FORMER Tivoli Gardens National Premier League head coach Lenworth Hyde Snr has hit back at club chairman Edward Seaga for the manner in which he was dismissed on Saturday, on the eve of the 38th and final round of the 2009/2010 Digicel Premier League.

Football coaches worldwide are fired in various ways for various reasons, but Hyde Snr was fired immediately after submitting his team’s starting list over the telephone by Seaga, who is also the head of the Premier League Clubs Association (PLCA).

“I don’t like how it was done and the reason. If you say you are firing me because I didn’t give you back the trophy this year no problem. But to say (the reason is because of) the team that I pick and the discipline (of the players)…if you give me a work to do, then allow me. You have to make players respect you.”

The coach revealed that he received a telephone call from Seaga “on Saturday morning after we finished training about 11:30 and he asked me for the team for Sunday’s game. I gave him the team over the phone and he said that team can’t work because he doesn’t want to be humiliated on his home ground,” Hyde told the Observer yesterday.

Tivoli Gardens were hosting champions-elect Harbour View on the final day of the season where the Digicel Premier League (DPL) trophy would be presented to the ‘Stars of the East’ with celebrations expected.

Tivoli without Hyde and his assistant Max Straw, were coached by Desmond Francis for the game which they eventually lost 1-2.

Seaga countered that Hyde was starting the same team that lost the previous three games. “When he presented me with the team I looked at it and I said it is the same team you played the last three games and get beaten with it. Change the team and it never changed so…”

The former Jamaican prime minister added: “…we have been having that problem right throughout the season.”

Hyde, one of the premier league’s top coaches with three championships under his belt, having won with Hazard United (now Portmore United in 2002/03), Harbour View (2006/07) and Tivoli Gardens (2008/09), said he was standing up for what he believed in.

“He changed up the team and still lose. You can’t have a coach and he can’t discipline the players. If you are running the programme the players have to go by what you say or they won’t respect you as the coach,” Hyde noted.

“You have some players living a stone’s throw away from the field and reaching half an hour late and players living in Portmore reaching before them. I can’t accept that. You can’t give me a job then come tell me what to do. I am not into that. I am qualified and I know what I am doing. If you want to coach come put on your gear and come,” he insisted.

Seaga also said that Hyde’s training methods were not helping the players, as they would be tired on match days. “The players are objecting to the way in which they are handled. Any little infringement he stops them from playing and defies the club of their value and use.

“We could have other ways of disciplining them and if I kept him here I would have lost several players. I have spoken to him about it several times, but he won’t change,” Seaga pointed out.

But Hyde stood firm in his defence of his training methods, which he said brought success last season.

“That is my stance from long time, that’s why I win on many occasions. I stick to the discipline and know how it must run and win cups. I won’t change.”

According to Hyde, his coaching style enabled two players to get invited to the national programme. “Jerry Walters get call for the first time because of our preparation. He came to Tivoli and we won with him and it did him the world of good.”

He also made mention of former Harbour View player Lovel Palmer, now playing for Houston Dynamo in the US Major League Soccer, who told him of how difficult a task it is to cope with football at that level.

“Lovel (Palmer) left here in good condition and went up there and he told me that he thought he was fit…he has to be working from 18-yard box to 18-yard box in the MLS,” Hyde pointed out.

“If we don’t prepare the players to manage that level of football we won’t reach any where,” he added.

“From we lose to Village and never had a chance (to win the League), players stopped training. I never see anything wrong with the team but he changed it.”

Hyde, also one of Jamaica’s most successful coaches, who said he was dismissed under similar circumstances while at Harbour View, and who was in charge of the Portmore team in the early part of their championship season in 2004/05 before being rotated with Paul Young but ended up being the assistant, is reluctant to coach at that level for next season.

“I don’t know yet. I have reservation when these things happen so often and I won’t change my style. You can’t have the owner of the team dictating. If you want to pick the team come and train the team. You can’t be in your office asking ‘what happen to that player and what happen to that player’,” lamented Hyde.