Football coaches are never short on offering mitigation when results turn against their team.
Injuries, refereeing decisions, and an unlucky bounce of the ball are all perennial favourites for coaches who find themselves under pressure but now another excuse could have joined them.
Ian Holloway, the manager of Swindon Town in League Two, English football’s fourth tier, has claimed that his team’s poor form can be explained by their training ground being haunted.
Holloway took charge of the club in October but had failed to collect a single point in the league since then until last weekend’s 2-2 draw with Accrington Stanley.
Even that result had been preceded by a stroke of bad luck, as the club’s captain Ollie Clarke suffered an ankle injury in training.
That has led Holloway — one of England’s most experienced managers, having previously had spells at Blackpool, Leicester City, Crystal Palace and Queens Park Rangers — to drastic measures as he seeks to improve Swindon’s fortunes.
“I’m going to try and cleanse the training ground area because people are telling me it’s haunted,” Holloway told BBC Radio Wiltshire. “There’s a graveyard somewhere near. Honestly, I’m not joking.
“I think our training ground is very close to an ancient burial site so I’m going to get my wife to come up and say sorry to all these people and hopefully we’ll have a bit more luck.”
This is not the first time hauntings — or variations on that theme — have been the talk of top-level football.
After Middlesbrough lost to Burnley in the FA Cup quarter-final of 1947, Wilf Mannion is reported to have claimed that the club’s Ayresome Park stadium had been cursed.
Leyton Orient, Birmingham City, and Derby County have also had to deal with rumours of jinxes afflicting their fortunes in the past.
Former Birmingham manager Barry Fry was widely reportedly to have urinated on all four corners of the pitch at St Andrew’s to ward off a reported curse on the club, although Holloway, 61, said that he would not be taking things that far.
“I don’t want to do what he did, but I’m going to get my wife to come up with her sage,” Holloway said. “I’ve done the Glastonbury stuff and the hail and welcome — great if you believe it. Do I? Really I’m not sure but I’m going to get it just to help because there’s some strange things happening.”
Swindon, who are 22nd in League Two, are next in action against Morecambe on Saturday.
(George Wood/Getty Images)
