More About Colin Todd
I was begged by email today - always a curiosity - to give coverage o the counter-point argument to three articles which had run this week on BfB all of which concluded that keeping Colin Todd as Bradford City manager was the right thing to do.
I did not write any of the articles nor did I ask for them to be written - submissions are always welcomed with open arm but rarely solicited with the mood of the day prompting writers more an I could ever do - and I thought the second of the three was written in reaction to the first but nevertheless the idea was that there was a counterpoint I was wilfully ignoring.
I was failing to represent the “anti-Todd” side I was told.
The phrase mulled around my head on Friday night’s journey back from Manchester. “Anti-Todd” as if the other three articles had been personal aggrandiseations of the City boss rather than comments more on the merits of stability and of the manager’s performance. I dislike the phrase “anti-Todd” intensely - BfB is not a place for personal attacks - but poor phrasing is not enough to mask a growing voice around Valley Parade.
All of which was moot in any case. No article landed in the BfB inbox and went unpublished this week - only two have in six years - and as of this morning (Friday) nothing “anti-Todd” had been submitted.
Now counter-point has been received and is online for all to read. One columnist requested a screen name for his article a request we denied - we have a policy of not publishing in anonymity lest this site becomes like so many other dismembered floating voices of Message Boards without accountability for opinion which certainly Roland Harris has had this week - and I hope that in denying that request the article can still be published.
Nevertheless the verbalisation of the comments against Colin Todd’s management of the club has begun and is on BfB.
At BfB we often read comments about how a reader enjoys the site but does not understand why writer x gets column inches. The fact we throw the doors open to all opinions is a strength of the website and a strength I am proud of. Love or loathe BfB it is always going to carry the opinion of those who write for us. As Franklin said “Decisions are made by those who turn up.”
Opinion is good. Both comments are soft-tagged as “anti-Todd” but neither makes a personal attack on the man. They talk about how he does his job something we as City fans are free to - if not obliged to - comment on.
My personal opinion on Todd - the one which informs the majority of the news on this website - is that he needs to make some changes in how the team plays and could make more of the playing resources at the club. I believe that he is a man of some experience in football and a reasonable amount of flexibility which comes with having had many jobs and can make those changes in situ.
That is my opinion on Colin Todd. If Colin Todd were to give his views on this website and on websites in general I’m sure I’d give it the same weight he gives my comments on his job and rightly so.
However it is also right that those who have a grievance to air with Todd have a forum to do so - this forum - and use it to state considered opinion without anonymity.
Ultimately opinions voiced in what is one of the more trusted forums than most for football fans - well City fans - to air their views adds to a general pressure on Julian Rhodes and Colin Todd that suggests a change or a course of action. If the only way for supporters to suggest a course of action to Rhodes and Todd is to use the banner headline comments of manager sacking then it is sad and hints at an inflexible polarisation which should not be at any level in any football club but especially not this football club.
Should the pressure suggest a change to Todd - a change of tactics or picking policy - then so be it. Vox populi, vox Dei. It is right and proper that the supporters have a voice - no - a chorus of voices representing the differing opinions around Valley Parade - which is listened to.
Personally I hope that Colin Todd stays at Valley Parade - many of his ideas make sense to me - but it concerns me that after the lessons of the authoritarian years of Geoffrey Richmond’s time at Bradford City still the only way for a dialogue between club and supporters to exist is in calls for sackings.
After defeat at The City Ground Colin Todd said he had no ‘qualms with the sending off whatsoever’ and was ‘not blaming the referee for us losing’. He was also quoted as saying ‘but we had six players booked and one sent off and I didn’t think it was that type of game’. In total these hardly seem like the rants of an unreasonable man. For the sake of completeness Forest also had three players booked, so ten bookings for not ‘that type of game’ is quite something. When did you last see ten bookings in a match for any type of game?
