In response to the understandable questions being asked by our supporters regarding the outcome of the disciplinary hearing re the postponed fixture with FC Isle of Man, we are now in a position to provide the following update and supporting information. We can also confirm that we intend to appeal the fine to the Football Association and as such, no further statements will be made by the Club at this time.

NWCFL Decision:

The NWCFL Management Committee at their meeting held on Wednesday 8th December 2021 considered the plea of mitigation submitted by New Mills FC with regard to the charge of refusal to fulfil a fixture. Their decision was to fine New Mills FC £750 with £250 suspended for the remainder of the season.

Below is a copy of the plea of mitigation submitted by New Mills FC.
Plea of mitigation in respect of charge notice in relation to an alleged breach of League Rule - Breach of League rule 8.39 refusal to fulfil a fixture v. FC Isle of Man on 27/11/2021:
Firstly, can we reiterate that we DID NOT refuse to travel to the Isle of Man on the 27th November, rather we requested that owing to the constraints imposed by the Isle of Man Government we were not able to call on enough suitably vaccinated players to field a team and therefore, we were asking for a postponement to a date in the future when either the travel restriction rules would be eased or we had enough suitably vaccinated players to field a team.
In advance of the scheduled fixture with FC Isle of Man we proactively canvased both our management team and our entire squad of registered players to explain the rules on entry into the Isle of Man and to ascertain who was and wasn’t suitably vaccinated (i.e., double-jabbed per the IoM Government requirement for entry onto the island) and we were eventually able to ascertain that only ELEVEN players from the active playing squad of twenty-four have been ‘double-jabbed’, and would therefore be eligible to travel to the Isle of Man. Having gathered this information, we immediately contacted the FC Isle of Man Club Secretary and the NWCFL on the 9th November to inform them of this significant issue and subsequently requested a postponement of the fixture scheduled on the 27th November - which we believed to be reasonable as no actual travel arrangements had been made at that point. As a matter of interest, the number of players currently eligible has now reduced even further to only ten eligible players following the departure and subsequent transfer of a player.
In your previous correspondence on this matter, you have quoted the wording from the NWCFL policy re COVID-19 player eligibility, which on reading clearly seeks to deal with instances of players being infected by the Covid-19 virus and consequently being ineligible to play due to isolation rules etc, as based on guidance from the UK Government and Public Health England. What it doesn’t state is the NWCFL policy regarding any restrictions on the freedom of travel by individuals to and from other club’s grounds following the imposition of restrictions on the eligibility of players to actually travel. As such the NWCFL are seeking to penalise New Mills FC based on a policy not applicable in the current circumstances, and while it could not have been foreseen at the time of drafting the wording that this situation would arise, it is both prejudicial and obtuse for the NWCFL to bend what is in place purely to fit the situation.
Unless we are mistaken there isn’t a NWCFL rule that states that a player must be ‘double-jabbed’ when they sign for a club and there are no restrictions in place within the UK mainland which preclude the right of individuals to travel to and from the grounds of clubs within the NWCFL. However, you are suggesting that in the case of FC Isle of Man there are a unique set of rules that should be applied when clubs travel to play them. Surely this is both unfair and discriminatory to every other club within the league and starts to call into question the integrity of the league and the results of the matches where clubs are being forced to play with potentially weakened teams. Why should one club benefit from a set of arbitrary restrictions being imposed by their government upon the players of the other NWCFL clubs. If for example, the New Mills District Council passed a byelaw stating that non-residents of New Mills weren’t allowed entry without proof of vaccination would the NWCFL insist that all other clubs needed to adhere to this and as a consequence they could only name a squad of players who have been suitably vaccinated when playing at a Church Lane.
You have also previously stated that we have had ample time to make alternative arrangements, we fail to understand what these arrangements should have been. We, along with every other club within the NWCFL, cannot insist that any individual from our list of registered players has a Covid-19 vaccination, nor under GDPR legislation are we able to provide details of which players have or haven’t been vaccinated, or who are due to be vaccinated. Unlike some other clubs within the NWCFL, New Mills FC does not run either a reserve team or a development squad containing under 18’s and subsequently, although we have thirty-three registered players, we actually only have an active playing squad of twenty-four players, as the balance in number relates to players that were signed during pre-season but who have now left and moved to other clubs outside of the NWCFL. This can be supported by the data recently published by the NWCFL on the numbers of players used by member clubs this season.
We fully appreciate that the NWCFL has a difficult balancing act to perform between the needs of individual clubs and that of the many within the league, but it is grossly unfair to punish New Mills FC in this instance when it was impossible for the Club to field a team on the 27th November owing to the vaccination restrictions being imposed by the Isle of Man Government.
The charge states that we have ‘refused to fulfil’ the fixture, which we categorically reject, as it is clearly not the case as have at no time ever refused to play the fixture, and we reaffirm that we would have happily travelled to the Isle of Man on the 27th November if we had had sufficient eligible players. We have stated that we will continue to monitor the eligibility of our players in terms of their vaccination status and will arrange an alternative date for the fixture to be played, in conjunction with FC Isle of Man, at which point hopefully either the travel restrictions would have been lifted or more of our playing squad would have been vaccinated and will therefore then be eligible to travel to the Isle of Man.
What is extremely disappointing is that the NWCFL has at no point sought to proactively discuss, understand, or help New Mills FC in finding a pragmatic solution to an obvious logistical problem that we were experiencing. Deciding instead to treat this a disciplinary issue from the very first moment that we highlighted the problem, and subsequently publicly charging the Club with non-fulfilment of a fixture before the actual charge had even been formally issued to us.

Regards

The Board of Directors
New Mills FC