Groves Blows His Top!

By: Bill Osborne
Date: 13/08/2003

"I think if I go to a football match I go to watch two sets of 11 players trying to play football and entertain people. I don't go to watch what that game turned into." Said Paul Groves after the loss to Doncaster.

"We want a game where two teams have to work hard to create the opportunities. You don't go to watch that. There's no course for us to appeal. The refs are right and that's the end of the story. There are very few examples of decisions being overturned. Appealing costs you money. Even the bigger clubs with the clout and the money don't get the decisions."

"The decisions are made on the pitch and those decisions stand, right or wrong. There is no alternative but to accept it. I don't think it's appropriate to make public what we'll put in our report about the referee.

"The refs won't speak to you. They say there's a cooling off period of half an hour but even then most of them won't speak to you. Some of them will, but most of them don't. We don't feel it appropriate to speak to the ref given what's at stake for us and how things have gone."

A two-footed lunge from behind by Ricky Ravenhill started the trouble and Groves added; "I remember a tackle at our place where somebody went through the back of somebody like that and it finished their career. In this incident there were lots of people in and around it afterwards and I'll look at the video."

"At 1-0 up I thought they had a spell just after half-time where they chucked balls into our box and put us under pressure. But I felt we'd dealt with that. After that spell we were just starting to get hold of it and kill the game off. We were working one or two opportunities and the incidents killed the game."

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