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The former manager of Leicester has disclosed some of the reasons behind his asking and how he started dating one of his female players.
Willie Kirk was fired by the club six weeks ago after being in a relationship with a female player was revealed.
The question of whether it is ever acceptable for a manager and a player to breach that boundary was raised by his dismissal.
1. Kirk dating a female team player
After being fired in March, Kirk has been silent, but he has now spoken about the situation during an exclusive interview with Daily Mail.
Kirk claims he wishes to accept responsibility for his deeds. He does, however, also wish to correct the record.
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Ex-Leicester City boss said, “There are several things I need to get off my chest. First of all, me and my wife have been separated for over a year. I think people just now are going “he’s a bad coach, he’s a bad husband, he’s a bad human.”
2. Breaking the club policy
After the start of the new season and in the months that followed, Kirk got an unexpected approach from one of the players.
Kirk continued, “One of the players contacted me away from work to express their feelings for me. I said “that is ridiculous” and just shut it down. That was that.”
Kirk claims that throughout the ensuing months, he turned down numerous approaches. I repeatedly closed it down, telling them that "there is a code of conduct; it's never going to happen."
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However, the player's injury at the close of the previous season caused things to shift. “I think this is what justified it to us. She picked up an injury at the tail end of the calendar year and was doing her rehab away from the training ground.
“Just before Christmas, I agreed to meet on a personal level. She was injured so it wasn’t going to stop me from doing my job because she couldn’t be selected.
“I was trying to justify it to myself, which never made it right. After Christmas we started seeing each other once a week, so she’d come here, or the week after I’d go to hers.’
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3. Travelling with the female player
During the international break in February, Kirk and his partner took a gamble that ended up being crucial.
Kirk continued, “I said I was going to go away for a few days to Milan. And she said, why do we not go away together? I told her that was a step too far, but eventually, we agreed to a few days away.
“We convinced each other that we could do it. We flew out on different days and spent two nights in Italy then we got separate flights back.
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“When we came back, we said, I think this has gone too far, we need to knock this on the head until the end of the season and either I’ll leave the club or you’ll leave the club. We had agreed we were taking too much of a risk.”
Kirk was unaware that a Women's Super League official had found out about his relationship and had reported him to Leicester.
“I got pulled into a meeting saying there had been a complaint made about me and the club lawyer would be in touch and the external lawyers would arrange an investigation. Ten days came and went.
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“We were building up to the FA Cup game against Liverpool. Fifteen minutes before the last training session on the Friday, I got pulled into the office by the women’s director and the internal lawyer was there and I just knew what it was.
“They said we need you to be honest with us “Are you in a relationship with a player? We know all about it, we know you’ve been to Italy, we know it started just before Christmas.”
Following a three-week examination into the relationship, Kirk was fired. He filed an appeal for the ruling but it was unsuccessful. The player remained at the club despite her involvement.
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