope that my favoured cultured passing style will be improved by a sufficient influx of players so that we’re not made complete muppets out there on the field.

But who would be interested in joining a club with no pedigree, no history and is widely considered by the media and the public at large as merely a flash-in-the-pan and the ultimate in millionaire extravagances, even more so than some Russian billionaire pumping in billions of roubles into a Premier League club?

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Well, actually, quite a few players. And some of them are quite good, too. I suppose the top of my list would be a new goalkeeper. Both Antonio Pizzonia and Ralph Firman are far too inexperienced, even taking into account their schoolboy years, and frankly, not good enough to put between the posts. Firman is a brave keeper, frequently putting himself in positions where angels fear to tread in the scratch match, but he isn’t technically proficient enough to pull this caper off, while Pizzonia’s youth and the fact he’s injured at the moment makes it difficult to assess just how good he is, but I’m not encouraged when he tells me his football experiences.

We could use some cover in defence. Jenson Button looks a likely sort, especially given his versatility and ability to play anywhere along the back four, while Jarno Trulli is surprisingly not that bad. But beyond that, I have some players who are seriously deficient in many areas that would be useful to getting results on the pitch. David Coulthard is probably the best of the rest, but his lack of pace may catch us out once too many times for my liking (and the board’s). Heinz-Harald Frentzen is a player who should be able to hold down a spot in the Conference, but if and when it becomes harder than that, I wouldn’t rely on the German to plug holes in my defence. I tried to convince the 1.89 metre tall Justin Wilson that he’d be a good goalkeeper, but he swears to me that he’s a central defender, and has been one all his life. Frankly, I can’t see the stoop-shouldered, craggy-faced, black-haired youngster being a defender. At least he can jump and head the ball. That has to be good at something, doesn’t it? Set pieces, they tell me. Cristiano da Matta can play on the left of or in the centre of defence, he tells me. But like most other ex-Formula One drivers who opted to be defenders for the hell of it, he’s not much chop at it, really. For some reason, though, he can cross quite brilliantly. It puzzles me, it really does.

I’m not helped by the fact that I have two defenders (as well as Pizzonia, which makes it three players) already injured before the season even begins. Olivier Panis, the Frenchman, apparently managed to drive a Toyota around the track for 300 kilometres plus without ever noticing, but the club physio, Dr Sid Watkins, discovers that he has had undiagnosed shin splints for the last month, and he’s going to miss three months of the season with that injury. It’s a shame too, because he’s versatile enough to play up forward or down back. Mind you, he’s not great at either end of the pitch, but there you go. This is the Conference and you can’t expect miracles from guys who drove fast cars for a living that if you turned them upside down would stick to the roof of the Monaco Casino tunnel.

Giancarlo Fisichella, surprisingly for an Italian, is bad at this game. There’s not much he can do except tackle, which he does rather well. It’s just that by the time he reaches the position where the ball is, somebody has taken it away from there. Plus he manages to break his arm and will miss three weeks.

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Perhaps we’re strongest in midfield. Kimi Raïkonnen and Fernando Alonso are both bright young sparks capable of playing great passes as they demonstrated to me time and again in the informal scratch match I put on to introduce myself to the coaching and playing staff. Nick Heidfeld looks fairly imperious, distributing the ball around with aplomb, but he’s dreadfully slow and too easily knocked off the ball for my liking. At least Rubens Barrichello can put in crosses but unless he can find a way to control his dribbling, he might struggle to make a long-lasting impact here at F1 Power. Jos Verstappen is a canny midfielder, with a bag of tricks and capable of steering home free kicks like nobody’s business, but again his lack of pace might leave us exposed.

Mark Webber thinks he’s the Formula One equivalent of Harry Kewell. He’s not. But at least he’s creative when he passes the ball around. That might help when it comes to the selection table, which I’ve told Bernie he doesn’t have access to. He didn’t like that. He thinks that the plaque on his office door that reads “Director of Football� entitles him to have a rather large say in who gets to play on the weekend. In my book, it doesn’t, and I’m going to have to show Bernie who is the real boss around here soon enough.

Ralf Schumacher might not be Harry Kewell, but he’s probably our best player in the squad. Capable of crossing balls into the box with ease and passing the ball around, Ralf is going to have to be a creative outlet for us down the right.

I have three strikers at my disposal, but funnily enough, none of them like each other. Michael Schumacher might be putting himself forward as the captain of the team, but I’m not sure whether Jacques Villeneuve or Juan Pablo Montoya would agree with him. At this stage, I think I’d like to put together Villeneuve and Schumacher on the pitch but none of my strikers are really up to scratch at this stage.

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So my first bid is for Fulham’s Karl Heinz Riedle. The 34 year old German striker might be past his best, but I’m sure he’d be more than equal to what other conference sides could put up against him. I also put a call through to goalkeeper Carlos Fernando Navarro Montoya to see if he’s interested in joining F1 Power. Apparently he is, so I put some terms before him and see what he’ll do. Fulham think over my offer for Riedle for about two minutes then tell me that if he wants to join, then I can have him.

