Another pre-season friendly gets abandoned due to players fighting

Another pre-season friendly gets abandoned this week due to players fighting on the pitch, leaving some fans angry at what they were seeing.

Bilborough Town, who formed in 2007 and currently play in the NSL Premier Division, hosted East Midlands Counties Football League side South Normanton Athletic on Saturday.

However, what turned out to be a decent game of football to watch, was left marred with a brawl taking place on the field of play.

South Normanton were 3-1 up when the game was abandoned by the referee on the 70th minute, the away side’s No18 ‘stuck the nut’ on a Bilborough player, then escaped being handed a red card for the challenge.

SNA’s No18 stick a nut on someone. Fight. Ref bottled sending him off. Two lads from the SNA bench then entered the pitch and had a go at Bilborough’s 12. Mayhem. One SNA lad left with a nasty gash in his head.

— John Hague (@thedrunkbirder) August 29, 2020

As mentioned in the above tweet, the game never restarted, and the unfortunate incident saw racist abuse take place, which provoked a second spout of fighting, making the official’s decision easy to end the game.

One match attendee, Neil Glenn, said on Twitter: “Fucking fuming! Just wasted an afternoon (and a fiver plus three quid parking) because two football teams of ‘grown men’ couldn’t go 90 mins without brawling. Match abandoned, also meaning the development lads missed out on a game as well. Shameful!!”. Bilborough Town got back to him…

But racial abuse will not be tolerated gents sorry not in any shape or form

— Bilborough Town FC (@btfcboss) August 29, 2020

This is the second game of the week that was abandoned due to players fighting as on Thursday night, a 22-man punch up took place at another non league ground.

Northern Premier League Division One South East club Stamford took on Grantham Town of the Northern Premier League Premier Division, however the game ended up turning sour.

The hosts became concerned about the safety of their players following a series of ‘poor challenges’ which took place in the opening half.

Here’s why. Grantham embarrassed from minute 1 clearly couldn’t handle it. pic.twitter.com/z9CjyVw0H3

— Henry ??????? (@henry_mxc) August 27, 2020

Stamford were leading 2-0 at the time, when players reacted to a poor challenge on a home player. It was one of many tackles Graham Drury, the manager of Stamford, was unhappy with and after chatting with the Grantham staff along with the referee, the game was halted.

The Daniels took the lead inside the opening minute when Cosmos Matwasa’s went forward to set up Tom Siddons who hit home past Grantham goalkeeper Jan Budtz.

Stamford then doubled the scoring just after the 30th minute, when a skillful pass from Rob Morgan met Tendai Chitiza who curled the ball into the back of the net.

The hosts were more likely to add to their tally with the Gingerbreads really struggling to get at their opponents.

Drury said: “I would like to apologise to all the supporters about the game being cut short.

“Both managers and the referee decided it was the right decision to call a halt to the game because the conditions were becoming too dangerous.

“I’ve seen the suggestions there was a mass brawl between the players which is an exaggeration. There had been some poor challenges on my players and then one particularly bad one led to my players reacting and the Grantham players also getting involved.

“It was more like handbags at dawn than a mass confrontation. Players were protecting their teammmates and both managers decided it was better to stop the game and the referee agreed. Fairplay to the Grantham manager for agreeing to this.

“The safety of the players was the most important thing. I took the fixture to do Grantham a favour and I only had 13 fit players to start with. A couple were struggling to carry on when the game was abandoned so calling things off was the right thing to do. We have an FA Cup tie in a couple of weeks.”

Looks like the gaffer has taken the Stamford players off after some shocking tackles by Grantham and a huge melee pic.twitter.com/5ppIJkRjQf

— Stamford Goals (@GoalsStamford) August 27, 2020