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Gold Coast United FC head coach and director of football, Miron Bleiberg (centre) celebrates with Football Federation Australia (FFA) CEO Ben Buckley (right) and Gold Coast United CEO Clive Mensink (left). AAP Image/Dave Hunt
Wednesday’s decision by the FFA’s Independent Match Review Panel to rescind Iain Fyfe’s red card from Adelaide’s 3-2 loss to Perth was staggering. It hints at an odd softening of the application of the laws by the A-League’s governing body.
Fyfe’s ‘game changing’ sending-off was a contentious moment for many, especially considering Mile Sterjovski’s poor first touch and the nature of the unfortunate contact between the two players.
In my opinion, Fyfe (as the last man) clumsily collided into Sterjovski without taking any piece of the ball and effectively denied his opponent a shot on goal. You can not do that and expect to get away with it. It was a red card.
Many will differ with that opinion, and that’s fine, but that only reiterates the point that it was a contentious moment.
So that makes the Match Review Panel’s (MRP) decision to cancel Fyfe’s ensuing suspension all the more staggering.
This is coming from the MRP who have averted controversy and ignored so many contentious incidents prior to this all season. In fact the MRP have rarely done anything major this season, bar a few extraordinary incidents involving Danny Tiatto and Charlie Miller at Etihad Stadium early in the season.
The MRP made a statement after Wednesday’s decision claiming: “The player was issued with an R5 Red Card for ‘denying the opposing team a clear goal-scoring opportunity’. The MRP firstly considered an Obvious Error Application by the player.
“The Obvious Error Application was upheld and, accordingly, the Red Card is expunged from the record of the player and he is not required to serve a sanction.”
So for the MRP to suddenly make such a decision, which appears totally inconsistent with prior conclusions, caught plenty by surprise.
So where did it come from? Why the sudden relaxation of the laws?
Indeed, there’s been a hint something odd has been going on at the FFA lately, after a separate, recent rule change which was kept rather quiet.
This rule change only really came to light during Fox Sports’s coverage of the Adelaide-Perth game, when commentator Mike Cockerill stated the FFA have changed the number of yellow cards a player needs to accumulate before they must serve a suspension from five to eight.
The staggering part was they had enforced this decision mid-season, before Round 21 to be precise.
The problem here isn’t that the rule change is wrong but rather that it is inconsistent due to it’s timing.
For example, a player like Perth Glory’s Jacob Burns, who has already served a suspension this season for accumulated yellow cards, can feel a little hard done by.
The situation has flashes of UEFA’s late decision to seed teams in the European World Cup playoffs.
Furthermore, it is curious that the FFA made no big deal of the rule change as a quick google search will tell you.
So the question is why the sudden need for changes?
Well, the FFA have recently been under plenty of pressure for their fixturing of the 2009/2010 A-League season due to the incomprehensible gap between the Grand Final and the World Cup which has left plenty of domestic players in need of a move away from Australia.
The threat of a mass exodus of A-League stars in January, arguably, has worried the FFA into taking action.
Indeed, the changes to the yellow card accumulation rule and the MRP’s Fyfe decision hint at a softening of policy to ensure more players are available more of the time.
Perhaps this way, they think they can soften the blow of big-name stars leaving the league by ensuring no other players needlessly miss games through suspension.
It is worth consideration and the evidence points toward such a situation. It appears the FFA have gone soft, mid-season.
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