Will this guy's racist banter bring down an entire club?
It’s that time of year again. The one where you start scanning the news seeing which clubs are throwing out the key terms meaning that they are in danger of folding. Terms like “resulting lost revenue”, “bad financial year”, “global economic slowdown” and “Brooks Mileson”. Down in merry old England, we see a couple of teams circling the drain, though unlikely to fold because of history and the fact that there is always money to be made in running a team poorly there. In Scotland, it’s not quite the same, especially for a team in the third tier. This is where East Fife, founded in 1903, find themselves.
Here’s the kicker: the team is not in this predicament for the usual reasons. They don’t have a ton of debt, they didn’t lose a benefactor who overspent on the team, and they try to stay within their means. Nope, the big anchor dragging East Fife down is their parent body–the Scottish Football Association.
Back in 2008, former East Fife player Kevin Fotheringham was banned for eight games by the SFA for allegedly racially abusing Frenchman Gary Tade. Unable to get the ban overturned within the organization, Fotheringham took to the court system, and the story takes a weird turn.
Fotheringham had the backing of East Fife to do so. His appeal was denied, and in the process he racked up 20,000 pounds worth of legal bills. The club helped him with the legal fees, which was probably a mistake on their end. Because when the judgment came down, the loser was also on the hook for the SFA’s legal bills to the tune of 15,000 pounds. The SFA have since forwarded the bill to East Fife.
East Fife have signaled they have no intention of paying on the second number and could not afford to do so if they wanted to. So the SFA said, “Fine, no problem. You’re just not getting your winter payment from us then”. Since EFFC have not been able to put on a home game since December 5th due to weather and are already claiming to be down almost 200k since the start of the season (surely a dubious figure, but a scary one nonetheless), club director Sid Collumbine says that losing out on the winter money would likely bankrupt the club. Already Collumbine has drafted his personal lawyers into the fight since the club can no longer afford to pay theirs.
Truthfully, this is a long way from being over, and EFFC are not going anywhere anytime soon. Yes, these are definite problems for the club, but the impasse, and witholding of money, will likely ease soon. Still, it’s worth noting three things here:
1) Do not take your sports grievances to normal court. Either way, in the end, both sides lose.
2) Sports leagues are notoriously vindictive when you question their decisions. Here, it’s a legal bill. My favorite is the extra game of suspension the EPL has been tacking on for appealing an obvious red card.
3) Don’t employ racist bastards.