But Montoya is a target for many clubs around Europe, so my chances of landing him as my first choice keeper could be quite slim.

“… John Filan is likely to be F1 Power’s first ever signing as manager, Mr Dixie Flatline, announced today that Blackburn’s Australian keeper will join the club as soon as possible…�

The keeper will join F1 Power for £475,000, which is a tidy sum for Blackburn, I suppose.

I lose another player to injury for a little while as Heinz-Harald Frentzen strains his wrist in training. I’m actually surprised that we haven’t had more training mishaps at the moment. I’m sure there must be some type of transition from driving really fast cars really fast to playing a game where the aim is to kick a ball into the opponent’s net.

I follow up the acquisition of Filan with getting Kingstonian’s best player, Geoff Pitcher, to sign on the dotted line. At £28,000, I think he’s a bargain. Then I also manage to bring in Ritchie Humphries on loan from Sheffield Wednesday for the season. That is quickly followed up by Reidle telling me he’s agreed terms with F1 Power, which is a big boost to our attacking stocks.

I’m contacted by Taribo West’s agent, who tells me that his client is willing to join F1 Power because he particularly looks forward to working with me. That means I need to front up to the hearing into whether his work permit will be granted.

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“Arsenal diverts this summer’s football headlines away from F1 Power, at least momentarily, as Arsène Wenger unveils MartÃ*n Palermo at Highbury this afternoon, signed from Boca Juniors for £13.25 million. This is quickly followed by Sir Alex Ferguson unveiling Gareth Southgate, a £8.75 million acquisition from Aston Villa.â€�

I lose Montoya and Villeneuve for the weekend as they are required by their countries, Colombia and Canada, respectively to turn out for their national teams. That’s funny, I don’t think either of them has kicked a ball in anger, but because they wear the colours of the most hyped Conference team in history, they’re automatically included in their national squads! Maybe I should pull on the football boots! In the end, we have a bona fide international as Jacques Villeneuve makes his debut for Canada, coming off the bench in the 58th minute but he couldn’t stop the Maple Leaf brigade going down 1-0 to Jamaica, thanks to a goal from Birmingham’s Michael Johnson in the 64th minute. Villeneuve was less than impressive against the Reggae Boyz, touching the ball just three times for one completed pass. Then again, he had quite a few for company.

But I do manage to bring him some international class talent as West Ham agree to Javier Margas coming on a four month loan to help shore up the defence. The Chilean international, desperate to escape his purgatory that is West Ham, agrees to the short-term loan contract. In the meantime, veteran striker Mark Hateley joins Hayes. I think there is somewhat of a gulf of class beginning to develop here!

Friendly - F1 Power v Accrington Stanley

Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone invite many luminaries from the former world of Formula One to our first ever game at F1 Glory, and we put on a bit of a show for our patrons as we hand out a football lesson to Accrington Stanley. It’s amazing that this is the first real time many of these people have played football at any level and even though this game is only a friendly, I’m sure it will be memorable for at least seven of the players representing F1 Power. Michael Schumacher scores first from a Geoff Pitcher corner on 13 minutes, who then hits the post ten minutes later. Pitcher proceeds to hit the cross-bar on 26 minutes, but Alonso is there to pick up the pieces and the Spaniard slams home the rebound. Somewhat against the run of play, though, after we spurn a few more chances, Alexander brings Accrington back into the game with a goal on 40 minutes. But Karl Heinz Riedle makes it 3-1 just on the stroke of half-time. Mindful of our lack of match fitness I change things around at half-time a little bit, bringing on Margas, Webber and Verstappen for Wilson, Riedle and Alonso. Pitcher gets a goal as good reward for his great first half on 54 minutes to make it 4-1 and we’re officially cruising. I make more changes at 66 minutes with Heidfeld, Barrichello, Humphreys and da Matta on for Coulthard, Ralf Schumacher, Raïkkonen and Trulli, and da Matta should have given away a penalty for a poor tackle on Williams. But Michael Schumacher gets us a penalty on 90 minutes when he’s tripped up, and Jos Verstappen coolly converts to send the crowd home deliriously happy! We looked really good this afternoon!

F1 Power (4-3-1-2): Filan; Trulli (da Matta 66), Coulthard (Heidfeld 66), Button; Raïkonnen (Humphreys 66), Alonso (Verstappen 46), R. Schumacher (Barrichello 66); Pitcher; Riedle (Webber 46), M. Schumacher (c).

Accrington Stanley (4-4-2): Ross (c); Skinner, Lynch, Cox (Bullock 31), Hay; Brown (Blake 31), Patterson, Poole (Morrison 17), Tomlinson; Alexander, Williams.

Final score: F1 Power 5:1 Accrington Stanley
MoM - Karl Heinz Riedle