I’m going to try and be calm when I type this. I claim diminished responsibilty caused by extreme provocation in case I get into trouble.
As much as we deep down expected it, I cannot begin to type how utterly pissed off I am. It’s not so much the fact that we’re out of the FAT it’s the fact that now we have our season ruined. Why? Because a retired player who hadn’t played for six months is worthy of destroying a club’s campaign.
All that hard work in the FAT. The epic against Eastleigh. The joy against Aldershot. The reaction of everyone against Gravesend. All gone. Vanished. Irrelevant. Angry? Upset? I fucking am. It seems that no matter what we do, no matter how we try to better ourselves, to do things by the book, some cunt comes and throws a barbed wire fence in front of us.
Reading the statement, we’re going to have to return all the prize money. Which is going to be a bastard, but nothing a few whiprounds will sort out. Already, people are talking about fundraising.
Also:
“The committee concluded that further FA sanctions would not be appropriate and therefore there has been no fine imposed and the club is free to enter the FA Trophy in future seasons”.
Good of them. Guess what, we can come back next year out of the kindness of the FA’s hearts. They’re not such bad people after all. How considerate and kind on this otherwise lousy day. I feel better already.
Cocksuckers.
As for “The decision is final and binding and there can be no appeal.”, doesn’t that remind you of some past event?
If any outsider wonders why we get so pissed off with the FA, including today, read this. “Rules are rules”, some may say. No they fucking well aren’t. Remember that Koppout used Rule K for the first time ever? After he hadn’t exhausted all options? When we were fighting MK, Koppout could go to appeal after appeal after appeal. Once he got the go-ahead, it was shut up shop time, no further appeals. Today was a reminder of how the FA really thinks. Any organisation that suspends you for taking it to court for whatever reason is nothing short of dodgy.
In future, AFCW may as well instruct our players to go round breaking legs of oppo players. We might as well bully the ref every single game, and try to get 11 men sent off in one game. We might as well decide to go into administration to ensure we can write off every single debt. There’s a rather tidy six figure one outstanding. We sure as hell will stay in the competition and we certainly won’t get deducted 18 points.
The FA pick on small teams like us and Altrincham because they can. They want to appear forceful, and manly. “Ooh look”, they purr, “We’re able to fine and deduct points. Aren’t we authorative?”. Fuck off. Suck my fucking cock. The FA are cowards. Yellow streaked, spineless, gutless cowards. If they weren’t, they would be giving possible 18 point fines to those clubs who have been dealing with dodgy agents.
But no, that’s too difficult. They want to suck up to the big money teams so they can go on rather nice free jaunts and look good. That’s all they’re interested in. They’re prostitutes, hookers, whores, whatever you want to call them. Though I think sluts is a better description. Beat up on the AFCWs, the Altrinchams, the Swindons etc. Even though the rules they’ve been done under are so minor and just need a bit of tweaking and a lot of leniency. What have any of us actually gained, apart from a load of grief? Apparently, the FA are “tightening up”. Yeah, taking the easy option once again. Got to do something, pick on the more defenseless ones. They haven’t got the guts to do anything harder.
The likes of us and the rest are easy meat, we’re relatively poor and can’t afford to fight back. But when Chelski taps another player up, just roll over and let your tummy get tickled. £1k fine, sir? That’ll do nicely. Who knows, next time a big club gets into trouble, the FA will drop their trousers and let the Premiership Giant ram its pork sword of power into their flabby chutney tunnel, like they usually do. And get rammed nice and hard in the process, they’ll love that. They obviously don’t really care about football, they only want the good life. And at our expense.
I don’t quite know how best to get revenge on the FA, but I hope the next secretary they shag employ has a harmful STD*
* – I should mention about a certain ex-England manager here, but I’m pushing the libel/slander laws enough as it is.
No, we’re not pissed off with the FA for getting chucked out the trophy. We expected that, deep down, the omens weren’t good. We’re pissed off because the things that really damage football get swept under the carpet. If there was an alternative football authority, we’d be applying to join it right now. And I bet many others would be as well.
OK, I’ve calmed down. If truth be told, I did think that about the FA anyway before today, I just needed a good reason to vent. Probably get me into trouble though.
We now face the important task of dealing with the Ryman. You just knew they were high-fiving themselves after that verdicts, and couldn’t wait to stumble along with their laminated charge sheet with glee. Fucking cunts (hang on, I said I was calmed down…)
Anyway, we’ve been charged with something under rule 6.1, which somewhat vaguely states :
“It is the responsibility of each Club to ensure that any player signing a registration form for that Club has, where necessary, the required International Registration Transfer Certificate”.
Vague, because it doesn’t quite specify what would be the likely punishment.
I believe it isn’t as serious as rule 6.8 which relates specifically to ineligible players. So that’s a good start, maybe. The general vibe now seems to be that we’ll be deducted points. How many is open to interpretation, and I explored losing 18 yesterday. But yet again, we could go into admin and cheat people out of money and still get docked less. Again, for any outsider reading this, why do you think we’re so angry?
There may be common sense applied here. I’m not holding my breath though. The FA won’t let us appeal because they know best and we should accept it. Integrity of the game, dear boy. So now we’re at the whim of the Ryman commission. I suppose I’m holding out hope that the FA put something in to tell the RP that it isn’t worth ruining a club’s season over it.
After all, the handbook of the FA states:
“Any team playing an unregistered or otherwise ineligible player or players may/shall have the points gained in the match deducted from its total and may be fined and/or otherwise dealt with at the discretion of the Management Committee”.
The word here is discretion.
If the RP decide to take off the 18 points, I would hope we would fight them. Really, really fight them. The vibe I’m picking up is that we want a scrap. If they take off 10 points, I still think we’d go at them. It really depends on whether the RP would relish a costly fight with an angry AFCW who will have some decent backing behind them. Naieve I know, but again, we’ve already been charged under the “lesser” offence, apparently. Perhaps that is a glimmer of light?
Should we get a fine and JD gets suspended for a couple of games, so be it. It would be a proportionate punishment by anyone’s stretch of the imagination. But as I’ve said, nothing is like that in this game.
In a way, I think we’re better poised to deal with the RP than the FA over this. Unlike the FA, we are allowed to appeal. I know that we had some pretty decent legal types dealing with our case today, and with luck they’ll return to help out some more.
I want us to go tooth and nail with the Ryman if we can, and if we need to. I think we owe it to a lot of people. As a non-AFCW fan put it today, we’re considered a headache just like Aldershot. Well great. Give us automatic promotion and we’ll happily fuck off. This season, preferably. I keep hearing that they’ll want to keep us in the RP because of our money – in that case, surely they don’t need to rile us up? Surely if that’s what the Ryman thinks of us they should just keep the beast placid? We hopefully won’t take an 18 point deduction lying down, especially over something like this, and if we ever need to use Rule K to get them back, I would hope we will.
As for us now? We’re pissed off but we’ll come back. We all know that the club has needed a period of renewal, and this may be the catalyst. Already, everyone seems to have gone from despair to “fuck you”. Hopefully, the players will as well – they know they’ve been denied their bonuses, and it will be a test of their own character. Those who bail now wouldn’t help us in any playoff situation. And being deducted points didn’t hurt Altrincham or Bury’s attendances either – depending on how the RP see fit to do us, this could be the motivation for the final push. A one or two point deduction (yeah, I know) could even ensure us promotion…….
Anyone down just needs to look at this. Or this. Or this. And certainly this. Even at their worst, the RP could never go down to those levels.
One thing I will guarantee whatever happens. I would certainly not like to be Harrow Borough on Saturday….