Headbutt: the long silence did no favours for Town
I’M quite surprised, even baffled that, over a period of five days, there was no subsequent statement from either player or club apologising for the shocking scenes during Grimsby Town’s game at Bradford City on Saturday. When a player headbutts a teammate in front of the TV cameras, gets red carded and effectively throws away the team’s last slim chance of Football League survival, there surely had to be an official response in the cold light of day. Everything unfolded in the public domain so apparently keeping the issue in house for so long appears quite odd.
In the annals of self-inflicted wounds, nothing in Grimsby Town’s history has its equal. A least the Brian Laws/Ivano Bonetti clash was in the dressing room and the Tommy Watson/Tony Rees “handbags” had no relevance to the club’s league standing.
Bonetti’s cheek was fractured after the Saturday game at Luton. I broke the news on the Monday after a tipoff and the next day the two protagonists and chairman Bill Carr were appearing at a Press Conference at the ground, prior to a big cup clash with West Ham. It was not the end of the affair, but explanations were given and fans were not kept in the dark.
In a season which will go down as arguably the worst in living memory for a multitude of reasons, the Valley Parade affair was the last straw, the icing on a cake of misfortune and misjudgment.
Yet we’ve had no clue for most of this week about the consequences from the events there.
Having witnessed scenes that embarrassed the Mariners and made the Town a laughing stock in the eyes of the football world surely the fans, the community, were owed both a speedy apology, an explanation and a conclusion?
But the silence, for five days after the event, was deafening. Not even a holding statement of any kind up to yesterday when this column was written.
That may have changed by today at the pre-match Press conference but even so it’s not been a great example of PR and does not follow the type of open policy favoured by the incoming administration which wants to foster better relationships with the supporters. Manager Paul Hurst, who brought Stefan Payne to the club, needed this incident like a hole in the head. He surprised many by criticising both players, Payne and Filipe Morais, after the game and said that the matter “will be dealt with.”
That’s all we’ve had. Thousands of Town fans would have liked to know in what way? Surely the air had to be cleared in a reasonable time? We’ve had speculation and calls for action, but no definitive news on what decisions had been taken. Yes, there will be an FA ban, but what about the club?
In the midst of a takeover which promises a better future this issue should not have been allowed to fester.
The longer the silence the more conjecture there has been about what went on - and if there was more to it than simply an on-field disagreement that escalated to ridiculous proportions.
THE prospective new owners of the club want to set high standards focusing on staff, community relationships and environmental impacts as they take Town into private control. They’ll review all aspects of operations and seek the opinions of fans in a survey. Nice aspirations, I’m sure we’ll all back them. But only one thing is guaranteed to make us really happy - producing a team that scores goals and wins games.