Swans Defend Decision

Swans: Decision Was Flynn’s Alone

It is understood that the club have sent a letter of apology to Bath City for the late withdrawal from the fixture and have given assurances that every angle was explored to get the game on.

The club’s official web-site explained the decision yesterday was one taken by the Director of Football Brian Flynn alone. We understand here that Brian said he contacted several Welsh League sides to try and obtain a replacement goalkeeper for the match but was unable to come up with anybody. We have to assume that every avenue available to us was explored to get this match on.

Indeed we hear a whisper that the match was originally to be called off earlier in the day but the current board of directors postponed that decision to ensure that everything was done to get the match the green light.

Flynn says in tonight’s Evening Post that ”The choice we had was to go to Bath with no keeper or cancel the game, so there was no choice. ”What would we have done? Taken somebody off the street on the way and said ‘Do you fancy playing for Swansea City tonight?’ ‘Putting an outfield player in goal would have been totally unprofessional as well, so unfortunately we couldn’t play the game.”

Bath City though have been less than understanding with their manager Alan Pridham declaring ”I just can’t believe what has happened and it’s embarrassingly amateurish,” he said. ”I’ve never known something like this at any level of football. I wouldn’t expect this from a local Western League club, let alone a so-called professional outfit. They should be ashamed of themselves. ”I would have thought that with the contacts managers have they could have got a young lad to play and I just think the whole thing is mickey mouse. If they had let us know earlier it could have been in the press and we could have let everyone know it was off, but to cancel on the day of the game is unbelievable.”

We also understand that tomorrow’s newspapers will carry further news on this game which was originally arranged by Wayne Powell from the Swans’ youth set up. It appears that the decision was that of Brian Flynn alone and the club are keen to make this point known as stated in the two paragraph statement on the Official site yesterday. Irrespective of who made the decision it will reflect badly on Swansea City Football club as a whole.

Whatever happens now, the friendly did not go ahead and we cannot afford for one, slightly ill-judged, decision to undo the good work that has gone on behind the scenes this summer at the Vetch.

My viewpoint from here would be let the other sides have their say tomorrow and let’s let this matter drop and move on with the preperations for the new season.

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