ALAN CAMPBELL ON WOMEN’S FOOTBALL
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 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.