Allen coach George Clay said he did nothing wrong at all-star game

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/

FROM KEITH GROLLER

Allen football coach George Clay was not happy with how he was portrayed in my column this morning on the McDonald's Lehigh Valley All-Star Football Classic.

He said he has received at least two dozen text messages and other phone calls asking him what he was doing in some kind of heated situation near the end of Thursday night's game in Nazareth.

A skirmish broke out near the opposing sideline and Clay said his only involvement was as peacemaker, trying to get members of his Red (Lehigh, Carbon and Monroe) team away from the kids on the opposing Gold (Northampton, Phillipsburg, Palisades) team and back to their own sideline.

Clay said he never had to be restrained, and in fact, said he said nothing to elicit trouble.

However, Pen Argyl coach Paul Reduzzi did seem to have a problem with Clay and clearly expressed his anger with him. I am not the only one who witnessed at least a brief, heated exchange and a few people rushing in to get things calmed down.

But George feels he didn't deserve to be singled out, and as such, I wanted to give him the chance to express his opinion and set the record straight.

Clay, in my opinion, has done a very good job at Allen. He is a good fit for the kids in that program and has set the right tone. The Canaries made vast improvement last year under his leadership. I always considered him to be one of the more mild-mannered coaches on the local scene.

Certainly, nothing that happened last night should change that opinion nor tarnish his reputation.

As I said in the column, it was a football game. Emotions are going to run high. In many ways, it was impressive to see the kids and coaches compete as hard and with the passion they possessed. You'd much rather see them play hard than go through the motions.

While things definitely did flare, they cooled down in a hurry and there was never a moment in the postgame session where you thought things would get out of control. There were no problems during the handshake line.

All in all, it was just a good old fashioned football game and a good night for a great cause.