question of Wimbledon's proposed move was remitted to the Football League board, which reconvened on 17 April 2002 and concluded that the matter should be considered by an independent commission appointed by the Football Association. The FA agreed and in the first week of May appointed Raj Parker of the Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer law firm to chair the commission, with Steve Stride, Aston Villa's operations director, and Alan Turvey, member of the FA Council and chairman of the Isthmian League, as commissioners. Under FA Rule 'F', the Football League and Wimbledon were informed of these appointments; neither objected. Acknowledging Koppel's request that the matter be resolved by the end of the month because of Wimbledon's financial problems, the FA set a deadline of 31 May 2002 for the commission's "final and binding" verdict, and released a press statement on 10 May inviting anyone interested to send written submissions care of the FA. By this time, the fans' matchday publication Yellow and Blue was outselling the official Wimbledon F.C. programme by three to one. Independent commission; approval Parker, Stride and Turvey sat at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's Fleet Street offices on 14, 15, 16 and 22 May 2002. Legal counsel instructed by Olswang appeared for Wimbledon; the League, which had engaged external lawyers for the arbitration hearing, this time did not, deciding that its objections were adequately set out in the written material. The League and FA contributions were summarised in the commission report as concerns that a relocated club would, in effect, "drive a coach and horses through the pyramid structure", "herald, or risk heralding, a franchise system for football whereby the investors in football could relocate clubs at will" and "dramatically change the defining characteristics of the English domestic game where clubs are identified with the locality or community built up over time". "English football is not organised on the basis of a franchise system in which different communities may bid for clubs competing in competitions," the FA statement concluded. "If a move effectively involved a break of the links with the community with which the club is traditionally associated, and a move to an entirely new community, with an intent to put down new roots and reinvent the club with a new identity and a new set of allegiances, and yet the club did not want to relinquish its place in the pyramid, go down to a lower level