Lennon

By FOS Editor
April 1 2011

The SFA have been forced to admit Neil Lennon’s two suspensions will in fact run concurrently.

The SFA were forced to admit today they could not legally enforce Neil Lennon’s two touch line bans to run consecutively.

A statement released today, “The club accepted that the manager was guilty of the misconduct charge but challenged the application of the rule insisting that it was not clearly stated that the two suspensions should run consecutively. Their legal advice suggested that the two suspensions should run concurrently.

“The Scottish FA has received independent counsel advice on this point and regrettably has been advised that its interpretation of the rule is legally unenforceable. As such, the club have been notified that Lennon can return to the dugout on 9th April 2011.”

The SFA were hoping custom and practise would see them through but Celtic’s legal challenge exposed the massive hole in the wording of the SFA procedures. While I don’t normally support Celtic’s constant battles with the SFA I think they did the right thing this time and got the ruling they deserved.

This has forced Stewart Regan to come out say, “We acknowledge that our rules do need updating and I have proposed to our Board that we commission a complete re-write of the Disciplinary Procedures from a legal perspective to address this whole matter.”

Hopefully the SFA will learn from all this and come up with rules and regulations that can be applied and are much more transparent than they are at the moment.