WHICHEVER way you view it, the circumstances surrounding Wednesday night’s cancelled SWPL1 game between Spartans and Aberdeen were unsatisfactory.
To recap, Aberdeen opened a dialogue with SWF at the start of March, saying they wouldn’t be able to play the fixture. It would have been difficult at any time for their players to get the afternoon off to travel to Edinburgh, but several are school pupils and mid-May is exam time.
The SWF League Management Committee wasn’t minded to accept this as a valid reason and ordered the game to go ahead. Aberdeen appealed unsuccessfully to both the SWF and the SFA, and now await their punishment.
The LMC were in a difficult position. Scotland’s preparations for the Euros have hit the domestic season hard and that has been compounded by the under-19s’ parallel success in qualifying for their Euros. Further postponements do not help.
Nevertheless, the failure to then apply common sense and consistency has come back to haunt the LMC and, by extension, SWF.
Aberdeen and Spartans agreed to play the game today instead of Wednesday. But this was also rejected by the LMC, who decreed league games cannot be played on SWPL Cup final day. Aberdeen head coach Stefan Laird says the club have this in writing.
Imagine their surprise, then, on learning the LMC subsequently gave permission to Glasgow City to travel to Aberdeen today – to play a league match.
This game was also originally due to have been played in midweek – on August 9 – but has been postponed because of the under-19 Euros. City applied to have the date brought forward and the LMC agreed, citing “exceptional circumstances”.
Aberdeen turned down the fixture on the grounds that no league games are permitted today, and say that was accepted by City. These, as far as can be established, are the facts.
For Aberdeen, the issue is about education, and the LMC’s refusal to accept it wasn’t possible to take students out of school, college and university at exam time. They also feel they are being punished for their postcode as they are the only team in the top flight outwith the central belt.
A midweek game is a very different proposition for them than any of the other seven teams, all of whom would have problems making the journey in the opposite direction for a Wednesday evening match.
The issue is the glaring lack of consistency. If the ruling is that no league games can be played on the same day as the SWPL Cup final, then surely it has to be applied whatever the situation.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here