Everton's Indonesia tour cancelled

The bad news just keeps on coming for Everton as news that the Indonesia tour has been cancelled.

Those of you familiar with my views of these pre-season foreign tours will probably assume that I would be quite grateful that this tour has been cancelled.

But when the team were supposed to be boarding a plane to Jakarta yesterday, the problem now is that while I think our pre-season schedule would have been better off including a better standard of opposition and involving less travelling time and more concentration on preparation for the new season with fitness work rather than global marketing exercises, we now have nothing prepared over the next week.

We were scheduled to fly out yesterday, play against a Malaysian XI on Friday before playing either Galatasaray or Indonesia on Sunday.

But news that Galatasaray had pulled out of the tournament started to raise question marks about the future of the Java Cup.

It had been suggested that Uruguayan side Nacional had been drafted in as a replacement, but they later denied their involvement.

Once suggestions regarding whether or not tickets had even been sold in advance of the tournament and questions regarding security were being raised, Everton officials decided to cancel the trip.

"Club officials here in the UK and our forward planning/security team deployed to Jakarta at the weekend have repeatedly asked for clarity and assurances from the organisers on the issues but unfortunately have not received the answers we required in the time frame necessary to ensure our participation.

"We are grateful for the support today of the Indonesian government in this matter, however the unresolved issues mean that the risk of travelling was too great.

"This decision was not taken lightly and we apologise for the obvious inconvenience caused to our supporters who have made, or were planning to make the trip and to our Indonesian fans who were looking forward to seeing Everton in action. an Everton spokesman told the media.

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