Enfield punished for FA total cock up; press happy to cover up the mess

By Tony Attwood

Enfield have lost their appeal against a points deducation which keeps them out of the play offs from their division.  The appeal against an FA decision was organised by the FA, run by FA people, for the FA by the FA.

The guilty party in the affair was at all stages and every level the FA, whose staggeringly gross and overwhelming incompetence led to the situation.  They old boys with the glasses of brandy and smart FA paid for blazers have once again walked away unscathed.

The details of this latest cock up in a long line of ever increasingly awful cock-ups, has been dealt with in detail in an earlier post on Untold.  But there is one point I would like to emphasise.

Not only did the FA make a series of mistakes such as

• Mis-spelling a player’s name in its records.
• Failing to recognise that a player signed by Enfield was the same as the one they had registered with a wrongly spelled name.
• Allowing a person with no authority to do so, to write to Enfield and tell them that everything was fine and the matter was dealt with.
• Wrongly suggesting that the player to sit out two matches for his punishment for a sending off.
• Failing to correct their errors.

Not only did it do all of that, it has also now revealed that there is no checking procedure anywhere in the FA in terms of its record keeping.  So this type of gross error could happen at any time, and not be picked up.  Checking procedures are fundamental, and not having them is absolute and utter lunacy.

This is just the latest in a series of unmitigated disasters and errors from the FA, some of which have been catalogued on Untold.  From their failure to recruit coaches to their failure to hold onto the money they have been given by Sport England because they didn’t handle it right while running banquets that cost tens of thousands of pounds a time and spending over £20m a year on interest charges on the huge debts they have run up.

At the heart of all this is pure unadulterated incompetence, an attitude towards finance which is based on the notion that “there is plenty more where that came from” and an attitude to their own misdemenours that “the press will print whatever we tell them.”

The trouble is that the media in England does bend the knee to the FA, so as to make sure they get their free FA Cup final tickets.  Even when they mention some wrong doing by the FA, they never dig behind the facts.  Even when mentioning pure Enfield, they don’t actually follow the story through.  One might even think they are publishing FA press releases.

The FA is a disgraceful organisation.  It is plain and clear for everyone to see.  I just wish a few other bodies other than little old Untold would follow some of the stories through.