AFC Fylde have labelled departing player Ryan Croasdale 'the unacceptable face of football' after he refused to take a pay cut during the coronavirus pandemic.
Croasdale said that the new contract that the club offered him would cause his family severe financial hardship. He was eventually put on the government's job retentions scheme but put in a grievance to the National League over 'not being paid in full' and refused to train.
The league ruled in favour of the player and Fylde were eventually allowed to appeal. However, the decision was ratified and Croasdale's contract was terminated by the FA, meaning that he is free to find a new club.
The full statement made by AFC Fylde is below.
On Tuesday of this week, the FA terminated the playing contract of Ryan Croasdale with AFC Fylde. He has left the club following an appeal panel ruling in his favour, therefore making him a free agent.
How this has all transpired is a story that all fans, not only those at Fylde, deserve to hear.
It all started back in April when the full impact of Covid became apparent and the season was cancelled. An emergency meeting was held between the Chief Executive, Jonty Castle, the Manager Jim Bentley and owner David Haythornthwaite. Discussions took place on what we should do with regard to the situation and in particular players wages. It was clear that if players weren’t paid that despite the seriousness of the situation, they could, when the time was right for them use this to force a move away.
As this would involve our better players, and those we wanted to protect, the owner believed we should do all we could to “protect” those players by paying them in full even if that was to the detriment of others. The Chief Exec and Manager argued strongly against this and said that after consultation with the players ”they were all in it together” and would accept a “package“ that equated to 80% of their wages. This would be made up through a combination of the Government furlough money plus a further top up from the club.
In Croasdale’s case he was on £950 a week so 80% was £760 a week. The government scheme allowed us to claim back a maximum of £576.92 so the balance of £183.08 would be topped up by the club. This formula was to be used for all the players. After much discussion, this approach was agreed, the players were informed and the appropriate paperwork drawn up and sent to each player. Every single player bar Croasdale eventually signed up to the “new contract”.
Croasdale refused to on the grounds that it would cause his family “severe hardship”.
As has been well documented previously, the players were not required to train or come to the ground. They were totally free to do what they liked, including finding part time or full time work to top up their earnings, if they needed, or wanted to. In fact, the Chairman offed all the players and other employees the chance to work in his business on a packing line at £10.00 per hour and up to 40 hours a week on a day or night shift.
Croasdale turned this offer down, at which time it was then clear for all and sunder to see his intentions and that he would use this at some time, aided and abetted by his agent, to engineer a move away from the club.
Having set out our stall and got the agreement from 16 out of 17 contracted players we obviously couldn’t make exceptions and although he refused to sign the paperwork, we put him on the government job retention scheme where he still received £576.92 a week for the remainder of the summer.
At the start of August we informed the players that pre-season would begin on 24th and they would return to full pay. At this point, Croasdale was forced to show his hand and on 7th August he put in a grievance to the league regarding “not being paid in full”. As soon as pre-season began, he came up with a number of reasons not to participate in full training. The reason being of course, was that he was negotiating with other clubs and didn’t want to risk getting injured. The procedure, is that the initial grievance goes to the National League and after that, if either party is unhappy with the result they can appeal to the FA.
We were extremely confident in our case, everything was well documented and the paper trail clear, but despite all this, our own League failed to support us and held in favour of the player. We were gobsmacked. How, in these uncertain times, when a players intentions were clear could they do this to one of its own members. The least they should have, and could have done was to support us and let the player appeal to the FA. They chose not to.
Incidentally, the reasons given in his grievance and we quote verbatim were
‘The loss of earnings which have accumulated throughout this period have caused severe financial hardship upon my family, this is due to me being the only financial provider in my household. In result I have had to borrow money from family in order to cover my mortgage and monthly outgoings.’
We therefore went to appeal the decision ourselves and were told that due to certain procedural irregularities we couldn’t. Again, our own League fought tooth and nail to try and deny us this appeal. Eventually, we succeeded but their earlier decision was ratified and as of Thursday this week Ryan’s contract was terminated by the FA and he is now free to ply his trade anywhere he chooses. The lucky club who picks him up will do so for free. Fylde fans will remember, we paid Kidderminster Harriers £50,000 for him in 2018.
As the title of the article states, this is “The Unacceptable Face of Football”
We lead you to draw your own conclusions.