A Profile of Tim O'Gorman

At that time, I thought of myself as a sportsman who happened to be doing a law degree. The focus was always on cricket. I’d always hoped that I might be able to play cricket professionally and feel very fortunate to have done that. It was great time to be in the game. All the top stars played County Cricket then. I was lucky to play with and against some real greats of the game such as Sachin Tendulkar, Dennis Lillee, Shane Warne and Viv Richards. Not to mention our overseas players at Derbyshire CCC - Michael Holding, Mohammad Azharrudin, Dean Jones and many others. Great times.

How did you keep your hand in with your legal qualifications while working as a professional cricketer?

With difficulty. Many of my cricket contemporaries growing up didn’t go to university and instead went straight into the professional game. I spent five years as a student and although I managed to play a lot in the first team at Derbyshire CCC during that time, it was always a bit truncated as I’d get started and then have to leave to go back to University or Law School or to sit exams. I remember feeling that I was a long way behind those who had played full time especially as they were also able to play overseas in the winter. I felt they’d had a better apprenticeship in the game. It was great to eventually be able to play full time, but I didn’t want to give up my legal qualifications either and so in the off-season I sometimes worked at the Ashursts (the City Law Fim). That was the firm where I ended up doing my articles and where I qualified as a solicitor after I retired from playing. I’m very grateful to the people there, especially to Roger Finbow the recruitment partner at that time.

Retiring from professional sport at twenty-nine is something a lot of athletes handle badly. You went straight into articles at Ashurst. Was that a plan you’d had for years, or did it come together quickly?

It wasn’t really a plan. The fact is that most sportsmen get sacked (or ‘released’ as it’s usually referred to but it’s the same thing isn’t it!) and so often the decision to stop playing isn’t made by the player. I was lucky. I was offered another contract but was able to turn it down to return to the City. I think playing cricket in your 20’s is brilliant but I didn’t want to continue into my 30s. So it was good to be able to make that choice and not have it made for me. Once I’d decided to retire, I was able to go back to Ashursts and complete my Articles.

I was lucky I have something to work towards. I’m not sure how I would have coped with being ‘released’ and yet still desperately wanting to play. As you say, many athletes really struggle with that transition. And finding the same purpose in your life after professional sport can be a real challenge. After I’d retired we set up the commercial arm of the Professional Cricketers Association which I then chaired for seven or eight years. I’m still very proud of the work the PCA did then, and continues to do, to help players with pensions advice, insurance, education and training, and career development outside the game. Evidence of the value of that work is that suicide rates of cricketers have dropped significantly since we started that work.

What was the hardest part of walking into a City firm as a trainee after a career in professional cricket?

Two things come to mind - albeit it’s a long time ago now. The first is that having spent so long working outside and in the fresh air, I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to adapt to being office based and dropping straight into the long hours culture. The second thing is that it was odd to go from being quite senior one profession to being at the very, very bottom of another. I had a lot of catching up to do with my peers who were already several years qualified by then but I’m grateful that the Durham Law degree was well taught and so it provided a really sound foundation to build upon.

You’ve had two distinct careers, and they overlap more than they look like they should. When you’re introduced now, which one do people lead with, and does that still surprise you?

Thankfully nowadays people tend to introduce me as working at Halfords and my sporting past, is just that. I remember Jonny Searle the Olympic gold medal winning rower who also worked at Ashursts at that time, saying that the key for us to try to turn ourselves from being sportsmen with a law degree, to lawyers who used to do sport. I thought that was a good observation. It takes a long time to gain legal experience to complete that transformation though. And as they used to say you ‘can’t buy that experience off the shelf at Tesco’.

What have ten seasons in professional sport taught you that you still use in a boardroom?

I’m not completely sure if there are lessons from sport which are applicable to business or the Boardroom. That concept might be a bit overblown, but having said that, I’m sure there are some transferrable skills and perhaps some learnings too. One thing which has stayed with me is the need to have a plan. When we were playing we used to say: ‘you have to have a plan, … even a bad plan can work sometimes’. That’s preferable to having no plan and acting like an untethered hosepipe. I think too, that the process (even the catharsis) of preparing a plan and the analysis of the issues required to complete it, are probably as important as the plan itself. ‘No plan survives first contract with the enemy’ and all that – which is definitely true in professional sport.

