Yeo leaves with controversial interview.

By Nathan Jackson
June 10 2005

A highly controversial interview from ex-Lincoln striker, Simon Yeo reveals why players are leaving. Yeo, who agreed to join the New Zealand Knights last week has made rather shocking comments about the players' views on the hierarchy at Sincil Bank.

A lot of players are leaving Sincil Bank, Yeo being the first and he spoke out to the Lincolnshire Echo about reasons why he feels the players are leaving.

"The warning signs were there when we had to pay £65 each to have our wives and partners stay in our hotel on the Saturday night after the final. If that wasn't bad enough, there was then a blazing row over the play-off final shirts. The players wanted to keep them because they are a great memento. But the club said if we didn't give them back to auction we would have £200 taken out of our wages. I was only on £500 a week at the time. We kicked up a fuss and, in the end, they let us keep them."

"The lads knew the club was still struggling and looking at every possible avenue for increased revenue. But that hurt the players. Bearing in mind many of them had been in non-league, to reach a final in our first season was a magnificent achievement. The bonuses for reaching the play-offs were also poor and we had several meetings to try to get them improved."

This argument was well publishised at the time at many fans got on the side of the players and fully understood the sentimental value that the players held towards those shirts. Although 2003/4 went without major incident, the major turning point of the players happiness came at the beginning of 2005 when the club announced massive profits of £735,000 for the financial year and the players spoke out about how they felt they deserved to get a bonus for the 2 previous seasons.

"When the club revealed the profit, the players thought they were all going to get a slice of it as a thank you. After all, we had been to the play-offs two seasons in a row. When it became apparent we were not, we demanded a meeting with the board. We were told we would always come second best to the club and the players looked at each other in disbelief. What really stuck in the throat was players like Peter Gain, Alan Marriott and Paul Morgan all took pay cuts when the club was plunged into administration. They have become the club's best players, yet, despite all this profit, they are still on the same money. That lost the board a lot of respect and I would be lying if I said didn't affect the spirit."

Yeo has now departed along with several other big stars but some fans are far from happy with Yeo's rant and some fans have even gone as far to say that they were sorry they ever viewed Yeo as a "demi-god".