Decision based on competition's rules, explains tournament director
KOTA KINABALU: Organisers said the decision made to strip Tawau of their victory over Kota Kinabalu in the SAFA Cup Group B match recently was based on competition rules and regulations.
Tournament director Reggie Sua @ Hafiz said they had also explained the matter to the teams concerned.
“There was no bias decision… we had looked into the protest made by Kota Kinabalu and the decision was made based on the competition's rules.
“Tawau fielded a player that had featured for two zones, Membakut (Lower Interior Zone) and Tawau (Tawau Zone). This is a violation of the competition's rules…teams are only allowed to register players from within their zone and not from other zones,” Hafiz told a press conference this at the Sabah FA office in Likas, yesterday.
He was responding to a statement by Tawau assistant team manager Muhammad Azreen Amir who told local media that the team had been wrongfully penalised.
The issue arose when Tawau qualified to the semi-finals after notching a second win by beating Kota Kinabalu 2-1.
But Kota Kinabalu filed a complaint against Tawau and tournament officials agreed that the latter had violated the competition's rules and regulations.
As a result, Tawau faced a three-point deduction and were striped of their victory, while Kota Kinabalu were awarded an automatic 3-0 win.
Subsequently a scoreless draw in their final Group B match with Kota Belud was not enough to put Tawau through.
They concluded bottom in the group standings on four points after including the win against Kota Marudu in their first match.
Meanwhile, Kota Kinabalu went through after additional points from the Tawau match reversal lifted them to the top of the group on seven points. Kota Belud also went through on five points.
Keningau and Kinabatangan were the other two teams that went through from Group A.
In the semi-final matches yesterday, Kota Belud beat Keningau 2-0 while Kota Kinabalu defeated Kinabatangan 3-1.