FA PANEL MEMBER'S OWN PLAYER CLEARED ON DOPE CHARGE
As announced yesterday Peter Heard, one of the commission had financial links with the FA. Today the Sun reports:
FA commission member Peter Heard was No 2 at Colchester United when their midfielder Adam Locke tested positive for marijuana back in 1995.
Heard’s independence over the Rio hearing has already been questioned after we told yesterday how he co-founded a company which has made up to £1million from FA contracts.
Both Colchester and the FA were aware of Locke’s test results. But, instead of a disciplinary hearing, the player was given a warning and the case never became public.
It contrasts starkly with the international naming and shaming of Manchester United and England star Ferdinand, who faces eight months in the football wilderness and a £50,000 fine.
Locke, now 33, went to Layer Road on loan from Southend and signed on a free in September 1994. After scoring eight goals, he left for Bristol City three years later. But he continued to play for then Third Division outfit Colchester following his positive test in 1995.
Meanwhile:
Graeme Souness’ solicitor forced Peter Heard off a disciplinary panel five months ago — because he feared the Blackburn boss would not get a fair hearing.
Souness appeared before a commission for comments he made to an official during his team’s Worthington Cup defeat by Wigan last December. But solicitor Gerard Cuckier requested that Heard be excluded from the hearing.
Cuckier said: “I had problems with this man in the past and, as Graham’s solicitor, raised my concerns. He then stood aside.”
It suggests that those on disciplinary charges do not have to accept the panel sat before them. United could have objected to Heard’s presence had they realised his commercial links with Soho Square.
The Telegraph reports:
Never mind what Sepp Blatter, FIFA's president, might assert: football, and FIFA, no more stand above civil law and human rights provisions than the rest of sport. However, this may prove to be of no help to Rio Ferdinand in his vain resistance of the eight-month ban given to him by the Football Association.
While Maurice Watkins, Ferdinand's solicitor who doubles as a United director, and Sir Alex Ferguson may claim that Ferdinand "has the right to go to court to protect his reputation", it is likely that the High Court would decline to hear an application for an injunction against the English governing body, thereby leaving Ferdinand's ban in place.
That is in contrast to 1979, when the High Court lifted the FA's 10-year suspension from domestic management of Don Revie, who had controversially left his job as England manager to take up a coaching post in the Middle East.
When it comes to civil law, let alone morality, those with a vested commercial interest - in this instance Manchester United, Ferguson, Ferdinand and Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the PFA - tend to overlook reality and the facts.
It is no use Taylor endlessly bleating "he hasn't even tested positive", or Ferguson claiming "British law is governed by precedent". There is no comparable precedent, in football in England, of a player declining to take a test: an offence comparable to refusing a drink-drive breathalyser test. Christian Negouai, of Manchester City, fined only £2,000, could not speak a word of English.
In recognition of the British Government being a signatory, and subscriber, to the concord of the World Anti-Doping Agency and in conjunction with the existence of the independent Court of Arbitration for Sport, the High Court is expected not to intervene until all existing procedures, and all remedies, within sport have been exhausted.
An important consideration for Ferdinand now should be whether Watkins, as a solicitor representing both United and Ferdinand, has a conflict of interest. The priorities of club and player can be different.
Few people unconnected with United consider Ferdinand has any case. His defending barrister, Ron Thwaites QC, argued at last week's tribunal about alleged procedural flaws. There were no flaws because Ferdinand took no test. QED.
Blatter's claim that FIFA statutes prohibit resort to the civil courts would probably be judged, at least within English law, as ultra vires (outside the law). For instance, in the case of Cooke v FA (1972), concerning a refusal to permit the player's transfer from Sligo to Wigan, it was ruled to be restraint of trade with the judge stating that if FIFA attempted to bar the judgment then the FA should leave FIFA.