Pickering Town manager Steve Roberts has admitted the NPL’s erratic decision-making in December took a mental toll on him.
Pickering, alongside the rest of the NPL, went through the mill before Christmas when the league botched an attempted restart.
The NPL announced on December 14th that the campaign would remain on hold and be looked again after the Government’s review of the Tier allocations on December 16th.
However, on the 15th the league ordered a mandatory restart on Boxing Day of all days and allowed clubs to play on the Saturday (19th) if they so wished.
That led to an unprecedented uprising from a significant number of clubs, with some refusing to comply – leading to compromise of ‘play if you want on Boxing Day’.
Roberts and Pickering chose not to and the Pikes boss admits the period did affect him psychologically and he was unimpressed with the NPL.
“I think the league have been pretty poor, I know it is difficult and tough to make statements,” Roberts told Non League Yorkshire.
“But all we ask for is a heads up and sometimes we have sort of found out through social media. They’ve not even contacted clubs first to let us know what’s going on.
“You want clear guidance. It did exasperate how I felt from a mental health point of view.
“We decided not to play on the 19th because you could see the cases rising and we have older fans and we didn’t want to put them at risk along with the players.
“(When they said four days before that you could play on the 19th) it was one of the poorest decisions they made, more-or-less passing the buck and saying ‘you decide what you want to do’ as a club.
“They should have been leading every club and telling them what to do.
“(Mentally) you weren’t ready for it either and you weren’t focussed. Yes we had trained, but (the decision-making) hasn’t helped with the emotion of it all. You want notice and clarity. At least now you know where you stand.
“It was a surreal day (when they said you could play on the 19th) and I saw that some clubs did play. I would never criticise, but I just thought you’ve played a game, you’re not getting many fans in and you’re not going to play many games after that. You could see where it was going to go.
“It was poor on the league’s part to put pressure on the clubs and they should have said we’ll wait until after Christmas. You couldn’t see your family, but you could play football with your mates.”
The attempted restart turned out to be a pointless exercise anyway as the third national lockdown has now left the NPL campaign dangling by a thread.
Pickering have not tasted action since November 3rd – the 3-2 defeat to Pontefract Collieries – Roberts openly says it has been tough.
“It is the first time that you do realise the mental health side,” he said.
“I have been up and down at times because you are so used to doing it and you think we might be back fully and engaged in two weeks’ time and then you get the rumour that it might not be happening so you go flat again.
“Then it gets taken away from you so you’re up and down.
“Emotionally it has been really mixed. We all love the game and when it is taken away it is a big loss in your life.
“I speak to my assistant manager Hacky (Tony Hackworth) most nights and at the moment maybe every two nights.
“He’s been the same as me so we’ve tried to keep each other upbeat and (in December) we had to try and not let that we don’t think it will start again transfer to the players.
“If we went training we had to say to ‘we need to be ready and focussed for when it restarts’. Deep down we were hiding what we were actually feeling (that it won’t start) – masking it.
“It has been really difficult.
“You get the text (from a player) saying ‘when do we start’ and you have to phone them and say ‘look, I’m in the dark as you, I just don’t know’.
“You’ve touched on it that they phone the manager expecting you to know, normally you would.
“When I took over I said I wouldn’t get everything right and if I don’t know the answer to something I’ll find it. In this situation you can’t.
“I don’t know, the club don’t know and if you send an email to the league they don’t really know.
“Hopefully we’re now coming out on the other side with the vaccine.”
If you have enjoyed reading Non League Yorkshire over the past few months, please consider making a donation to the not-for-profit organisation NLY Community Sport which provides sport for children and adults with disabilities and learning difficulties. CLICK HERE to visit the JustGiving page. There is a video at the bottom of the page showing our work.
NLY Community Sport, run by James Grayson and Connor Rollinson, has always had combatting social isolation at the top of our objectives when running our Disability Football teams. When we properly return to ‘action’, our work will play an important role in reintroducing our players, who have disabilities and learning difficulties, back into society.
We have six teams, a mixture of Junior and Adult teams – Nostell MW DFC, Pontefract Pirates, Selby Disability Football Club and the South Yorkshire Superheroes (Barnsley) – across Yorkshire.
We have enjoyed great success over the past three years. Several of our players have represented Mencap GB in Geneva, including Billy Hobson from Selby and Greg Smith, whose story is quite inspiring.
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Watch the video below to see highlights from our three years as an organisation. The video was produced for our players at the end of March to remind them of good memories from the last three years.
