ABERDEEN Ladies have refused to travel to Edinburgh for tonight’s scheduled SWPL1 fixture against Spartans. The club say it is unreasonable to expect their players, who are all amateurs and include schoolgirls, to ask for time off to travel.
Spartans will now be awarded a 3-0 win as Aberdeen’s appeal was rejected by Scottish Women’s Football yesterday – with a further appeal to the Scottish FA also turned down.
The club’s head coach Stefan Laird said: “It’s outrageous.
“They’re saying if Aberdeen don’t get their players out of school at 2pm, and their players out of work uncompensated, then they will forfeit the match.
“They bang on about education, and quite rightly, but they want us to get our kids out of school at exam time? Understandably, the parents are saying no.
“This has been going on since March 6. It is just unacceptable that we are having to forfeit the game.”
Aberdeen offered to play the game this Sunday, as neither they nor Spartans are involved in the SWPL Cup final – and say their opponents agreed. However, this was refused by the SWF league management committee, who told Aberdeen they would not permit any other SWPL games to be played on the same day as the final.
Yet, bizarrely, in a separate judgement the same league management committee subsequently gave Glasgow City permission to play a league game this Sunday – against Aberdeen.
The 10-times champions wanted to bring their midweek trip to the Granite City on August 9 forward because some of their players will be involved in the women’s under-19 Euro finals at the time.
An SWF spokeswoman was unable to explain the blatant contradiction of allowing one league game on the same day as the cup final, yet not another.
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