By Albatross
April 19 2005

We all knew Jack Ross wanted to return to Scotland - however the AWOL Hartlepool United man has soured relations with the club after whinging publicly to the Scottish Press about Pools not tearing up his 2 year contract after less than 12 months. The article in the Daily Record has Ross basically moaning about the fact that he's not been allowed to leave Pools and return to Scotland, and seems to indicate that relations between him and Cooper have broken down completely. He's been back in Scotland for three weeks, he says, and has only had one brief call from Cooper.

To be honest, I'm disappointed in Ross; not so much in that he's homesick and wants to go back to Scotland, but in the way he's handling things. He'd come across in articles I'd read as an articulate, thinking footballer; now, he seems to have turned into just another petulant player that doesn't want to honour the contract he signed and thinks he should be allowed to do as he pleases.

He wants Pools to tear up his contract, and is talking about being prepared to give up football completely rather than return to the club; but there is very little recognition from Jack that Pools have reasons of their own not to do that. After all, we have made a considerable investment in Ross: no doubt he collected a nice signing-on fee when he agreed to join us from Clyde, he's been (even by his own admission) well-paid, and has spent plenty of time on the sidelines, necessitating a knee operation and physiotherapy due to a problem that happened before he'd even kicked a ball for us. With another year of his contract to go we are entitled to ask for a transfer fee, if only to recoup some of that investment - it's hardly the club's fault that the Scottish game is in such a mess that most of the clubs that might be interested in him can't afford to pay a fee.

Ross seems to want to paint Pools as being the bad guys here, but past evidence seems to point in a different direction. Ryan McCann was allowed to leave by mutual consent when it was obvious that things weren't working out; and when Andy Jordan left earlier this season, in part due to personal problems, he went to great pains to say how understanding the club had been. Ross moans that things have taken too long, that he's never settled, in fact seems to want to blame the club for his failure to do so - what a contrast!

By going public like this Ross has undoubtedly done himself more harm than good. It's been out in the open that he wants to return to Scotland for some time; and like a lot of people I was expecting that to happen this summer one way or another. It would have been disappointing, but I doubt too many Pools fans would have wished him ill. Now however it's a different matter. He's almost certainly never going to be welcome back at the club - even if he makes up with Cooper, I doubt the fans will be particularly forgiving. Indeed, if he does carry out what he's claimed he'll do and retires from the game in order to get out of his contract, there will probably be more than the odd fan saying "Good riddance". In the words of the song, "Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more...."