SHINTY: Champions Kingussie left furious after deducted points over referee storm
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Premiership champions Kingussie have been deducted two points by the Camanachd Association after failing to contact a referee which led to the postponement of their match against Skye last weekend.
The club announced that they will appeal the decision which has been ruled by the Camanachd Association.
The match between Kingussie and Skye which was supposed to take place at The Dell last Saturday was called off after the Red and Blues failed to contact referee Graham Cameron by Wednesday night to confirm arrangements.
As a result, no referee was available to take charge of the match on Saturday.
As things stand, Kingussie are in second place in the Premiership, four points behind leaders Newtonmore but have four games remaining.
It has not been made clear if the clash between Kingussie and Skye will be rearranged.
Kingussie has published the letter to the Camanachd Association on its social media.
It reads: "With reference to the letter we received from you today informing KCC that we were to be deducted two league points we would like to make the following comments and would like to lodge an appeal against your decision.
"You cite byelaw 3.5.1 but we do not believe it is appropriate for this case for many reasons. Reading this byelaw it is clearly intended to be used for teams who do not fulfil a fixture as they are unable to field a team.
"We did not fail to fulfil this fixture, we wanted to play. Skye wanted to play. The only reason the game did not take place was because the referee was not prepared to come.
"You say in your letter that you didn’t have a spare referee to send to our match at the last minute - clearly this is you accepting that if a ref was available the game would have taken place.
"Our representative spoke to Astie Cameron on Saturday morning to try to find a solution and Mr Cameron finished the conversation by saying ‘the Camanachd Association is putting this match off’. Clearly that is not KCC failing to fulfil a fixture.
"In fact reading all the byelaws we don’t think any of them are relevant to what happened last Saturday.
"We have already publicly apologised for the administration error in not following ‘guidelines’ in the club fixtures handbook.
"These state that the home team should phone the referee by ‘Wednesday evening at the latest’.
"You say in your letter that some referees may contact the home club if they haven’t heard from them and we all know that some referees don’t bother whether they hear or not and just turn up for the fixture.
"This is quite clearly a flawed system - there should be one hard and fast rule.
"Ironically you are not following your own guidelines as you are prompting teams to contact refs on a Thursday and Friday, the guidelines state Wednesday is the cut off.
"We trust an immediate instruction will go out to all referees that it is now compulsory for them to contact Astie Cameron on a Thursday morning if they haven’t heard from the home club by the Wednesday evening.
"Again every club has to be treated equally.
"In your letter the sanction you mention is a two point deduction. Can we ask, if the game in question had been a cup match would you now be proposing we are eliminated from a cup? This would clearly be absurd as referees would then be deciding the fate of competitions depending on their stance on receiving a phone call. Possibly your ruling, if it stands, will decide a league title.
"We trust that our appeal will be heard by the relevant Camanachd Association sub committee.
"We look forward to hearing from you."
