We Just Couldn't Please Everyone

As administrators, we are quite used to people at this time of year saying “Have a good summer…” but those in the know realize this is our busiest time of year.

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I made the mistake some time ago of saying I didn’t think that anything new could come up which could trouble me as chairman. How wrong could I be!

In the last couple of years, I’ve had one club go into liquidation [Thamesmead Town], a club trying to sign a player who was the subject of a Banning Order and a warning from The FA that there were “suspicious betting patterns” about a match. No-one, however, could have possibly foreseen Covid-19.

We know what happened, all football was suspended and Steps 3-7 saw their seasons terminated and records expunged. This was ratified by The FA Council but then challenged by a number of clubs, resulting in an arbitration under FA Rule K. The award of the tribunal was issued this week.

The leagues have not been able to comment until now because of the threat of arbitration but we now know that the challenge by one club, initially supported by others, has failed in its entirety (see page 7). It is worth stating what the leagues had to do at that time.

Let us remember that, in the middle of March, events were happening so quickly we did not know which way to turn.

One weekend, the Isthmian League had a full fixture list but clubs were advised not to have the “Respect” handshake. Our last matches were played on March 11 with all matches for the weekend of March 14 later canceled. Matters changed not just every day but literally by the hour.

Football was suspended from March 21 and no matches have been played since.

It was about that time we all learned about Zoom. The only Zoom I had known previously was a Lyons iced lolly back in the day! Now suddenly we were having video conferences once or twice a day.