Just weeks after declaring his determination to avoid administration because of a "responsiblitity" to creditors, Morell Maison has performed yet another volte face and, lo and behold, Halesowen Town FC have called in the administrators.
In reality the club is in such a mess that administration was unavoidable and, lets face it, I expect the creditors of the club were rather less surprised by the news of administration than they were to hear that Maison felt any responsibility to them at all.
Last Monday when the news was announced, rather than acknowledge his own starring role in the farcical running of the club over the last two years, Maison blamed an un-named "vexatious" former employee who, according to our loveable owner, was determined to see the club wound up.
Let's look a little closer at this shall we?
It's no secret that that the person Maison was referring to was Ian Hipkiss, a Halesowen man and the club's excellent former groundsman, who had given up a secure full time position with Walsall to come back to the club he has followed since childhood.
Hipkiss told the Halesowen News: "The first three months were great but then I stopped being paid. I have been through hell this year. I have not been able to pay my mortgage payments and put food on the table. I am owed over £7,500 in unpaid wages... I have not had a pay slip since January and just could not carry on anymore.”
Vexatious? A vexatious legal action is defined as being "instituted without sufficient grounds and serving only to cause annoyance to the defendant." Sorry Maison, but Ian Hipkiss is anything but. Faced with the financial hardship that follows from not being paid what is contractually due, he had only one option and he took it. The only surprise is that he didn't do it sooner.
But I doubt anyone is taken in by Maison's tactics. Previously he had no problem in launching an attack on the Yeltz Trust and Robert McNaughton without whom there would be no football at all at the Grove this season. In fact, the only person he doesn't see fit to blame in this whole sorry mess is himself. Then again, that doesn't really matter. Let him bleat on as much as he likes in his feeble attempts to make honourable people like Ian Hipkiss scapegoats for his dealings. We know who really is to blame and Maison sees his face everytime he looks in a mirror.
