New Year Begins With Controversy

Today's Bath City match against Weston-super-Mare was postponed today in very controversial circumstances. Since Monday's home match against Havant & Waterlooville was called off as well, any decision not to play was bound to upset a lot of fans. What happened today, though, appears to go beyond disappointing and move into the realms of farce, gamesmanship, and shame.

Here is a sequence of events as reconstructed from several eyewitness accounts: club officials and volunteers arrived at Twerton Park at 10:30 am to help remove the ground covers that were in place from the previous night. Although one cover was found to have ripped, exposing a small area roughly three by five feet, the pitch appeared to have survived the overnight low temperatures in good condition. At 1pm the match referee, Mr Antony Coggins from Bicester, arrived and agreed with the Bath City assessment that the pitch was playable. According to Bath City supporter Daniel Tanner (and since corroborated by others present) Mr Coggins said, 'My bed is harder than this I have played on worse pitches than this. I have put the key into the ground and it is fine. The game is okay to go ahead. You have done a great job well done.' He then enquired about where the club had sourced their ground covers.

Fifteen minutes later the Weston-super-Mare team coach pulled into Twerton Park. According to one Bath City volunteer, Weston assistant manager Chris Smith marched straight over to the corner of the pitch where the Popular Side and the Bristol End meet. This is the area of the pitch that normally suffers from freezing, and as Weston have been coming to Twerton Park for seventy-five years, it would have been well known to the Weston management team. Moments later Smith claimed the pitch unplayable, and that his players would be risking injury if the game was allowed to start. Perhaps succumbing to pressure, Coggins held an additional pitch inspection at 1:30pm. Despite the presence of sunshine for the preceding half hour, Coggins chose to reverse his previous decision at 1:45pm and declare the pitch unfit. The Weston-super-Mare squad did not chose to stay around long after this. By the time I arrived at the ground with my two children at 2:20, their coach had already departed for home.

Arriving at Twerton Park today was confusing to say the least. Just as we entered the ground someone came up to me and told me the game was called due to a frozen pitch. I thought he was joking, but then I wondered why a complete stranger would joke with me about something like that. Two more people told me the same thing within seconds. A minute later I saw my friend Dave and his eight-year-old son. They had come for their first ever match at Twerton. I felt embarrassed, but he said they would come back again. As the gates were wide open, I decided to take the boys into the ground and have a look around.

The first thing I noticed upon entering was that the Bath City players were having a practice on the supposedly 'unplayable' pitch. I also met several other frustrated City supporters, and from talking to them, started to piece together the events of the day. In a nutshell, it is widely believed that Weston did not want to play the match. They have had some injuries and have been losing players to other clubs. In fact, according to Daniel Tanner's account, upon hearing the ref's decision to call it off Weston manager Andy Gurney 'rubbed his hands up and down with a smile on his face,' before making a sarcastic comment to City player Matt Coupe. This reportedly led to a heated argument between Gurney and Coupe that City manager Adie Britton chose to intervene in [there is some confusion about whether Coupe's exchange was with Gurney or Smith as they are somewhat similar looking].

I decided to make my own unofficial inspection with the help of a fellow supporter known on the Bath City message board as the 'A18.' We did a circuit of the pitch and spent several minutes around the area that was supposedly frozen. The grass was a bit crunchy, and there were certainly areas that could not be described as 'soft.' It was a long, long, way from the icy tundra that City had played on at Woking just two weeks earlier. It certainly did not look dangerous.

It turns out that Weston have form when it comes to controversial, last-minute postponements this season. On 5 December their match with Eastleigh was called in very similar circumstances, although the scapegoat in this instance was rain. After passing an inspection at 1pm the game looked declared 'on' by the match referee. After Weston's arrival at Silverlake Stadium the referee went on to reverse his decision, in this instance as late as 2:45. Quoting from a thread from the Eastleigh forum:

the pitch was passed as playable at 1.00 and ... it didn't rain from then until 2.45 ... so what changed?... As far as I could see there was no significant surface water on the pitch (none at all at the club house end) and the groundsman indicated to me by attempting to push his heel into the ground that the pitch wasn't particularly soggy either. I suspect that the game wa called off because Weston had a couple of players missing and put pressure on the referee.

