BY DANNY LOCKWOOD
I WAS interested to see the quotes from Halifax coach Richard Marshall following the club’s announcement that the squad had agreed to take a 10 per cent wage cut, after failing to make the top four and missing out on a lump of central funding.
It’s a frugal and understandable move by all at The Shay and I would also praise the player’s common sense approach too. With success comes reward, and with failure – or at least with less success – comes some form of cost. Hopefully the Halifax team will be well motivated to do better in 2017.
Coach Marshall is a popular and amiable bloke, so I confess to raising an eyebrow at his decision to single out Dane Manning for not accepting the deal and deciding to return to his former club, Batley. I’m not sure it was necessary.
They have had excellent excellent service from Dane since he joined in 2012. Apart from anything else, if we’re judging his move on league standings alone, you can argue that he’s going to a ‘better’ club in the Bulldogs.
More importantly, he’s returning to his old stomping ground and being a local Dewsbury/Batley bloke there could be many reasons for him making the move.
But what struck me funniest, is that Batley chairman Kevin Nicholas could buy something for £9.99, pay for it with a tenner, and he’d still check his change!
Parsimonious doesn’t even come close – so unless new coach Matt Diskin has more persuasive ways than John Kear did (and I’d find that hard to believe too), I’m surprised if Fax have been outbid by the Bulldogs for Dane Manning’s services.
What rankles most is that coaches often remark on players having short careers and needing to make the best of the few opportunities they have.
I’ve neither time nor inclination to check every newspaper cutting on recent years, but I wonder if Richard Marshall has ever trumped another club by offering a player a few more quid?
So what’s the difference now…?
