One of the best things to come out of Carrow Road since the permanent signing of Darren Huckerby emerged very recently as in the decision by our players, manager, directors and other senior staff to club together to help Norfolk people during the coronavirus threat, quickly raising £200,000 in the process.
Straight over to Club Captain Grant Hanley, who said he believes the actions of the City squad illustrate they understand their responsibility.
“It’s a complicated situation. We’ll let those people involved decide what is best to do moving forward.
“I’ve seen some of the stuff that’s been said, but I think as a footballer ever since I started in the game there has always been criticism or a bit of stick for whatever you do or whatever is happening at the time.
“A footballer needs to have a thick skin and accept whatever is coming your way – good or bad – and not let it affect you too much. The most important thing is to remain professional and do what is best for your club at that time.”
City’s six-figure donation will help individuals and charities affected by the virus.
“I did play a part but the lads are first class and they all understand and appreciate how much this club means to the people and the community. It wasn’t difficult. The hard part was phoning people and gathering them all together on this one,” said Hanley.
Now whatever we might collectively or individually think of players’ salary levels, this appears to be much more than merely a gesture. And it didn’t take Grant and the lads very long to pull it together either.
Daniel Farke joins Bournemouth’s Eddie Howe and Brighton’s Graham Potter in a large article in my favourite red top [a guilty pleasure] this morning as an example of how generous folks can be.
I’m sure MFW readers and writers alike have both received and offered help during these dangerous and testing times but what pleases me the most about this is that it’s a “shop-floor” driven initiative. The lads didn’t have to do it, but do it they did.
Sure Norwich City has received a bit of stick recently for furloughing staff but I don’t get that. The 80 per cent Government money is there for a reason whatever business anybody might be in and the Club is topping up the rest to ensure those laid off remain on full pay during the crisis.
I really do not see what else we can do. If you’re in the ticket office or on the matchday team you can hardly work from home. At least this way job security remains for our friendly – in my constant experience anyway – team of “auxiliaries”.
And the one thing we know with Norwich City [however cynical I can sometimes be] is that all monies raised will go to deserving local people. There’s no doubting that.
Not being amongst the Twitterati, my finger is only on the pulse as far as the many friends with whom I am in regular contact, and not a single one of us gives a monkey’s chuff about season ticket payments or possible refunds on Man Utd FA Cup tickets.
All that can wait.
Well played all at Norwich City.
And if anybody is still in doubt about our community spirit there’s also this – sorry, I hadn’t seen it before I wrote the article!
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/canaries-chaplain-takes-on-treadmill-marathon-1-6592251
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Strange to reply to meself – but well done Jon Norman!
You must have been bored wotsitless mate but what a terrific effort.
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Hi Martin,
I agree with you what Grant and the boys have done is brilliant, typical of this club in a crisis.
However Martin I find Premiership clubs using the government payment scheme troubling.
Tottenham’s owner is worth 4.7 billion, putting the burden on the tax payer to me is obscene. Because be in no doubt all this money the government are forking out now is going to have to be paid back somehow and that will likely be through taxes. If Mr Lewis isn’t able to put money into the club because of FFP I apologise, however the FFP rules should be relaxed for this crisis.
When it comes to us I do still think it is wrong to use the government scheme, the club will receive £millions even if we go down. I know a lot of supporters will quite rightly say we are the real paupers of the premier League and as such we are not the same as the billionaire owners that we compete with and doing this is fair. Sorry, to me this is for your Cambridge United’s, Macclesfield and some poor championship clubs who will go to the wall without this intervention.
To be honest the response from football has been mixed with Carlos Tevez and the players at Barcelona responding to the situation with great speed and altruism.
Compare that to Alex Song, who is suing his club because he refused to take a 50% wage cut and they sacked him, doesn’t he realise how bad this looks, or our own PFA telling players not to agree to a reduction of wages !!!
I am talking about players earning fortunes here not the poor lads scrapping away in the lower levels, they quite rightly need help and the government scheme for them is definitely appropriate.
Also I read the PFA letter with great interest did you notice it didn’t say wage reduction it said wage deferrals, so in other words take a cut now but have it paid at a later date.
I also get the impression like the City lads a lot of players do want to be helping but are being prevented from doing so by their own union whose chief executive earned £2.2 million in 2017, and have put a farcical amount into Alzheimer’s research. Disgraceful.
Sorry I have gone on a bit Martin but this really annoys me, I have friends who work at the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital and it is a very scary time.
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Hi Tim.
Let me kick off by saying that my daughter is currently a gold commander [contracts & procurement] with the NHS and responsible for the whole of North-East London in that capacity.
Number one son works for Portsmouth Council in Adult Social Care with a particular responsibility for vulnerable children of said “adults”.
Any surprise that I’m in total agreement with you?
