Ian Evatt’s Fantasy World Uncovered.

Morecambe Football Club released a Statement this week. On 9th November 2022, they told us:

Today, Lancashire Police have confirmed that no further action will be taken in relation to an allegation of racist abuse at our fixture versus Bolton Wanderers last season.

At the end of this game, BBC Sport reported on what had happened thus:

“A League One game was stopped for 10 minutes after a “barrage of abuse” including racism was said to be directed towards the opposition.

Referee Ross Joyce took Morecambe and Bolton players off the pitch on 88 minutes of the 1-1 draw. Morecambe said they were aware of the allegations and would investigate.

“From minute one the barrage of abuse from directly behind the dugout was astonishing,” Bolton boss Ian Evatt told BBC Radio Manchester. “No protection. Encroachment, spitting and it takes the worst of all remarks – a racist remark – for somebody to stand up and do something about it.””

This nonsense – as was mentioned at the time – was repeated on the now thankfully defunct EFL on Quest later in the evening. The barely literate Clinton Morrison was given a platform to launch a totally unjustified attack on the club, making a string of allegations for which neither he nor anyone else at the programme had any proof whatsoever. No mention was made of the real events that happened inside and outside the Mazuma Stadium, which have been retrospectively re-assessed by the BBC thus this very week:

“A police investigation into an allegation of racist abuse during a League One match has been dropped.

Lancashire Police said no further action would be taken against a 61-year-old man who was arrested at Morecambe’s match against Bolton Wanderers last season. The game was suspended for 10 minutes at the Mazuma Stadium in February.

Officers had been investigating alleged racial slurs being directed at the Bolton bench.

Five Bolton fans were also detained at the same match on suspicion of assault and being drunk and disorderly, with one man later charged with pitch encroachment. Some other suspects were given fixed-penalty notices, police said.

The arrests were made after a number of fans ran onto the pitch to celebrate Bolton’s equaliser.”

Why didn’t they mention these facts at the time? The whole thing stinks. Given that no evidence has been found to substantiate his claim about spitting and particularly racist abuse, Ian Evatt clearly invented these allegations. So what action is going to be taken against him? His actions caused two of our number to be ejected from the game when all the evidence at the time indicates that they – rather than Evatt – had been the victims of abuse aimed at them from the Bolton Bench. The club as a whole and Morecambe fans in general have rallied around the victims – Santa and his Missis – to express our collective outrage about this development on the day. The wrong person was arrested on the day.

So is Mr Evatt going to be man enough to express any regrets or even remorse about engineering the delay in the game when his team were clearly about to lose last February? Any words of comfort he would like to offer to Santa and his family?

What do you think?