RELIEVED as Lymington & New Milton are to have been cleared of FA charges of racial abuse, the question remains: How did it ever get that far?
After months of anxiety the Sydenhams Wessex League club and four of their players - Jimmy Sheppard, Alan Walker-Harris, John Bailey and Chris Smith - were finally put out of their misery last Friday when the FA reached a verdict of "case not proven" following a five-hour hearing at Oxford United's Kassam Stadium.
But that will not stop the Linnets penning a letter to Mark Palios, the FA's chief executive, asking why the charges were brought against them purely on the strength of allegations from their FA Vase opponents, Buckingham Town.
The case dates back to a controversial night at Linnets' Fawcetts Field home last December. An ill-tempered FA Vase third-round tie was abandoned after 88 minutes, with Lymington leading 2-1 and referee Steven Cook convinced he had sent off five Buckingham players.
It later transpired that only four had been dismissed, but an FA disciplinary committee concluded that the behaviour of the Buckingham players had caused the abandonment and that the result would stand.
But, in a nightmare twist to the tale as far as Linnets were concerned, Buckingham's allegations of racist comments were passed on to the FA's compliance unit, who subsequently charged them, even though the United Counties visitors had barely a shred of independent evidence to back their claims.
Linnets chairman John Mills said: "We're really pleased we got the right result, but I'll be writing to Mark Palios to ask why this went ahead on just evidence from Buckingham. The only independent statement they had was made anonymously to the 'Kick Racism out of Football' campaign seven days after the game - and that could have been anyone!
"We, on the other hand, had lots of independent witness statements, including a letter from a canon of the Church of England who was at the game. There was never any doubt in my mind that we should get the right result, but there was always that fear in the back of my mind that they might not believe us. In the end, the hearing was very fair."
Although Lymington have had their own expenses refunded, they had to foot the bill to get one of the assistant referees to the hearing.
Mills said: "We asked on April 2 for the referee and linesmen to be called and it was only when I phoned the FA to check some paperwork had reached them that I was told they hadn't been.
"By then it was too late to get the referee there but we did manage to get a statement from him and we arranged for the linesman to come. I shall be asking Mr Palios if he thinks it's fair we should have to pay for the lineman's expenses when it was case not proven.
"Luckily for us we were able to highlight some of the contradictions in Buckingham's allegations, but it's frightening to think how far things went. I'd have been horrified had we lost because we'd done nothing wrong."
Former AFC Totton coach Dave Taviner has been reunited with his old Testwood Park boss Ian Robinson at Lymington & New Milton.
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