Nairn St Ninian cited by North Superleague after disagreement over Colony House postponement
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Nairn St Ninian have been called in front of the North Superleague management committee to defend their decision to postpone last Saturday’s match against Colony House.
A number of positive or inconclusive Covid-19 tests meant that players needed to self-isolate, but the league insisted that the match should go ahead.
St Ninian held firm in their stance, and as a result have been cited – meaning they could be fined with a 3–0 win being awarded to Colony House if the committee rules against them in a couple of weeks.
A club statement said: “We’ve been muddling through turning up to some games with nine registered players.
“Horribly, we know how unprofessional our league is – if we do anything we will get hammered for it so we have just been playing the games.
“The problem was we were travelling on a bus to go through to Inverurie. We were putting our players at risk, our management at risk, our committee at risk, the other team at risk, and we were told to play.
“It’s pretty nonsensical. The secretary has his own reasons for doing it because he has already been caught out. He postponed a game earlier when the team just didn’t have a team – nothing to do with Covid.
“They used that as a mask when they just didn’t have a team. He got caught out and made a complete horror show of the appeal, which was dismissed. Now he’s doing the risk-averse thing of saying nothing is off until they have lots of evidence.
“I sent him the positive test, I told him another guy was inconclusive and the third one was at 1.30am on Saturday – it wasn’t physically possible to get anything.”
More concerning from St Ninian’s point of view is that football appears to be getting prioritised by the league over public health.
“They’re not putting public health in front of playing what is a silly game of football,” the statement continued.
“It’s all just a big mess. Our manager has had a bypass operation so we’re not willing to put people’s health at risk when it’s unnecessary.
“The league said no, we’re playing, and we’ve been cited.
“We’ve had our issues and run-ins with the North Region before, so they’re not the most pragmatic association.”
St Ninian requested that the rest of their squad conduct lateral flow tests after the news early on Saturday, with no more positive results recorded as the Inverness Courier went to press.
