Delta Motors Corporation President Ricardo Silverio backed the firing at halftime of Fort Acuna as Toyota coach during the third game of the 1980 PBA All-Filipino Conference championship series against Crispa.
Silverio backs firing of Acuna
By Lito Fernandez
Bulletin Today
Published Sunday Dec. 14, 1980
“If I was there, I would have kicked him in the ass.”
Thus said Ricardo C. Silverio, president of the Delta Motor Corp., yesterday in support of the decision to fire Fortunato Acuna as coach of the Toyota Tamaraws.
Acuna, a former Tamaraw himself, was fired by Pablo Carlos, Jr., Toyota team manager and vice president of the same firm, during the halftime of the Toyota-Crispa game last Thursday at the Araneta Coliseum.
In a press statement last Friday, Carlos said he was forced to fire Acuna because “he ignored me three times” during the first half of the game when he (Carlos) asked Acuna why he was not using Jaworski.
Silverio made the statement after Jaworski and the rest of the team, accompanied by Carlos, made a courtesy call at his Delta Motor office following a press conference called by Toyota at a Makati hotel.
“I feel sorry for him because he’s a nice boy,” said Silverio. “I’m surprised why he changed all of a sudden. I just cannot understand why he did that.”
“Nobody is indispensable in this organization,” added Silverio, who was recently appointed presidential project director for softball.
Asked whether Toyota would hire a new coach next year, Silverio said: “We definitely will get a new coach next year. Right now, however, we don’t have any specific person in mind.”
What about Dante Silverio, the former coach of the Tamaraws?
“Dante is very busy. He is really getting involved in our business.
“To begin with, Dante is not a coach. He’s not also a player. But he became a good coach because he put his heart into it.”
The 51-year-old top man of Delta said they have big plans for the team.
“We intend to keep the team. We’ll make it stronger. We owe it to the public to give them a good game, win or lose,” he said.
Silverio said the budget of the team for one year is about P4 million.
He said:
“We don’t make any money for participating in the PBA. The share we get from the PBA is not even enough for the food of the players. The only good thing we get is the recognition of the public…the prestige.”
Silverio said Acuna should have approached him when the so-called “leadership crisis” hit the team.
He said he had a high regard for Acuna as a coach. “We did not discuss his performance even after that loss to U-Tex in the first conference. It’s very unfortunate that this had to happen.”
Earlier at the press conference, Carlos, who handled the Toyota team in the second half of last night’s match as a “coordinator,” called the fired Toyota coach as “insincere, incompetent and inadequate.”
Carlos, who is also the project director for bowling, had said in his press statement that it was never his intention to interfere with the fielding of players, “but the situation Thursday night, when Acuna kept Jaworski in the bench for two quarters, was something different.”
Acuna held his own conference the following day where he said that Jaworski had been the cause of the rift in the team. In the same conference, he labelled Jaworski as “immature and insecure.”
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