Mr. Mason said he had never asserted that the unions were responsible for the sabotage, suggesting that individual strikers may have acted on their own.
Speaking on the Sportsweek programme, Hurst, 69, said: "There is the opportunity, without Wayne, for the individual strikers to perform and ensure they play well in the first three games.
What's stranger, though, is the fact that, for possibly the first time, the government is trying to legislate the behaviour of individual strikers – in other words, they're trying to tell us how we should go about doing civil disobedience.
The squad is now seen for what it is: a group of committed but unexceptional players, albeit enlivened, as with many collective English enterprises (governments, armies) by one dashing individual, the striker Wayne Rooney.
"It was nice to see the two main strikers get the goals - and they were two good goals, the first well worked, the second a good individual strike".
In order to break the strike, guards apparently sought to enforce a policy of putting hunger strikers in individual accommodation, away from the communal parts of the camp.
Of United's individuals, Messi said England striker Wayne Rooney was a threat.
1 A key risk factor for the syndrome is starvation with early published reports being prisoners of war. 2 In recent times, refeeding syndrome has been confirmed in hunger strikers, individuals with anorexia nervosa and chronic alcoholics.
Dougie Freedman had levelled shortly before the interval, just as a cold air of pessimism was threatening to engulf the sparsely populated stands, and the Scottish striker doubled his individual tally 14 minutes from time as Walsall finally buckled under the pressure.
This was a majestic individual display by the Uruguayan striker, who left the field to a rapturous ovation and went down the tunnel with the match-ball under his arm.
