THE WAY TO CLEAN UP YOUR ACT!
CLITHEROE chairman Anne Barker wants to return to next year’s National Game Awards to pick up the Team of the Year gong having picked up the the PFA Fair Play award this time around. Everybody knows the difference between receiving a yellow card for a slightly mistimed tackle and one for blatant dissent towards an official, and The NLP Fair Play table accounts for these differences. This year showed a remarkable amount of teams remaining calm on the pitch and keeping their dissent to a minimum. Two teams stood out, going through the whole season without the referee flashing the yellow card for any dissent, abusive language or violent conduct. Whitby Town were one, with just two red cards all season too. Beating them though, receiving just 42 bookings in total for the season with none of them for dissent, abusive language or violent conduct, were The PFA Fair Play award winners Clitheroe. It proved a fitting reward for the Lancashire club, who decided to clean up their act after twice being hauled up by The FA disciplinary panel last season. Barker said: “It’s unbelievable, but I can’t take the credit for this. That has to go to management team Simon Haworth and Gareth Roberts. “We had too many dissent bookings last season, so when the board appointed Simon it was made clear to him that we had to improve on those areas – and it’s barely been too much of an effort. “When you get so far into the season and they realise they haven’t had a dissent booking, it’s an ongoing thing and they don’t want to get booked because they want to win that award. “At the end of the season we were on tenterhooks, it only needs one moment to lose it, but thankfully that didn’t happen. “To have that recognition is perfect, I want to be back next year but with the Manager of the Year and the Team of the Year and the Player of the Year, but to be here at all is fantastic.”