Playing the blame game

THIS is all my fault, you know. Bill Quinn’s resignation from the Roughyeds board, the Rugby Football League’s rule which states he can’t be chairman, the packing off of four of the club’s best players to Quinn’s mate Des Johnston at Barrow.

All these things were orchestrated by the evil Matthew Chambers (aka Blofeld), who sits in Chronicle HQ stroking a white cat as he cooks up plot after plot against the man who remains as Oldham’s majority shareholder — despite resigning from the board months ago.

I think that is how the story goes, anyway.

In Quinn’s interview on BBC Radio Manchester’s Rugby League Extra show last week, the owner of 75-per-cent of shares in Oldham RLFC (1997) Ltd apportioned blame for the chaotic recent events at the club on a report printed by this newspaper two weeks ago.

Within that story, we revealed that the RFL had confirmed that operational rules prevented Quinn from being chairman of Oldham without him being on the club’s board.

Calls went unanswered on Quinn’s mobile phone and a voice message was left before the piece was printed, in order to get his reaction. Those calls were not returned, so we gave him the chance to put his views across in print two days later.

One of the few certainties left in all this is that had Quinn not resigned from the board on May 7, he would never have had the RFL rules topple him from his Roughyeds perch and we couldn’t have written the story. Which, contrary to comments made on the programme by the RFL communications manager Craig Spence, was firmed up by way of a call to the governing body’s media office to double-check the relevant regulations.

On later calling the radio show back, to respond to the views of an Oldham supporter who put across some counterpoints, Quinn also took the opportunity to rail against the Chronicle’s highlighting of bad news over good.

I’m not sure if he classes yesterday’s back page picture of him at a Barrow game — a day after Oldham flogged them four players, decimating an already injury-hit Roughyeds squad — to be one for the ‘good’ or the ‘bad’ column.

No doubt Quinn has invested a lot of money into the club and that his initial intentions were good. He is also desperately keen for public approval and this week’s private meeting with invited supporters provides him with the chance to put his side of the story across without the glare of the media, who have been banned.

Perhaps anyone who plans to attend tomorrow night’s propaganda exercise could ask him a question on our behalf: if you don’t want to continue, why not just give up your shares and call it a day, when everyone knows the club is skint and that they are effectively worth the square root of nothing?

Nobody can fault Quinn for having a go. But it hasn’t worked out, and now the only way to put an end to this turmoil is to let others (plural, hopefully) take the lead, as soon as possible. The club is more important than any one man.

mattchambers@oldham-chronicle.co.uk