Bruce Holloway: Are national league regulations too harsh?

WaiBOP's Head Coach Peter Smith. New Zealand Herald Photograph by Andrew Warner.

Opinion

No sports code in New Zealand beats itself up as much as football.

The latest evidence came when New Zealand Football recently stripped Waibop United of a hard-earned victory in the ASB Premiership - and for good measure also fined them $2000 for what was essentially an administrative oversight.

Waibop United were docked three points from their 3-1 win over Wanderers SC at Mt Maunganui on November 22. A 3-0 win was later credited to Wanderers SC, and Waibop's playoff prospects were mortally wounded.

Waibop completed the transfer of Craig Wylie from winter club Bay Olympic - but he was subsequently deemed ineligible because they overlooked also lodging the change to their named squad and the player agreement with New Zealand Football.

While Waibop United had the right to appeal that decision, the club's board quickly concluded they had no chance of winning, given the clear indication from New Zealnad Football that it would strictly adhere to the regulations which govern the national league.

The issue here is not whether Waibop transgressed. There is no doubt they cocked up with the paperwork, and New Zealand Football can hardly be faulted for upholding its own rules.

The question is whether the punishment fits the crime. And perhaps also, whether the dictates of the regulation even serve the wider interests of the game.

To recap, the player in question was properly transferred. It's not as if there was some aggrieved third party, such as a former club complaining, or fundamental questions about Wylie's registration status. (And opponents Wanderers were not even the ones complaining - that honour went to Waitakere United.)

So in retrospect, would not a fine have been sufficient to punish what was in effect an administrative shortcoming concerning paperwork between club administrators and head office?

Though even then, $2000? Really? You'd get less for driving dangerously drunk down Queen St on a Saturday night.

The ASB premiership is New Zealand's flagship domestic competition and in deference to that it does deserve to be put on a pedestal in terms of some of its regulatory requirements.

But it is also an amateur competition, though you wouldn't think so when you examine the punitive culture and professional punishments regime under which it is administered.

The words 'fine" or "fines" appear 23 times in Regulation 10, which governs the national league. It has a host of specialist requirements and is a minefield where you could explode any one of a number of $500 or $2000 penalties should you put a foot wrong.

Anyone volunteering to be an administrator at national league level should probably automatically be disqualified on mental health grounds.

Indeed, in most cases you would pity the poor sods who try and run a national league club (or "Participants" as the regulatory jargon now prefers to refer to them).

But there's a twist in Waibop's transgression, and it is a distinctly perverse one.

The folk who messed up in this instance just happen to be full time administrators with the Waibop federation (which runs Waibop United in the national league) and the very same people who oversee the disbursement of tens of thousands of dollars of fines annually to winter clubs under their jurisdiction.

It's a reminder that football has the same pattern of extracting and extorting funds from the game at grassroots level - where the money is arguably needed most - through a regime of fines for amateur indiscretions which has been in place since 1989.

So the lack of sympathy with Waibop is palpable, even among those who count themselves as core United fans. (Some of the more cynical have even pondered if they couldn't possibly add a bit of community work, or home detention to the punishment.)

As one football acquaintance put it: "If nothing else, at least now they'll bloody well know what it feels like, and perhaps think twice about some of those fines they dish out every week over winter."

The secondary perversity with Waibop's transgression is that the prime beneficiary has been Wanderers SC, an U-20 team for whom the rules are officially bent on the player registration front.

In the case of Wanderers, Regulation 10 states that the players' registration remains with their winter clubs.

But Wanderers have now picked up more points from opponents' paperwork issues than they have from on-field victories, having also benefited from a Hawke's Bay United oversight last summer.

However putting the multiple curiosities aside, the fundamental evaluation of the merits of a football regulation is perhaps predicated on whether it serves an essential purpose, or merely binds participants with extra red tape.

Back in the day players could appear in a very competitive national league without a club secretary having to go through the paper-shuffling drama and forelock-tugging of today. The only issue was getting the best available player transferred and on the park. Simplicity was part of the beauty.

These days there are a host of considerations, of which having a player agreement lodged with New Zealand Football the Friday before he plays, is just one.

But how prescriptive do league regulations need to be to uphold the integrity of a competition?

Do we really need to punish players, fans, coaches, and even the wider credibility of the league for an administrative error?

Waibop have wisely chosen not to appeal their punishment. But the game might be better served in the long term if they did seek to address the above questions in the next review of regulations.

The good news is history show that regulations are not set in stone.

Clauses earnestly mandated as absolutely essential to the operation of the national league one season, can quietly disappear the next.

For instance, the 2012-13 national league regulation contained a whole section devoted to requirements for match day programmes (must be A5 size, at least 16 pages, with a colour cover and feature club statistics, etc).

By contrast, it is completely absent from the current iteration.