Barnsley head coach reflects on 'really good job' after M5 coach fire
The football club's coach caught fire on the M5, just south of Cheltenham, following their 1-0 win against Exeter last Saturday
Barnsley’s head coach has been reflecting on last week’s coach fire as they travelled back from Exeter City.
Neill Collins has called it a ‘narrow and very lucky escape’ following the terrifying incident on the M5 last Saturday.
Personal possessions, club equipment and football boots were all engulfed in the flames as they were coming back from their 1-nil win against Exeter, just south of Cheltenham, when their coach was forced to pull over onto the hard shoulder, with players at the back raising the alarm.
Soon after, a terrifying blaze ripped through the coach, destroying everything left on board.
Everyone on the coach was luckily safely evacuated before the fire took hold, helped by the medical equipment - including gas and air - which further fuelled what the football club has called an 'inferno' on the side of the road.
Neill Collins said: “First and foremost, we’re very fortunate that everyone’s fine – everyone’s good.
“No one foresees anything like that happening, but thankfully everyone was able to stay calm and get off the bus. The police came and made sure everyone was safe. We obviously lost a lot of personal items, which isn’t the ideal experience for anyone to go through, but everyone handled it really well and we managed to get home safe.
“The boys at the back said the bus was on fire and the engine lights were coming on, so the bus driver did an excellent job of getting pulled over as quickly as possible enabling us to get off the bus as quickly as possible.
“It all happened, I’d say, within a minute. There was a problem, we pulled over and got everyone off the bus and got everyone to safety, and before you know it the bus was on fire – it was as quick as that.”
“You start with the most basic things like football boots – I think some players lost three or four pairs of football boots and anyone who buys them know they’re very expensive.
“You go into the equipment that we take; the equipment manager does an amazing job. There’s the fitness side of it and their equipment, the coaching staff and media staff have lost laptops, I’ve lost my phone that’s got everything on it, my hard drive with all my work. There’s some painful lessons.
“In hindsight, you can say you wish you’d grabbed this or that, but I think everyone did a really good job.
“Jon Russell was on the side of the motorway with no shoes on – that’s how quickly it happened; he had bin bags on his feet!
“It was certainly not the way we expected to spend our Saturday night!”
Collins, who used to work with the Tampa Bay Rowdies, has seen incidents of adversity in the past, having seen cancellations and long stays at airport - and his house finding iteslf in the eye of a storm.
He said: “When you talk about the experience I had in Tampa, I wasn’t involved in a fire, but we had three or four travelling ordeals where you had to come together.
“We had a hurricane come through Tampa and one of our staff, his house was in the eye of the storm, and he thought he was going to lose his house. The Club evacuated everyone, but then we also had to fly to California that weekend – bearing in mind we’d just been in the middle of a week where we had to board up our houses.
“It’s slightly different, but the principles are the same that people are out of their comfort zone or two or three travelling trips where people were on the road for 14 hours or whatever. So, the other night, getting home at 4am wasn’t ideal, but I feel as though I’ve been through this.
“It’s no coincidence that we’ve had some great away performances, but on Saturday night the players and coaching staff stayed calm and stuck together, and I think it’s a credit to the players who are here, the players who have come in and some of the work that’s been done in the past year. So, hopefully we continue to grow as a team.”
Barnsley FC have thanked Cheltenham Town FC, who provided their coach to enable the safe return to Barnsley of their players and staff.