The Pars, The SFA and the Integrity of Scottish Football

Yesterday’s decision by an SFA Appeals Committee to overturn the band handed to Dunfermline Athletic for fielding an ineligible player is astonishing, The Pars have been told they must replay the match, this time away from home, and they have also been handed various fines totalling around £30,000.

The initial ban was imposed by the SFA’s Emergency Committee. This Committee is a small group comprised of the top office bearers of the SFA. President George Peat, Vice President Campbell Ogilvie and Chief Executive Gordon Smith were three of the five men involved. The rules of the SFA do not state what punishment should be applied in a case of this nature. Instead, the Emergency Committee are empowered to deal with the offending club ‘as they see fit’.

Dunfermline’s decision to appeal was based on the severity of the punishment. They did not deny that they had breached the regulations but their argument was that punishments handed down to other clubs had been less severe. No two situations have been exactly the same so it is difficult to be sure about the relevance of previous instances.

The Appeals Committee is made up of a independent QC and several ‘ordinary’ SFA Council members – not office bearers of the Association. The presence of the QC is partly to advise on points of law. In Scots law precedent is all important. Their decision to overturn the cup ban given to Dunfermline must cast doubt on the ability of the Emergency Committee to undertake their work. Messrs Peat, Ogilvie and Smith have been over-ruled when trying to apply their own rules. The punishment they came up with has been deemed to be exscessive. The oft-quoted maxim that the SFA make up the rules as they go along never seems to have been more appropriate.

Even the decision to replay the game at Stenhousemuir defies precedent and logic. Any other time when a match has been effectively nullified, the replay takes place on the same ground as the first game. It is not, in fact, a replay. It is a re-staging of the first game.

This time the replay is a one-off game to be played to a finish. This is a sensible decision but it does contradict precedent and the SFA rules.

Dunfermline are delighted to have a second chance, despite having fielded a player who was not eligible to take part in the first game. Stenhousemuir, who did not lodge a protest, but trusted the SFA to investigate the matter and deal with it, are left confused.

After their win over Morton it is Celtic who await the winners. That means a major pay day for either Stenhousemuir or Dunfermline. If it is Dunfermline who go through then it seems to suggest that cheating pays off. OK, they may have not intended to break the rules, but that has never been much of a defence in a case such as this.

And all this on the same day that the SFA issued a statement saying they would not allow clubs to change names because it called into question the integrity of the game.

Integrity? Scottish football? Aye right.