Baffling Football Administration

Football Administration will always baffle me. Having played 84 minutes in a game away at Stalybridge on 28th December floodlight failure caused the game to be abandoned. Both clubs agreed that they would be happy to share the points but the Conference have ruled that the 0-0 result does not stand and the entire game must be replayed. However rules being what they are, suspended Bradley Barnes can not use the game as part of his suspension and the bookings picked up by Chris Lever and Shaun Gray still stand, despite the game being wiped from the records.

So…coming to my point this left me with a dilema. The game quite plainly can’t just disappear from the records. It did take place, 1040 people attended and watched 84 minutes of good football, 22 players started the game, there were no goals but the referee saw fit to book a few players. As those bookings are not wiped from the records in the same way that the score is,there has to exist a way of tracing why two players have bookings totals potentially higher than the number of appearances they have made. So, for the purposes of my records I’ve created a new “competition” called “abandoned games” and moved the game into that category. I’ve then excluded from all the player and match statistics any games or goals scored in those matches. I haven’t however removed those games from the disciplinary tables as any bookings collected in those games do count.

What a pain in the arse!