Stuart Kettlewell campaigns on dangers of strikers ‘making a back’ for defenders

Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell will maintain his campaign about the dangers of strikers “making a back” for defenders after potentially losing Liam Gordon for Saturday’s trip to face Hibernian.

Gordon landed heavily as he went head first over Marley Watkins’ back while challenging for a high ball during Wednesday’s goalless draw against Kilmarnock.

The Killie striker was booked and Kettlewell praised referee Don Robertson for recognising the danger.

“It wasn’t a concussion but we will have to assess him,” Kettlewell said after Gordon suffered two neck and head knocks in the game.

“The first one’s a challenge that I’ve been speaking about for a long time. It’s the one where the defender goes to attack the ball… I keep talking about this ‘making a back’, as they call it in rugby.

“We’ve actually got a still where he goes full length and he’s landing on a really hard surface and it’s his neck and his head that’s breaking the fall.

“There’s a lot of complaints about Marley Watkins getting yellow carded, but it’s nailed on for me in this modern day.

“I don’t think that the striker’s trying to hurt him, but again, you look at rugby, that’s a sending-off offence in rugby.

“That’s not necessarily what I’m suggesting, it’s just that we really need to be careful with those ones.

“But the referee saw it and from me trying to be a pioneer of talking about that exact instant, then it’s a small step forward that the referee recognised it.

“It’s arguably the most dangerous one that you’re going to get in any sport, not just football.

“It’s not trying to be tell-tales, it’s not trying to grass on anybody, for want of a better phrase. It’s just that we’re trying to bring this to people’s attention, we have done for a long time.

“Because what do we do? Does it take Liam Gordon with a really serious head or neck injury there before we actually start to say, ‘oh, we need to watch this’?

“I’m not saying that there’s any malice from Marley Watkins. But you need to understand when the opposition player’s off the ground, you need to leave that one.”

As well as pushing for the referees’ department to clamp down on the practice, Kettlewell was consistent with his message to his own strikers.

“It’s something we speak about on a daily basis, try to educate them within training, because the last thing we want is one of your strikers does it to one of your centre-backs and you end up with a serious injury,” he said.

On the subject of player safety, Kettlewell echoed Dundee United manager Jim Goodwin’s concerns over the festive schedule after the rearranged game with Killie was added on to their busiest spell of the season.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t think we had to squeeze that one in amongst all of this.

“We’ve had plenty of muscle injuries and I thought we looked a wee bit tired and I thought our reflexes and our reactions were a wee bit slow.

“Now the focus comes to getting to five o’clock against Hibs on Saturday with the best performance that we possibly can to see if we can get ourselves a result and then I need to give the players a couple of days off.

“I’m no huge fan of days off but they’ve ran a race to this point. They really have and Jim’s absolutely right. We’re at the stage where we’re majorly risking injury.

“I think we’ve played potentially a game or two extra on some of the English clubs that have got far greater resources and far bigger squads than us.”