Another poster on the same thread wrote:

Well I heard the rumour about Weston officials putting pressure on the ref to call in off from 3 different sources so there is quite possibly some truth in it.

I was alerted to this earlier controversy by 'A18's father, known as the 'A36.' They live in Hampshire and had made a long drive to see today's match. It is supporters like them who were the real victims of this farce. Many people will have travelled long distances at great expense to come to Twerton today. Every effort should have been made by all participants to get the game underway. Whatever their motives, it appears that Weston wanted the match abandoned almost from the moment they arrived. They certainly were not willing to hang around to try to get the match started once the referee had made his ruling. Seeing how football clubs exist because supporters pay to see them play, such blatant disregard for the time and money of those same supporters appears to border on the scandalous.

There have been many reactions to today's events. The fact that City were holding a full training session on the so-called unsafe pitch was a statement in itself from City manager Adie Britton. When asked by a Bath Chronicle reporter, 'you think other parties may have spoken to [Anthony Coggins] about the condition of the pitch?' Britton wisely declined to comment. Speaking of the pitch, Britton said 'we don't feel it is dangerous at all. We wanted to play and we think it's safe. We're going to train on it. We don't have a problem with it at all.' (the full interview can be heard here).

The official announcement from Weston-super-Mare AFC is surprisingly bland considering the controversy:

Today's game against Bath City fell victim to the weather, after another late call by the Referee Mr Coggins, who apparently called the pitch fit for play earlier in the day.

It then lists no less than three other occasions in the last month when referees have reversed earlier decisions about their club's matches proceding [this blog has asked for a clarification of the events surrounding today's decision from the club but as yet has received no response].

As there is nothing official to shed any light on the situation from an official Weston-super-Mare AFC perspective, I have also solicited views from unofficial sources. An appeal for comments was placed on the Unofficial Weston-super-Mare AFC Fans Forum by myself at 4:04pm this afternoon. As of writing ninety-six people have read this post, but so far no one has felt inclined to express their opinion.

Another thread was started by a Weston supporter soon afterwards, however, calling for Andy Gurney to be sacked. 'Angry Gull' wrote:

'Is it true Andy Gurney was too scared to play the game? We can run and hide all we like, but we're certs for relegation and Gurney's cowardly acts, dragging the club even further through the mud, is a total disgrace. He's sending us down as a laughing stock. Time to go....'

Weston's forum allows anonymous posting, however, and it should be noted that 'Angry Gull' is not a registered user.

The same cannot be said of the forum's moderator Sean, though. He has posted on this same thread and this is the closest thing to an official response from Weston to have been made thus far. He wrote:

No it's not true Bath City told us the game was on at 11:09 Bath City lied the ref' called the game off at about 13:55. Bath City jumped the gun, they need the money hence why they were more than happy to tell the world the game as on when in reality it was never going to happen.

I have asked 'Sean' to clarify just who he is accusing of lying, but he has so far declined to elaborate. He appears to have gotten his times as confused as his grammar, but his main thrust (I think), that the referee did not pass the pitch as playable at 1pm is contradicted by two eye-witnesses as discussed above.

The Nedved Juniors and I hung around the ground for about half an hour before we decided to head home. Both children were delighted to receive free doughnuts from the tea-bar staff who needed to dispose of perishable stock. They might have succeeded if they had tried selling them, though. At least fifty City fans had stayed on to watch the practice session.

Little Nedved Junior, who is only five, asked me to explain again why the match had been cancelled. I swallowed my anger for a moment and tried to give him a simple, unbiased explanation. Although I was cross, I instinctively did not want to draw a child his age into the controversy. 'The other team did not want to play because they thought the pitch was unsafe,' I explained.

'Then the other team are scaredy-cats,' he said.

I suppose even at age five children have a grasp of controversy after all.

It was a very frustrating moment when we left eventually. The only thing that kept my mood from getting too low was the wonderful sunshine and clear skies. Not the kind of day you expect a match to be called off because of poor weather. But then, you don't get scheduled to play Weston-super-Mare every day.



Note: Nedved's Notes will still happily publish any official response from Weston-super-Mare AFC that is received in a follow-up post.