Could this have anything to do with the referee? Silly question, you may think, until you look at the F.A’s website. Remember the game was played on 29th October and the referee was Mr G.K. Hegley. According to a piece on the F.A’s website dated 26th October, ‘Following a meeting of the FA Referees Committee this week, referee Grant Hegley has been suspended for 14 days. Hegley was charged with less than proficiently applying the Laws of the Game after failing to send off Sheffield United’s Keith Gillespie after the final whistle of the match against Reading on 1 October.’
The first and perhaps most obvious question is ‘Are there two Mr Hegley’s?’ Can we perhaps assume not, especially since the man in the picture on the F.A. website would seem to be bear more than just a passing resemblance to the man in the middle at The City Ground.
So let’s look at the next question, namely ‘When is a suspension not a suspension?’ The answer might appear to be ‘When it’s for a referee.’ Just when did Mr Hegley’s suspension begin and end? He obviously wasn’t suspended three days after the date of the piece on the F.A’s website. Perhaps he was wearing a tag and was allowed out early.
So, assuming as we might that it was the same Mr H and that his suspension hadn’t taken effect three days later, can we find an explanation for the flood of cards (Darren Holloway’s excepted) that baffled Colin Todd? Look again at why Mr H was suspended – for not sending off Keith Gillespie. It may be recalled that Gillespie’s grouse at the end of the match was to do with a penalty or, rather, the absence of a penalty. I’ve only seen it on the TV two or three times and in slow motion, but I’d love to hear why Mr H didn’t give a penalty. At the end of the game Gillespie was joined by his manager in ‘an exchange of words’ with the referee, for which Gillespie should, it seems, have been red carded and Neil Warnock faces a disciplinary hearing. It was the same game where Paddy Kenny could rather easily have been sent off (compare that poor chap Flitney from Barnet) for denying a goal-scoring opportunity by handling the ball outside his area, only to be rescued by Mr H’s apparent view that the ball was going wide. Even Neil Warnock was quoted as saying ‘I thought he was gong to get sent off straight away.’
What we have, then, on 1st October is a referee accused by managers of being slow to give fouls and red cards, found guilty on 25th October of ‘less than proficiently applying the Laws of the Game’ and then on 29th October applying the same Laws to our game in such a manner that he brought out his yellow card no fewer than ten times.
Let us also remember the severe limits on appeals against cards, limits which seem to be based on the perceived need to preserve the omniscience of referees as far as possible. We need go no further back than Dean Windass’ statement that Mark Clattenburg, the Premiership ref who booked Deano at Doncaster, ‘admitted to me afterwards that he had got it wrong, but unfortunately he cannot do anything about it now.’ The suggestion is that refs can’t be seen to make mistakes, which is one way of saying that they can’t be seen to be human. Well, they may not all have fathers, but they are, so far as I know, all human.
So City cannot appeal any of Mr Hegley’s yellow cards or the £2500 fine we would have avoided if even one or two could be overturned. Mr H has come off a disciplinary for not proficiently applying the Laws by being too lenient and has jogged straight into a game where no one could accuse him of being too lenient. Wouldn’t it have been better to have started his suspension immediately, as would have happened with a player sent off or disciplined before a similar F.A. committee? Isn’t it only too human to react to an accusation of leniency by being just the opposite? Could none of this have been foreseen by the F.A? Ah, but to get an admission out of the F.A. might not allowed either. And we don’t really know that they are human, do we?
And a ‘by the way’ to finish with. There may be one or two people out there who think I’m being unduly harsh on refs and that they should be protected. Maybe I am, but I can only compare things with my old day job which I left on Monday. I was a District Judge. I gave reasons in public for every decision I made, even the most trivial decisions. The press came whenever they wanted and reported whatever they felt like. Almost every real decision – guilty or not guilty, prison, fine or whatever - was liable to appeal without further ado. Some times the appeal court came to a different decision. Some times even that decision was appealed. The judges there, like me, are only human. What’s so special about referees that their very human nature has to be so jealously protected? Answers in an e mail!