You left private practice to help build the legal function at Carphone Warehouse shortly before it listed. That’s an unusual first in-house role. What made you take it, and what did you learn doing it?

So many of these things are happenstance aren’t they? I had got to know David Ross one of the founders through mutual friends. They all played rugby at the HAC, and he asked if I’d be interested in joining Carphone Warehouse. It was a no brainer for me because having worked in cricket and being outside of the legal profession for quite a few years, I thought it more likely that I’d end up working in business rather than in a City law firm, and that’s how it’s turned out.

Halfords is a listed services business with a garage network, over a million MOTs a year and software being licensed into North America and Australia. What does running the legal, compliance and company secretarial functions for something so broad involve day to day?

We have team of 15 now (it was three when I started at Halfords over 10 years ago). Most of us are solicitors but we also have Company Secretaries and FCA Compliance Officers and claims managers. Most in-house lawyers will tell you that the reason their role is fun is because no two days are the same and you’re never sure what is going to come across your desk. This is certainly true at Halfords. Our work ranges from: M&A, to commercial property, to employment, to IP, to Tech, SaaS and AI, to litigation, to health and safety, to commercial banking and Listing Rules Compliance. It’s a broad church.

Every day is different. It’s challenging and fun but that’s mostly because I have a lovely and very talented team of great colleagues.

You chaired the Cricket Discipline Commission for close to ten years, sit as a panel member for Sports Resolutions, and hold a Masters in Sports Law. For a reader who doesn’t know how sports discipline works, what does chairing an independent panel involve?

I stopped Chairing the CDC in 2025, and things move on (it’s now been renamed as the CDP), but much of what we did then was hearing cases brought by the ECB’s Cricket Regulator. Other than dealing with interlocutory matters, Panel Hearings essentially involve listening to the evidence presented from both sides and then deciding the appropriate sanction. The panel members I worked with were highly skilled and experienced people. Often they were Judges, Barristers or Solicitors but we also had quite a lot of lay experts too, such as cricket coaches or experts in biomechanics and physiology. We covered many cases on a wide range of subjects ranging from illegal bats to misuse of drugs, to misconduct both on and off the field (including the Yorkshire race discrimination cases). Quite a few well-known players have come before us over the years, but one of the things that is great about cricketers is that when they get involved in these matters, almost all of them realise they made an error, they put their hands up to it, they serve their sanction, they learn from it, and they move forward. We didn’t get many recidivists.

Sitting in judgment on players, some of whom you’ll have known or played against, is a difficult position. How do you hold that line?

It’s easier than you might think because the issue of potential conflicts of interest was always very front of mind. We had strict rules about it. For example, we never sat on a case involving a player at a County we had played at. I remember one case, involving a past Derbyshire player who I’d never even met, but I still didn’t sit on that Panel because of the possible conflict. I think we managed those issues well. The most important thing in all these cases is to make sure that all parties get the chance to put their point of view and to be heard. That is especially so for players where there is often a real ‘imbalance of arms’ between them and the Sport’s Governing Body which will have deeper pockets and access to experienced legal teams to act on their behalf. We always tried to ensure the process was both equitable and just.

Sports law is something a lot of students say they’re interested in without much idea of what it means in practice. What’s the honest picture, and how would someone build towards it?

There are different ways into Sports Law but often a law firm will have sports businesses, clubs, or governing bodies, among their existing clients to whom they already provide a wide range of legal services. So, a good way into this area is to do work for those clients.

If you do an AI Search, it will tell you that the overarching global sports economy (which includes international broadcasting rights, cross-border sponsorships, and international sports tourism etc) is a massive economic driver generating $2.3 trillion annually, representing roughly 2% of global GDP. So, it’s too big an industry to be ignored.

I think there’s real merit in offering students the chance to study the legal aspects of Sport now as it’s a really important discipline. The work David Patient and others have done to set up the Durham Law School Alumni Association is brilliant and I hope the Association can facilitate discussions between our wider membership and the Academic staff at the Durham Law Faculty staff to develop a Sports Law module for current students. I think they would really enjoy studying and being involved in Sports Law.