GARY TEALE, the St Mirren manager, has revealed that nobody at the club is making light of the training ground incident that saw Steven Thompson accidentally stab team-mate John McGinn in the leg with a pole.
Coverage of the "Spear-gate" story has "gone viral" on the internet, with many newspapers and broadcasters from England, the Republic of Ireland and beyond carrying coverage of the bizarre episode that left McGinn on crutches and in danger of missing the rest of the season. The midfielder will undergo a scan on Tuesday to gauge the extent of the damage to his thigh caused when Thompson executed "some kind of Ninja move" and threw a pole towards the ground that somehow ended up in McGinn's leg.
The incident has been treated light-heartedly by many but not at St Mirren, with Teale admitting he did not see the funny side of losing his midfielder to a needless injury as his team battles desperately to avoid relegation to the SPFL Championship.
"I've obviously lost a player to an injury so I'm not making light of it at all," he told Herald Sport. "I don't think Thommo is making light of it either. He was really shocked that it happened as he never intended it. It was just a freak training ground accident. I've never come across anything like that before in all my time in football and I wouldn't expect to come across it again. Thommo has shown a lot of remorse from it. You can't put it into the category of "it's just one of these things that happens" because it's not. It was an accident. There was no anger, frustration, intent or anything like that. It was just something silly that went on.
"I spoke to Thommo about it at the time. He knew himself as soon as he did it that he was in the wrong. He's shown a lot of remorse and hopefully we can soon put the incident to bed."
St Mirren's victory over Kilmarnock on Saturday keeps alive their slim chances of avoiding the drop and Teale admitted it would be a blow to lose McGinn for the last four matches.
"John is going for a scan on Tuesday and he could be out for the rest of the season now. We hope not but we won't know until we see the results. You don't want to lose good players out of your side, certainly not because of incidents like this. We just hope he's back as soon as possible.
"As a team we'll just keep going. We owe it to our fans to keep performing. It's been a disappointing season but if we can get four good performances like we showed on Saturday it will give the supporters some encouragement."
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