Can’t help feeling that a lot of the anti-Curle sentiment has nothing to do with his skills as a coach and more to do with the fact that he’s not exactly like your average Carlisle bloke – and we do tend to like those made in our own image!
And I don’t just mean the fact that he’s black – but that he’s athletic, intelligent, articulate, and self-assured. No surprise then that Abbott was so popular among some. Not suggesting for a moment that Russ was fat, thick and a bumbling whimp – but on a sliding scale I’d say he was further that way than Curle.
Maybe time we started judging our mangers on merit and not whether we’d be comfortable having a beer with them in the pub