Alzapiedi Explains Canvey Departure

Glen Alzapiedi said he quit as manager of Ryman League Premier Division club Canvey Island because of a....

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Published 7th July 2012

Glen Alzapiedi

.....decision taken above his head to bring controversial striker Bradley Woods-Garness back to the club.

He said he decided to walk away during a heated exchange with chairman George Frost on the telephone after training on Tuesday night.

Woods-Garness left the club after a short but successful loan spell which ended in March after he was involved in a dressing room spat with team-mate Jay Curran.

Alzapiedi said at the time he felt that what happened meant the former Sutton United striker had no future at the club because the incident had damaged team morale. He said, therefore, the revelation Woods-Garness had been brought back in left him with no option but to go.

He explained: “At training the chairman came over with director of football John Batch and basically said to me that the club had re-signed Bradley Woods-Garness without me knowing.

“After training I spoke to the players and told them what had happened and we swapped opinions about it. “Then we all went home and I got a phone call from the chairman in which he said I had been disrespectful to him for speaking to his players.

“So my reply was ‘you have been disrespectful to me and you have undermined me so I think you can find yourself a new manager’. That’s all I said to him and then I hung up.”

Alzapiedi said he was against the re-signing of Woods-Garness because he did not fit into how he wanted to set up the team, and because he was sure it would damage team spirit.

The club released a statement later that night which said Alzapiedi had left by “mutual consent”, but the former Ware manager is adamant he resigned.

He said: “I have the utmost respect for the playing staff, the support staff and the supporters at Canvey. They have been extremely supportive. But I have no regrets about leaving the people who were not supportive of me.”

Frost said the decision to bring Woods-Garness back to the club was entirely his, and it was one he made because he felt the player is the twenty-five-goal a season man they desperately need.

“I felt the club needed Bradley and Glen had a problem with that,” he said.

“But management is about managing and the club provides him with the tools. He works for the board and he took the job with the understanding that he would be in charge of the team and that somebody else would find the players for him. And that has what has happened here.”

Alzapiedi joined the Gulls as a coach ahead in 2010 and was promoted to manager in January 2012 when Batch stood down.

He guided them to a county cup win and they had a good end to their Ryman Premier campaign which saw them fall just short of the play-offs.

Frost said: “He was a good servant and he did well for the club and you can’t take that away from him. So it’s a shame, but at the end of the day he is not the right man to take the club forward.”

Frost said he received about twenty text messages on Wednesday morning from people who were interested in the manager’s job at Park Lane.

He said there were a “few good possibilities” but that the board would sit down at the end of the week and see how they wanted to progress.

He said in the interim, training would be taken by the coaching team of Danny Curran, John Brandon, Laurie Carter and Stacey Shave – under the guidance of Batch.

[Source: The Echo]