Leg Side Filth

Chief executive David Smith resigned because of chairman Neil Davidson’s meddling. Davidson managed to piss everyone off including the players, ground staff and yours truly. Two petitions were drawn up by members demanding Davidson’s removal, and Tim Boon said “time to blow this fucked up Popsicle stand” and buggered off to take up the England U-19 coaching job, and who could blame him.

Now peace, of a sort, has broken out at Grace Road.

Well, it’s more of a compromise, really.

Neil Davidson has finally emerged from his Führerbunker and resigned. The special general meeting that was timetabled for November 17th has been cancelled after a meeting between the board of directors and the members who drew up the petitions.

The AGM scheduled for March has now been brought forward to February, during which the current board of directors will resign and stand for re-election.

In the meantime, Paul Haywood has taken on the role of chairman, and Mike Siddall is chief executive. Captain Matthew Hoggard has hailed these appointments as a positive step forward.

The immediate effect of this is that a ceasefire has been reached and those who stood to be most affected by this – the players – are free to concentrate on their off-season training.

Thankfully, the team seems to been brought together and made stronger as a result of this summer’s conflict. The opposite would have been utterly disastrous for the club, and let’s just say if, god forbid, that had come to pass, it would have been a case of pitchforks and flaming torches rather than a couple of petitions.

But there are still unresolved issues. For a start, it was discovered the members do not have the power to remove the board of directors at a special general meeting, even if 75 per cent of the votes cast in the ballot call for it.

Secondly, one of the other resolutions outlined in the petition was to hear from David Smith as to why he resigned.

David Smith is still a member of Leicestershire County Cricket Club. Will we get a chance to hear his side of all that’s happened at February’s AGM? It would seem that once again, the board seem to have bought themselves some time, and we are still none the wiser.

Also, our interim chairman, Paul Haywood, when he handed in his resignation (not accepted) at a meeting at which the rest of the board backed Davidson, gave as the reason for his resignation “issues [that] had come to the board’s knowledge that we were previously unaware of that meant I could no longer support him.”

He went on to say: “Due to confidentiality, I cannot disclose these reasons. I had spoken about my views to the chairman and the board but, at this meeting, I received no support from the other board members.”

As a member, it would be nice to know precisely what these reasons were.

Pretty much a large part of Leicestershire’s off-field summer has been comprised of bitching, backbiting, slanging matches, smokescreens, and now compromise.

And we still don’t have the full picture.

Will all become clear come February? I doubt it. Will anything change? That remains to be seen.

Only god save us from another summer like the one just gone – off the field at least.