Shamozzle!!!

Friday, 06 April 2007 07:52

Turmoil surrounded the opening of the 2008 South West Football Association season when a number of fixtures had to be altered late last week following the withdrawal of Hay Park from the Premier league.

Hay Park, one of the leading clubs in the South West for the past few seasons, found themselves without enough players to field proper teams in the competition and withdrew on Thursday. The Association was forced into a hurried re-assessment of the makeup of the leagues dropping Hay Park to the fourth division and elevating Dalyellup to the Premier league.

Dunsborough was the club to bear the brunt of the changes being forced to meet Dalyellup in Dayellup instead of the Australind in the first round of the new season.

“The changes were forced on us and left us with no choice but to balance the league as best we could,” said Association secretary David Whitfield this week.

Dunsborough management, however, are mystified as to why Dalyellup didn’t fill Hay Park’s spot and meet the opponent that club was already allocated in the recently released fixtures.

“We were scheduled to meet Australind in the Premier, Reserve and Women’s Premier League at Australind as planned by the Association to align all clubs to meet opponents at one ground on the same day,” said Dunsborough president Tony Plumb.

“Instead were required to play Dalyellup in the Premier League and reserves at Dalyellup while the women were switched to meet Hay Park at Hay Park earlier in the day”.

“Our last training was on Wednesday night and the advice of the changes did not reach us until Saturday because I was away on business in Perth and other management personnel were absent from Dunsborough at the time.”

“We spent all Saturday trying to contact 40 plus players to inform them of the changes, and as it was we had to field teams that were short key players on the day”.