Well the inevitable has happened. The first manager has lost his job due to a poor start to the season and the fans are already mooting his possible replacement. It’s no surprise, in this results driven business, that the pressure for instant success has already led to one person heading down to the job centre this week. There’s no surprise at the club either. It’s at the high pressure environment of err… Kettering Town.
Morell Maison has resigned after only seven games in his 3rd spell as Kettering’s manager after a poor start on the pitch where he saw his side win only once. Is this a surprise departure? Well, not really. He wasn’t very experienced at Conference national level, his only spells in the conference were both as a caretaker, at Kettering and Chester City. Despite this, however, one would’ve thought that he’d last longer than seven games and it seems that this move has been prompted by the poor start as well as a Maison spaced hole in the directors lounge. For those who have never heard of Mr. Maison, let me make it clear, this is very, very worrying.
Maison’s first foray into management was at Kettering towards the end of the 2006 season when he replaced Paul Gascoigne. He won the last seven games out of eight to see them just miss out on the play-offs. The next season Kettering turned full time and spent lavishly on players in a bid to get out of the Conference North. Maison and Kettering fell just short of the league title and Maison was sacked with two games left to go.
He was then hired by Southern League club Halesowen Town for the start of the 2007/08 season. The Black county based side had just been taken over by a new owner and it was looking positive. They spent big, well they said that they would, but didn’t pay anyone and took the club into administration and to the brink of closure. At the same time they incurred the wrath of the FA and were kicked out of the FA Trophy and Cup after failing to pay their opposition their share of the gate receipts. It then emerged that the owner was actually Maison himself and from then on the fans started their boycott and he eventually left when he was bought out by the Ingram brothers at the start of the 2009/10 season (who then took them back into administration) after he was arrested and bailed for fraud.
He then arrived at Chester City at the end of 2009. He was appointed as Director of Football and quickly sacked manager Jim Harvey, despite Harvey doing brilliantly well with what basically was a youth team, and put himself in the hot-seat. Results didn’t improve and he then tried to take the club over but, thankfully, nothing came of it. When he was appointed the players hadn’t been paid in months and despite his job title he did nothing to get them paid. Fans then began their boycott of the club, which must mean that Maison has some strange record of being the only man to be involved at two clubs who were boycotting in the same season. When the club was wound up there were debts of nearly one million pounds (which had been accrued in just six months).
Admittedly he cannot be held completely responsible for the problems at Chester as he arrived during the death throes of the club but the problems at Halesowen Town were entirely his fault. And let’s face it, he didn’t exactly do anything of value at Chester, serving only as an icon of how badly the club had failed under the management of the Vaughan family.
So should fans of Kettering be worried? Well despite all his ‘experience’ I would be worried. He has been at two clubs where huge debts have been racked up, players not paid and both have gone into administration. This is unlikely to happen at Kettering Town but it doesn’t bode well when you have someone who is clearly incompetent (at best) in the boardroom. With the owner Imraan Ladak this week saying that attendances need to rise to 2500-3000 level to pay the lease for their move to Nene Park there could be a few worries ahead for Poppies fans.