I’ve always declared quite openly that I “don’t do politics” but in response to your post I’ll make an exception.
If the likes of “Sir” Philip Green can request a State-funded bale-out there is surely nothing wrong with Norwich City’s approach to this crisis – and it is a crisis indeed.
How did folks get out of poverty in the 1960s? Box or play football extremely well. Or pick up a guitar, scrounge an amp and be better than I ever was in any of those respects.
Forget degrees, careers in journalism or being the best dude ever on a drawing board. We always have to make do with what we have wherever that might eminate from.
I simply admire the solidarity from the squad, management and directors towards the rest of us. As I said, they didn’t have to do it but it makes me feel so good that they did. And although I’m centre left I wouldn’t truly even describe myself as a socialist.
As for “deferrals” [not referring to NCFC directly] I doubt many players would even notice, even when their accountants informed them.
Thank you for a truly great comment.
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Hi Martin.
I was naught yesterday went to Bristol to get my youngest son home who was sharing a house with 6 others and didn’t feel he could isolate himself with any safety so to me it was an essential road trip, we still got stuck in a traffic jam near Brum for 30mins.
Now my second son’s partner is a Practitioner Nurse and it is their son we look after during the week, she is on call for palliative treatment and care.
As other comments are all saying Spur, Norwich and Newcastle are the first to take up the government option on furlonging staff these clubs yes are taking up the payments for relative few people yet I have seen no complaint of BA doing it for 39k of staff.
BA saying it needs to do it as they have no cash flow and many other companies are in the same situation the three football clubs yes are premiership but they have no cash flow either and my understand it all has to be paid back over a set period so in reality it is loan package to survive.
Anyway I hope everyone’s family are safe and well.
Onwards and upwards
OTBC
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Hi Alex.
I reckon just about all of us are struggling to do what we reckon is best for everybody – we’d planned to go to Mundesley today but have deferred that until Monday in case we get accused of non-essential travel.
It’s my house, my registered address, on my driving licence and all my personal post goes there and I know all our neighbours pretty well.
But I couldn’t bear to be wrongly accused of a “beach trip” so that’s basically why we decided to defer.
Blackpool to Bristol is a long old haul but imo you made the absolutely right decision. You cannot isolate in a shared house. You simply cannot. I would have done exactly the same and I’m so glad that all four of our “shared” kids – two each – have their own places so there’s no real worry for us.
Nurse Practitioners are the hub of the surgery – take it from me:-)
Cheers.
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Hi Martin,
Thanks for your reply, which I agree with, as it wasn’t long before one of my friends telephoned to say
“Hi Tim, what about all those big companies making massive profits, still putting people on furlough !!!” He is much brighter than me.
Which kind of made me stop and think. We are different to 99% of the Premiership as dear old Delia is a lowly millionaire compared to all the other billionaire owners
( Burnley excepted ) and I didn’t want to get accused of favouring my own club.
The Spurs/Man Utd/ Man City etc players in my eyes could easily take pay cuts to help fund the non playing staff in my view and as we know our players couldn’t as they are the poorest paid by far in the Premiership.
It just annoys me that there is so much money in the “Richest League in the world” there is a lack of empathy I suppose is the word coming from the top.
A lot of ex-players have come on tv over the last few day to say footballers are easy targets and to defend them, but people like Phil Thompson then hint that 30% reduction for Premier League players is not enough and Grant Hanley when interviewed on Sky seemed to suggest they ( Norwich City) wanted to do more.
It is the very silence from the top earners in the game that is causing them to be so unpopular, but I do think some of them live in a vacuum, Grealish anyone ?.
But as I said in my comment I feel it is the next to useless PFA who are causing this, in fact Grant Hanley and the boys donation was done in direct opposition to their request that nothing be done without their say so. Gary Neville is right when he says most Premiership players want to do something, but it needs to be now.
You are right to say will these players actually miss the money until their accountant tells them, also is it fair Harry Kane loses 30% of his wage packet the same as say Marco Stieperman . Again the PFA haven’t thought this through.
Fantastic work your youngsters are doing Martin, you all stay safe.
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Hi Tim
First off, thanks for your kind comments.
Number one son is bored $hiteless. He’s one of three in his team so logically on call to Hants Police one week in three. It’s kicking off a bit in that environment just now so he’s had one pressure week and two doing, erm, virtually nothing.
He actually can’t wait for his next duty week!
Well done for mentioning Burnley. That was a good call.
On the obverse side while somebody like Gordon Taylor is still in situ at the PFA I don’t know what we can really expect.
I had a strange career in that I was strictly Union until I got my first management role at about 28 and had to hand my cards in before I was accepted for the job – which became my career job.
However working for a German Company they utterly respected their Works Council and also our TUC affiliated unions such as the then GMB and GWU so I didn’t mind too much. The culture of “us and them” didn’t really exist from either side. “Shop floor” bonuses could sometimes be worth more [in real terms, not just %] than those in management were. And so it should be.
