Fair play to our clubs, says Respect manager

The Football Association's Respect manager Phil Bradey is hailing the "phenomenal" performances of the league’s managers and coaches after the EVO-STIK League was named as the most sporting competition in the top levels of Non-League Football for the fourth time in five seasons.

The EVO-STIK League was unveiled on Wednesday as the winners of the FA National League System Steps 1-4 League Respect and Fair Play Award at the governing body’s 2013-14 Fair Play and Respect Awards.

Premier Division Skelmersdale United also helped the EVO-STIK League to a Respect double by winning the FA’s National League System Steps 1-4 Respect and Fair Play Club Award, the fifth time in five years a league club has scooped the coveted title.

Proud Bradley is now looking forward to heading to the Community Shield at Wembley next month to collect the league’s accolade alongside Skem chairman Arthur Gore and manager Tommy Lawson.

Bradley, pictured presenting Lancaster City with the EVO-STIK League's own First Division North Fair Play Award at June's annual awards night at Blackpool's Hilton Hotel, said: "I felt that this season’s reduction in dissent, although numerically our smallest percentage figure to date since we started our Respect programme in 2010, was in fact our best ever achievement because we had made it so difficult for ourselves to maintain such improvement.

"It is much more difficult to continue to achieve reductions when you are starting from a base of well under 400 dissent cautions while it is much easier for other competitions starting from well over 500 to record a significant and much higher percentage reduction.

"In season 2010-11 we achieved an 11 per cent reduction, in 2011-12 11.8 per cent and in 2012-13 a 9 per cent reduction per game played so to record a further reduction of 7.5 per cent was a phenomenal effort by the club chairman and managers who bought in to the programme.

"The majority of managers have been fantastic and realise now first hand the benefits of having fewer suspensions to deal with having clamped down on dissent and foul and abusive language. Their own technical behaviour marks have soared as well over the four years with 85 percent of ‘tech areas’ now being marked by referees as either 'excellent' or 'good' while 'poor' marks have been driven down from 3.6 per cent to 2.2 percent in the same period.

"Dismissals from the technical area have also come down by almost 40 per cent in the same period while the number of players dismissed for foul and abusive language is down by almost 30 per cent. None of this could have been achieved without the co-operation of our managers and chairmen.

"To those few clubs whose managers and chairmen are still not buying in to it I would say please give it a try – your club will, without a shadow of a doubt, be better off for it, both by way of results and by saving cash from less fines. I also have tools to help that have been drawn up with the help of managers with proven track records."

Bradley was particularly pleased with Skelmersdale United landing the national club award and added: "I am thrilled for them particularly as it maintains a 100 per cent record for the league in this category and is a great reward for a board and management team prepared to buy in to Respect.

"Skem’s success just shows what can be achieved when there is a will to do so. In the first half of 2011-12 season they were, without doubt, a problem club on Respect issues, but the club’s board and in particular secretary Bryn Jones, said 'enough is enough' and implemented a zero tolerance policy to dissent."

Image courtesy of Graham Lindley