Swindon Town’s manager, Ian Holloway, has suggested the struggling League Two club’s bad fortune could be because their training ground is haunted.
Swindon, who are a point above the relegation zone after two league wins all season, are without their captain, Ollie Clarke, after he ruptured a tendon in his ankle during training last week. Holloway claimed there are “some really, really strange things happening” and said he would be asking his wife, Kim, to “cleanse the area” because Swindon’s training ground, in Calne, is near an ancient burial site.
“I’m absolutely devastated so I’m going to try to cleanse the training ground area because people are telling me it’s haunted,” Holloway told BBC Radio Wiltshire. “Seriously, there’s a graveyard somewhere near. I’m not joking.
“I think our training ground is very close to an ancient burial site so I’m going to get my wife to come up and say sorry to all these people and hopefully we’ll have a bit more luck. But you have to earn your luck.”
Holloway said he would stop short of going to the lengths of the former Birmingham manager Barry Fry, who reportedly urinated in each corner of the pitch at St Andrew’s to ward off a supposed curse on the club.
“I don’t want to do what he did, I think he had to urinate on the corners of his pitch but I’m going to get my wife to come up with her sage,” Holloway said. “I’ve done the old Glastonbury stuff and the hail and welcome, all of that, great if you believe it. Do I? I’m not really sure but I’m going to get it just to try, just to help because there’s some strange things happening. Really, really strange.”
Holloway, who last month replaced the sacked Mark Kennedy on a contract until the end of the season, can register his first league win against bottom club Morecambe on Saturday. A colourful character, the 61-year-old whose last managerial post was at Grimsby four years ago, praised forward Danny Butterworth for his equaliser in last weekend’s 2-2 draw at Accrington Stanley.
“The Swindon Messi, that’s what the lads are calling him in there,” Holloway said afterwards. “It warmed my heart because he deserved it. He dribbled, he ran – I don’t know how many people he fooled – and he drove it into the bottom corner.”
