The Premmy Files – Important Statements Galore
No time to rest in the Premiership because we’ve got a couple extra-curricular things to crack into here, two rather significant pieces of midweek news. One is Ricki Herbert stepping back from Hamilton Wanderers and the other is this Southern United ineligible player thing.
Ricki first and after chatting with the club chairman over a number of weeks he’s made the decision to resign as head coach of the national league squad. Considering all the many jobs that this fella seems to have, it’s hardly shocking. He’s still the Football Development Manager at Wanderers as well as having a technical director role with Cambridge FC and of course there’s his ever-expanding Ricki Herbert Football Academy. Plus some “outside business opportunities”. Ricki Herbert is no different from the rest of us, there are still only 24 hours in his days. How he ever managed to fit all that work in is crazy.
And then, yeah, there’s also the fact that Hamilton Wanderers have sucked this season. Other than a 3-0 win over Eastern Suburbs they’ve lost all four games including blowing a 2-0 lead to go down 4-2 to the WeeNix in Ricki’s final game. They’ve conceded 18 goals in five matches and were poor over the second half of last season too so you already had to wonder if this arrangement was working... which apparently it wasn’t.
Kale Herbert has taken over as head coach in a natural progression, having been in charge of the National Youth Side and the Hamilton Wanderers winter league team this year, as well as being an assistant to his old man up until now. Fingers crossed this’ll be reflected in a more focussed Tron Wands team out on the paddock because they’re currently sitting last on the ladder and this squad should be better than that.
As for this Southern United thing... damn.
So following on from the chat about this in last week’s Premmy Files, Southern have been sanctioned by NZF for playing a bloke or two in their opener against Tasman that they shouldn’t have. As such the result, which was a 4-0 win for Southern, has been overridden and changed to a 3-0 default win for Tasman. A seven goal swing. Exactly how this happened is slightly unclear but it seems Cam McKenzie and Cody Brook, who each came on as subs late in the game, were ineligible because an excel spreadsheet confirming the squad list was sent through late to NZ Football... even though both players were apparently fully registered through Comet, had signed their player agreement thingamajigs, were featured in their social media squad announcement and team photo, as well as participating in preseason games. Which makes you wonder why the discrepancy... but pretty easy to see why Southern fans are feeling hard done by.
Because, like, clearly there was nothing devious about this. We’re talking about a relatively minor mistake that had no effect on the outcome of the game. Which ain’t to excuse Southern because they cocked up, pure and simple. Nobody else got snapped playing ineligible players. And they’ve accepted that in their own statement whilst also lodging an appeal as to the severity of the punishment. Not that they’ll likely have much luck with all that – the whole “mitigating circumstances” thing is a pretty flimsy excuse. It obviously sucks on a personal level that “key staff were on bereavement leave” and nobody’s doubting there was a hectic nature to that weekend with the Logan Park turf opening... but this spreadsheet thing was a known necessity so you’ve gotta get it done properly.
It’s only the heavy-handed punishment that they could mount a case over but, as it says in NZF’s statement on the matter, there really isn’t any wriggle room for playing an ineligible player – and the precedent has been set in this very competition, with a similar result overturned against Auckland City (also involving Tasman) the season before last for a more obvious mistake with an ineligible Micah Lea’alafa.
By the letter of the law NZF have done the only thing they could. It’s just unfortunate that it comes at the expense of the spirit and nature of the game. Tasman were played off the park there and get three points thanks to an admin error... it’s all kinda silly. Although I don’t wanna blame Tasman either because I suspect they wouldn’t have realised the ineligibility until after the game when a formal complaint was their only recourse and it’s not like they got to decide the punishment or anything. The fact that it it took the opposition to highlight this in the first place is already a hint that there’s a deeper systematic issue with how these things are policed.
What confuses me is that teamsheets are generally submitted an hour or so before the game so why didn’t NZ Football pick anything up before kickoff when it could still have been dealt with nice and quietly? I’m presuming the answer to that is because there was nobody to look up those things, just as Southern probably only had one person whose job it was to send the spreadsheet email through and that’s where this gets even sillier because a lot of these clubs are not operating on solid administrative structures. It’s an amateur league full of volunteers, many of the clubs with tricky financial limitations, and here we are expecting professional standards.
I also highly doubt that national league clubs are getting adequate support from NZF for all of this. I mean, why are they asking for multiple squad confirmation in the first place? Just find a bloody centralised system that works, either Comet or the old fashioned way or whatever but having to do the same thing in different formats is just begging for these kinds of mistakes and it’s not in anyone’s best interests to have the integrity of the competition threatened like this so NZF really oughta be doing all they can to prevent these instances rather than just punitively reacting to them when they happen.
By the way, if Southern wanna add to their appeal case here, it’s worth mentioning that Liverpool fielded an ineligible player in a League Cup game two months ago. Pedro Chirivella was a late sub in a 2-0 win over MK Dons but didn’t have international clearance. Under NZF rules they’d have been booted from the comp but the EFL chose merely to fine them £200k because “mitigating factors” meant it “wasn’t appropriate” to expel them (granted two hundy g’s would likely bankrupt every single Prem club... but relatively speaking it’s pocket change for Liverpool). The Reds went on to beat Arsenal on penalties in the next round after a wild 5-5 draw. Sunderland also played an ineligible player in four Premier League games and a League Cup tie (coincidentally also against MK Dons) back in the 2013-14 season and were fined, but not deducted points, after alerting the authorities to their own mistake. Completely different jurisdictions of course... but also much bigger global resonance yet the reprimands were able to take a variety of factors into the mix beyond the bureaucratic black and white of right or wrong.
This makes a big difference to the table with Southern slipping from second place to sixth and Tasman leaping from ninth to seventh. Tasman now have more default goals than real goals this campaign after five weeks. Southern are good enough to overcome the three points they were stripped of here and with only Auckland City strolling out in front of the pack as of yet it’s not like they’re suddenly out of touch with the semi-final race. They’re playing good footy. They’ll win plenty more games.
However this could have a pretty substantial effect on the ol’ Golden Boot race actually because Garbhan Coughlan scored once that game and Joel Stevens got two. Myer Bevan is out in front with eight as it stands and Stevens is clear second with six... but he presumably drops to four now meaning that Bevan has double the goals of any other player through five weeks. Coughlan has four dropping to three, he’s also a fella expected to be up near the top of the ranks at the end of things. I’m still leaving those goals up on my list because, you know, they were legit goals at the time and I’m petty like that... but the official NZF stats will probably have to be updated to reflect the dumbness of all this. So it goes.
Anyway, here are some beautiful highlights to absorb into your consciousness, particularly you jaded Southerners because there are two almighty stunners from Joel Stevens in here...
Also whack an ad whenever you read something decent as a way of saying cheeeeers
Keep cool but care