Is AFC Wimbledon's oversight worse than Milan's ref fixing? The FA must show some common sense and re-think AFC Wimbledon's 18-point deduction for fielding an ineligible player.
Richard Williams February 27, 2007 The Guardian AFC Wimbledon returned to the top of the Ryman Premier League on Saturday after a 3-2 home win over Billericay Town. But a very big shadow hangs over the continued success of the team whose achievements, including two promotions in the 4½ years of their existence, give pleasure to anyone unable to shake off the belief that football clubs are not mere franchises with souls that can be bought and sold by strangers. Sometime in the next week or two the Football Association will consider the appeal of AFC - as they are known to their fans - against an 18-point deduction imposed when it was discovered that they had failed to complete the proper registration procedures for a player who had represented them in league and cup fixtures. When Jermaine Darlington joined the club last October, he became the first man to play competitive football for both AFC Wimbledon and Wimbledon FC, in whose colours he appeared before his career took him to Watford and Cardiff City. It was because AFC did not declare that he had previously been registered with a foreign governing body - the Welsh FA - while playing for Cardiff in the English league that they have been thrown out of the FA Trophy and docked all the points earned from the league matches in which he appeared. The fact that the process of regularising Darlington's position took a couple of hours and the exchange of two emails suggests that this was never exactly the crime of the century. Nor, it seems transparently clear, was it the result of anything other than an oversight. A 32-year-old left-sided midfield player versatile enough to have filled in at right-back in Saturday's victory, Darlington left Cardiff by mutual consent after a series of injury problems. His contract was terminated and, in effect, he retired. Some time after returning to the London area, however, he started playing for a Sunday amateur team in north London and discovered that he could get by. Dave Ambrose, AFC's manager, heard about it and, knowing Darlington from their early days together at Aylesbury, invited him to turn out for the reserve team. When that went well, he was moved up to the first-team squad. Erik Samuelson, AFC's chief executive, told me yesterday that the problem came to light only when Darlington got himself booked in their FA Trophy third-round victory over Gravesend and Northfleet. When his caution was processed through the FA database, Wimbledon's failure to register his switch from the Welsh to the English FA showed up. Believing that his last club had been the amateur outfit in north London, they failed to tick the box marked "yes" next to the question asking whether the player's registration had been held by a foreign association. For that they were thrown out of the Trophy with no right of appeal, costing them around £12,000 in repaid prize money, before the Ryman League authorities announced the 18-point penalty, which would put them down to 12th place in the current standings. It seems typical of AFC that their fans, who created the club when the old Wimbledon left town to become Milton Keynes Dons, should respond to the bad news by producing a season's best home attendance of 2,963 against Bromley at Kingsmeadow two weeks ago. Petitions are being organised in time for the appeal, and Jim Sturman, a prominent QC who also acts for Chelsea, has told the club that he will represent their case without a fee all the way to the High Court and the European Court, if necessary (as the first man to earn £1m from legal aid work, he can presumably afford it). According to Samuelson, there is a diversity of views among their Ryman Premier rivals. "There are people who say that rules are rules. There are those who prefer to stay out of it. And there are those who've written to say they think it's crazy." As he points out, the scale of the punishment appears even more absurd when compared with those inflicted on the game's grandees for far more serious offences. "Look at AC Milan," he said. "An eight-point deduction for four years of trying to influence referees. We believe that we're the victims of a ludicrously disproportionate penalty." So do I. And at a time when the FA and the Premier League can smooth the passage of Javier Mascherano from Corinthians to Liverpool via West Ham, thus overriding Fifa's ruling that no one can play for more than two clubs in any given year, it seems to confirm that there is one law for the big battalions and another for the minnows. Here, surely, is an opportunity for the authorities to show some common sense. http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/02/27/is_afc_wimbledons_oversight_wo. html [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Check out the new improvements in Yahoo! Groups email. http://us.click.yahoo.com/4It09A/fOaOAA/yQLSAA/GtUolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Please use [email protected] for general discussion. To unsubscribe send a blank message (from the email account in question) to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Join as a full member of IMUSA today: http://www.imusa.org/join.htm Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/imusa/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/imusa/join (Yahoo! 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