TOO TOXIC TO WORK AGAIN?
Uproar at Oldham will deter every club from signing rapist Evans
IF Ched Evans woke yesterday believing he was finally returning to work, the day ended with the chances of him playing professional football again soon looking extremely remote.
Amid the chaos at Oldham Athletic enough stories emerged to convince every club in the Football League that trying to recruit a convicted rapist is too much trouble, however talented he might be.
In truth, the threats issued by sponsors concerned the six-man board at Boundary Park even more than the vile individuals who reportedly threatened a director’s daughter with the crime of which Evans was convicted in April 2012. They dismissed that as idle, if sick, threats, and no complaints were made to the police.
More worrying, in their view, were the financial implications of trying to sign the 26-year-old Wales striker, who was released last October after serving half of a fiveyear prison sentence. With sponsors withdrawing their support and the future of the club suddenly in jeopardy, they had no choice but to end their interest.
Even so, the stories of death threats and of club employees being spat at in the streets are unlikely to persuade another club to follow Oldham, Hartlepool or indeed Sheffield United in trying to weather the storm of controversy that erupts the moment a club admits to trying to sign Evans.
He is just too toxic, certainly until the outcome of the investigation into his case by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. In fact, the CCRC only have the authority to refer his case to the appeal courts and only if Evans is successful there would his conviction be overturned.
In Oldham, the backlash has been brutal. So much so that a senior club executive almost broke down in tears when he invited a handful of television journalists into the recep- tion area at Boundary Park to inform them that a deal for Evans was off and to quash a local newspaper report that the club’s chairman and principal owner, Simon Corney, had resigned.
It has been a torrid few days for a club who stumbled into this situation completely unprepared and very quickly found themselves out of their depth.
It probably did not help that Corney was trying to direct operations from New York while his employees, locked inside this old stadium, were left under what seemed intolerable pressure, judging by the sight of chief executive Neil Joy when he eventually emerged for the second time this week to read a statement. He wasn’t just unshaven. He was visibly shaking.
A little sympathy for Oldham here. They did not announce their desire to sign Evans. News broke of their interest after reports last Sunday that a League One club was on the verge of recruiting the disgraced former Sheffield United forward.
But the fact that discussions with the player and his representatives had reached such an advanced stage before conversations had taken place with their sponsors seems naive in the extreme. So, too, does an apparent failure to foresee the public outcry as well as the inevitable response of leading politicians and senior police figures. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t happened elsewhere.
More than 60,000 people put their names to a petition opposing the signing, while a rival petition in favour of recruiting Evans attracted 3,000 supporters. In addition, an online fans’ poll saw 28 per cent of those voting saying they would no longer attend home matches if he were to join. Furthermore, a female seasonticket holder drove from South Wales to hand her collection of Oldham memorabilia to club
staff.
But it was also with some exasperation that advisers close to Evans reflected on Oldham’s handling of the situation, in particular the fact that the directors pressed ahead with their plans when their own manager, Lee Johnson, did not seem to support the move.
Yesterday, some 83 days after coming out from prison, Evans released a statement, in tandem with the PFA, that included an apology to the woman he was convicted of raping.
How sincere it was is hard to say. But it certainly came too late to rescue the move and it also failed to recognise what remains a central issue in the saga.
‘It has been claimed that those using social media in an abusive and vindictive way towards this woman are supporters of mine,’ Evans said in his statement. ‘I wish to make it clear that these people are not my supporters and I condemn their actions entirely and will continue to do so.’
But there’s a problem — not just that his fiancee’s millionaire father, Karl Massey (left), is funding the website that is trying to clear Evans’ name by discrediting the victim, but that the footballer’s cousin was among nine people fined for illegally naming her on social media.
The young woman, who has been forced to change her identity five times, was branded a ‘money-grabbing whore’ and a ‘poor little victim’ by those who directed abuse at her.
By last night a second Evans statement complained of ‘mob rule’ and blamed the media for preventing him from signing for Oldham. It was also claimed Massey was furious with suggestions he had offered to cover any loss of sponsorship money and pay the wages of his future son-in-law.
As things stand, Massey might be better offering him a job in his high-end watch and jewellery business.