Ian Evatt insists Bolton Wanderers did not consider cancelling their game against Morecambe and believes his players channelled their emotions in the right way to the clash being temporarily suspended and got a point out of it.
Wanderers drew 1-1 against the Shrimps thanks to Amadou Bakayoko's late equaliser cancelled out Cole Stockton's opener, which came after Ricardo Almeida Santos was shown a red card and James Trafford had saved Stockton's subsequent penalty.
But the game was marred by off the pitch incidents, with allegations of racist abuse and spitting towards the Bolton dugout, Wanderers boss Ian Evatt said after the game.
The match was suspended for 10 minutes as both sets of players were taken off the Mazuma Stadium pitch following the allegations of racist abuse directed towards the Wanderers dugout.
Evatt believes stopping the game for a time was the correct course of action, but did not entertain the idea of cancelling the fixture.
He feels if that had been done, then those who undertake actions such as racist abuse are 'winning' as he believes a line was crossed at the Mazuma Stadium.
Evatt said: “Postponing was the right thing to do temporarily. If we cancelled the game, the people that are doing these things are winning. They can’t affect society and games and everything else the way they are doing. Their behaviour is unacceptable.
"I hope they get banned. I hope the police are involved, I don’t know any of that right now, but we all heard it and the racist remark was what tipped everything over the edge, but there was a lot, lot more before it.
“The guy that made the racist remark ran out the stadium as quickly as possible, so he knew, and we knew and, we will not accept it.
"If it happens to one of us, then it happens to us all and I’m not willing to stand there and carry on doing my job when people cross the line like that and they crossed the line, there’s no doubt about it."
The officials permitted 10 more minutes of play to make up for the temporary postponement, during which time Bakayoko scored a dramatic equaliser which led to jublilant celebrations.
Evatt explained the message he gave to the dressing room before heading out, and that he is proud of them for their response and would not apologise for their behaviour, which he felt was brilliant.
He said: “I just said for all our upset, all our emotion, we have to keep our discipline but channel it in the right way and go and get something out of the game because that will hurt them the most and we did so I’m so proud of them.
“At the end of the day, we are human beings and we don’t deserve to be abused like that from minute one until minute 90 and we need protection and we need it stamping out of the game and if emotions spill out we are only human, so I can only apologise for that, but I’m certainly not going to apologise for the way my players behaved today.
"I thought they were brilliant.”
