Crawley Town boss Scott Lindsey gives thoughts on Jay Williams tackle after seeing footage back

  • last month
Crawley Town midfielder made headlines on Tuesday night after a late challenge on Matt O'Riley saw the new £25 million signing limp off injured with an ankle injury. Here is Scott Lindsey's take on on the incident two days later.

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Transcript
00:00Jay Williams has got a lot of attention from the game on Tuesday night for the tackle he did early on.
00:06Looking back at it, what are your thoughts on it and how do you protect a player for getting attention like he has since then?
00:12What's my take on it? My take on it was that I think that the referee's decision to do nothing about it has made it a whole lot worse.
00:22There should have been something done, whether that was a yellow or a red remains to be seen but I think that's not made it any better.
00:33I think Jay, it was in my opinion a genuine attempt to win the ball. I think if you look at him, his eyes are fixated on the ball the whole time.
00:45He mistimed it. Simple as that, it happens. He mistimed it. The kid got there slightly in front and poked it.
00:53It's unfortunate. We obviously don't want the boy to be hurt or injured. That's not what we want and that's not what Jay wants.
01:00If you watch the footage back, as the boy's getting treatment, Jay stood over him and making sure he's alright.
01:08If there was any malice in what Jay did then he certainly wouldn't be standing over him and making sure he's alright.
01:14It's an unfortunate situation and we're really sorry that it happened but it was a genuine attempt to win the ball in my opinion.
01:24It wasn't a great tackle. I'm not sitting here saying it was a great tackle because it wasn't. It was a bad tackle.
01:37That's really clear but it was a genuine attempt to win the ball. Like I say, if the referee would have done his job properly
01:45then maybe it would have been a little bit calmer than it ended up being.
01:50I also spoke to Jay yesterday. He's genuinely upset about it. He's a good kid. He's done really well for this football club.
01:59He was the first to try and find out how the boy was afterwards and he wanted to have some of their coaching staff's phone numbers afterwards to apologise.
02:11It just shows the measure of the kid. It's really unfortunate and we're really sorry it happened.
02:17We've just got to try and make sure that we protect our players as well in terms of the stick that Jay's got.

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