The long awaited decision from the disciplinary committee finally came on Friday. This was concerning our recent match against TahVe, where TahVe started with just seven players. Merely seconds after kickoff a TahVe player faked an injury, and almost immediately the referee decided to abandon the match because TahVe did not have enough players for the match to go on. Yesterday the disciplinary committee ruled the match as a 3-0 victory for TamU-K.

The 3-0 ruling was the only possible decision here. Clearly TahVe worked around the rule that if you fail to start a match due to not having at least seven players, the match is ruled as a 3-0 victory to your opponent, and your season is over. Therefore it only stands for reason to have the 3-0 result stand in this case too. A decision to replay the match, in any shape or form, would have been a farce of Shakespearean proportions.

Comments from within TahVe seem to indicate that the only punishment they got was a 140 euro fine. Obviously we would have heard by now if they had been banned from competition, and it also does not look like a point deduction was made. Considering that the punishment for actually forfeiting a match is a 350 euro fine and getting banned from competition for the season, it can be said that TahVe was let off easy.

Indeed, the punishment given only does the bare minimum of letting everybody know that working around the rules to prevent having to forfeit a match is not acceptable. However, it does not prevent others from doing it too. One can only hope that we will get to the end of the season without somebody else deciding that a small fine and a 3-0 loss is preferred over a double digit trashing, The decision also lets all the individuals involved in this fiasco off the hook. Personally I would be utterly embarrassed to be one of the TahVe players that were on the field that day, especially the on who got ”injured”.

Hopefully the goals not scored in this match wont come to haunt us at the end of the season. Luckily the first tie breaker is head-to-head matches, not the goal differential, so this possibility is likely avoided by simply winning TahVe when we meet again in August.

That match, by the way, is one that you wont want to miss.