As football’s ugly side, in this case the pathetic brawl between Crawley and Bradford at Valley Parade back in March, still has ratifications for those who were involved, it is Rotherham manager Steve Evans who has again been hit with punishment to plunge his reputation further into the low embers of footballing disrespect.
Evans, then manager of Crawley, will serve a 6 game stadium ban at new club Rotherham after being found guilty on a charge of indecent behaviour on that night which saw a plethora of punishments handed out for those involved in ugly scenes.
This, on top of previous misdemeanours including tax evasion and an investigation into financial irregularities from which he picked up an £8,000 fine. This murky record, which is coloured further by a long line of touch-line fines his volatile nature has picked up, paints Evans as, to understate, not the nicest of characters.
It remains strange then, to a degree, that Rotherham United, a club self-proclaimed as progressive, with a new stadium and bold aims for promotion after narrowly missing out on promotion from League Two last year, would find Evans employable. Yes, the Scotsman has proved his worth on the pitch by promoting Crawley to the Football League and played a significant part in gaining a successive elevation to League One, but the bad headlines the man seems to attract are enough to be a significant compromise for such success.
Rotherham have not started the season well either, with just seven points racked up from 5 games and a 6-2 defeat away at Port Vale occurring two days before Evans discovered his fate in front of a court over March’s disgrace. After a match which the Millers’ hierarchy described as a “reality check”, they will now be without their manager’s touch-line presence for the next 6 games as the ban comes into effect with immediate effect.
Evans would justify his departure from Crawley to the newly built New York Stadium on the premise that the huge finances available to him at the Red Devils, another reason for the masses of lower league contempt aimed towards Evans’ character, had began to dry up whilst Rotherham, boosted by the sale of Adam Le Fondre, began to prepare for an assault on promotion.
Why they decided to opt for Evans and his long line of idiocy and in some cases, criminal activity, to guide them to it is a question that continues to become even more difficult to answer, with every charge the manager recieves.