Is this the end?

[England_First]

The Academy will not recover from this as far as Bowler goes he dont have a clue what goes on at Reaseheath he leaves that to his right hand man,and ALL the Coaches,hence the problem. Always known in the past that kids were staying with Coaches,is this the same situation today! The club has left itself wide open to this for years.

Does Woodward say why the coaches were arguing about which kids should go home with them, it might be about which kids were going to be playing in which teams, or maybe who lived closer to where games were being played, I suggest until we know we should not make accusations or condemn the club.

I see Woodward's was on Sky last night, when asked what he has done since leaving football he said nothing as he has been a broken man for 14 years, he must have forgot about his 12 year police career that only ended due to him being sacked because of 12 counts of gross misconduct, after he was accused of rape by a woman who he was supposed to be the family liaison officer for, I'm sure its just a coincidence that his dismissal happened a few weeks before he went to the press regarding his own abuse. Guess what I am saying is, some balance is needed in all of this, Bennell did the crimes, Bennell should be re-tried, could the Alex have done more to stop him back in the 80's, I don't have the answer to that because if Jimmy Saville can hoodwink the Government, Royalty, The BBC and even the phuckin pope, then what chance would a small town football team have of checking out a premeditated *** offender, who happened to be good at the job he was doing as coach and who knew exactly what he was doing without and help from anybody else.

[jimmyboldon]

I see pound signs in his eyes following his loss of job/income. The timing was no coincidence. Why wait so long?

[[email protected]]

I agree the timing is fishy from Woodward. But what he has done has got others to come forward. Dario's statement was fantastically rehearsed. Not one apology to the victims, it happened under his watch at the end of the day.

[ojprice]

Does Woodward say why the coaches were arguing about which kids should go home with them, it might be about which kids were going to be playing in which teams, or maybe who lived closer to where games were being played, I suggest until we know we should not make accusations or condemn the club.

I see Woodward's was on Sky last night, when asked what he has done since leaving football he said nothing as he has been a broken man for 14 years, he must have forgot about his 12 year police career that only ended due to him being sacked because of 12 counts of gross misconduct, after he was accused of rape by a woman who he was supposed to be the family liaison officer for, I'm sure its just a coincidence that his dismissal happened a few weeks before he went to the press regarding his own abuse. Guess what I am saying is, some balance is needed in all of this, Bennell did the crimes, Bennell should be re-tried, could the Alex have done more to stop him back in the 80's, I don't have the answer to that because if Jimmy Saville can hoodwink the Government, Royalty, The BBC and even the phuckin pope, then what chance would a small town football team have of checking out a premeditated *** offender, who happened to be good at the job he was doing as coach and who knew exactly what he was doing without and help from anybody else.

behold probably the most retarded post you will ever read

[thnhouse]

I think for me there’s a number of key points to address, and the first is that the clubs handling of this situation has been poor and has let this escalate into an attack on the club that may well be completely unfair. A full statement condemning the actions of Bennell, acknowledging the bravery of people for coming forwards and then detailing all the safeguards the club have put in place since then and most importantly stating that the club acted as soon as they found out about the allegations against Bennell.

The idea that the club knew about Bennell doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me, Bowler has always struck me as a decent man and Gradi too. I don’t think either of them would have been ok with children getting raped if it meant producing good players, especially been as neither have shown the kind of ambition for Crewe that this would require, our club culture has never been “win at all costs”. They may well have been naive and fallen into the trap of being fooled by a master manipulator, but any suggestion that they knew or would have been complicit in it is a big leap.

Finally I think the Guardian has been poor , sensationalist and it’s a newspaper that I have a lot of respect for. In reality this story should have been the brave actions of a man (whatever his motivations) and a call for better safeguards in an industry that deals with millions of children, whether I feel that so much of every article has been sensationalist and trying to create a scandal out of our club. A club which is so far only guilty of reacting poorly to a situation it was unaware of. I wonder what they will have to say when people come forward who were abused while at Man City and Stoke as seems likely to happen, will the paper be so keen to try and tarnish clubs with much more power and a much better legal team.