Blog writer, and pretty much keeping us going during the summer, Mark Duell returns with his views on the latest to come out of Cardiff.
WITH the news coming out today about the non-payment of outstanding wages in Cardiff becoming public knowledge courtesy of Dan LaCosta, one can start to think of what more troubles are going to happen in deepest South Wales.
This I fear is the tip of the iceberg and more things are going to emerge in the next few weeks as things start to unravel.
LaCosta’s statement is frank and honest, and he had warned PR apparently beforehand that he wanted to have the matter resolved and didn’t want to go public. But PR isn’t all about honesty and now he is under the microscope more and more for the wrong reasons entirely. The big losers here are of course the players (one can probably assume that LaCosta isn’t an isolated incidence here) who are owed wages and of course the loyal Devils supporters. Most will be thinking, will we have a club to support if this carries on?
One can hark back to PR’s ill-fated and short-lived reign here in Steelerland. It was the same guy who sliced things so bad that it caused the then Elite League title winning coach as it was in the guise of Ben Simon to quit and return to North America, One can only speculate what kind of mess we would have been in before Tony Smith rode into rescue us full time and not in partnership with this ego driven gentleman from South Wales. Its certainly a shuddering thought.
As I said in the paragraph previously, the future of Cardiff Devils has got to be a worrying stage now. They are supposedly moving to a new rink in the next year or so, a topic that seems to have gone a bit quiet on the news front. PR is also the guy who has awarded Dave Whistle a three year deal something that is usually unthinkable in some context of British ice hockey, and forced fan favourites such as Gerad Adams, Phil Hill and Chris Blight out of a club that they loved to bits. Thankfully, we rescued all three.
If I was a Devils season ticket holder I would have serious reservations about renewing it, the troubles that plagued the previous campaign are simply not going away at all. Yes sure Pope has left the scene, and I am sure the departure wasn’t as pretty as the media release said it was. A fair few of the Devils persuasion were glad to see him to go, he was like Sooty to Ragan’s Matthew Corbett if you want to analogize things somehow. Of course, Devils landed GB international netminder Ben Bowns a couple of months gone by in a coup that surprised many. If I was Bownsy, I would be worried after today’s bombshell from the guy who started the season between the pipes last year. Are you sure this is the right move now Ben? Ask yourself that question.
Should Ragan destroy the Devils, and face it he’s doing a decent job so far on paper, then almost 30 years of British hockey will be gone in a blink of an eye, Former stalwarts such as Neil Francis, John Lawless, Shannon Hope and Hilton Ruggles will/should be horrified at seeing this happen. The club needs an owner that has the best interests at heart and not one that is worried more about damage to his alleged inflated ego. A fan consortium would be the best idea, but would that be too much pride for PR to absorb? Possibly yes, and even then he would allegedly put the price up so he made as much profit on the amount he paid to acquire the Devils in the first place.
They talk about foreign owners in football having to pass a fit and proper person’s test before approval is given for them to takeover clubs. Perhaps hockey could look at something on those lines, but perhaps this is going too far? If it did and I was marking it, I would certainly have Mr Ragan down as a failure. He’s way below the standard, and is making Cardiff look more like a laughing stock. All the other 9 EIHL clubs look stable, the Devils are in danger of missing out on the party. And there’s only one place where the buck must stop, at the very top. Just turn the light switch off as you depart the scene Paul, you’re becoming swiftly the most hated guy in the principality. Nearly as much as Vincent Tan, but that’s another story…
See you all soon, and remember in G we trust!
Mark
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