And all this from a guy who says he doesn’t do politics!
I have no real words to describe the antics of Jack Grealish and his ilk. A really good player but wtf goes on between the ears?
Thanks very much.
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Hi Martin; I read about the “sacrifices” of Messrs Howe and Potter on the BBC web-site. Of that from Herr Farke, not a mention..nada, nil, zilch, diddly squat.
Even in these extraordinary times they manage to find odd ways to ignore “Little Norwich”, although we got “good coverage” from them regarding the staff furlough!!!
O T B C
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Hi John.
I wouldn’t call it a sacrifice, of course I wouldn’t. But they’re declaring that everything will be kept within local bounds, hence my admiration.
Try p59 of today’s Sun where we get full credit where that credit is fully due.
I know holding up The Sun as an example makes me look a bit iffy but I used to work for them as a casual sports sub and if you ignore their [enforced by Murdoch] politics I have every respect for their current sports guys. Their Neil Custis started on the EDP after all.
The only reason I quit was because I had NUJ/NGA cards in my main job and when News Group moved from Bouverie St to Wapping I morally couldn’t cross the picket line. I was not alone in that respect.
The BBC are a law unto themselves and simply do not realise how lucky they are to have folks like Chris Goreham on their payroll.
Phew – that was almost a full-on rant!
Cheers mate.
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There’s been a fair bit of criticism of the club on the Pink’un forum for taking the furlough option for ancillary staff, but no mention of the players’ voluntary contribution of 200k, and that’s before the Premier League meeting today which has agreed the potential deferal of 30% of wages, so our boys could have a double whammy. I know everyone will say they can afford it, and maybe they can, but it’s still a significant impact when like anybody else they will have commitments based on their earnings. Grant Hanley says that the hardest part was getting hold of everyone, so obviously they all contributed willingly and promptly.
The Premier League have also committed 125 million to lower league clubs, though that may not be enough to keep some of them afloat. Mind you, it would just about pay off one particular club’s debt!
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Hi Jim
I never touch the Pink Un forum [yuck!] but I do look forward to Paddy D and Dave F’s reports and comments after a match just to make sure I’ve been to the same game. Which I always have – they’re really very good by and large. And under time pressure that no longer applies to me, of course. No more typewriters and fought-over landlines these days.
Willingly and promptly, as you say, is the bit that pleases me. No we shouldn’t feel “sorry” for somebody on only £5k a week but in this case it’s the thought that counts.
It’s a bit like Mrs P and I washing our old but serviceable clothes and taking them to our local [excellent] animal charity shop rather than chucking them straight in the dumpster.
It’s the thought that counts and at least NCFC has achieved something.
Thanks as ever.
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Ha!
I contrived to miss this yesterday – great dig at the Binners in the final par:-)
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It is a difficult moral maze, lots of people having a go at clubs for using the government furlough scheme and demanding players take a cut in wages because they’re all earning a fortune, but face it who among us mere mortals would want to pay their tax bills? Govt could lose a lot of revenue should that happen. 😉
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Hi Ady.
Moral maze is a great phrase and just about sums it up perfectly.
The financial maelstrom surrounding modern football is very difficult for me to completely understand but I know enough to agree that you are right with your last point!
Thanks.
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Although I don’t believe that footballers should necessarily be forced into a wage cut, it should be a voluntary scheme, I am still troubled by the “deferral” word. As Tim Ball says, that certainly implies that they will want it at some later stage. That will be on The PFA and, presently, they are not coming out of this situation at all well.
I’d rather our Club didn’t use the furloughing scheme but I can understand why. And, at least they are putting in the extra 20% unlike Spurs and Newcastle. However, if this isn’t what the government intended and there are plenty of richer businesses that will take advantage of this, then they should have thought it through a bit more.
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Hi Derek.
I simply see the Government’s furlough scheme as there for us to take advantage of in very much the same way as any other business would but as you rightly say the extra 20% shows a degree of commitment.
Ashley [Newcastle] and Levy [Tottenham] have had shedloads of stick and seem to show no signs of backing down.
The Government left itself so little time to deal with the whole Covid-19 thing I’m surprised even this scheme arrived – it has to be better than nothing, anyway.
Thanks – good comment.
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Good stuff, Martin.
I suspect the next, imminent, developments will vindicate your view and challenge all but the most determined critics.
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Thanks Stew.
I was made up with the speed and ease that our gang put this into action.
To find out this morning that our “Chaplain on a Treadmill” Jon Norman raised almost twice his £10k target is equally pleasurable.
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I see the Lyddutes are about destroying 3 mob mast saying they help to spread Cov-19 I am really unsure whether to be sad for these people or just amazed that in this day and age they still exist
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