The Scottish Cup

Posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008

We are now aware that Joe Malin the excellent Elgin City ‘keeper on Saturday in our Scottish cup-tie was actually ineligible for the game.  He had only signed on the day before the game.  The Scottish Cup competition rules do say that any protest has to be mentioned to the match official and Elgin City on the day of the game.  We didn’t do this, we did realise Malin was a new addition to their squad when we got their team lines at 2.20pm.  Even if we had wanted to we were unable to check his eligibility at this time as the SFA Registration office closes at 12.30 on Saturdays.  We have written to the SFA with an enquiry today.  Malin had a fantastic game and quite rightly picked up the man of the match award.  We now understand that the SFA are meeting to discuss the situation on Thursday this week. Our sympathies are with Elgin City who made us very welcome on the day.  Oversights such as this can happen, just last season we lost the League Cup Final to Whitehill Welfare when we inadvertently played Kenny Young who has played in the group sections for Edinburgh City some nine months previously.  Through no fault of the players we asked them to hand back their medals a couple of days after the final.