Opinion: Time to give outdated disciplinary system red card

I refer to the outdated disciplinary system which exists in this country and the even more ridiculous loophole by which teams get around it.

By way of background, two of Ballymena United’s key players - Allan Jenkins and David Cushley - have each accumulated five bookings and are each due a one game suspension. Fair enough, them’s the rules, as the saying goes.

Except those bookings were picked up in the league - and by an unfortunate quirk of fate, the game in which they were due to serve the bans are in the Irish Cup.

In this country, it’s not like in England, where a fifth booking automatically triggers a ban for the next game.

Get your head around this one - in Northern Ireland, the suspension kicks in on the Monday after 14 days following the fifth booking.

It means a player will simply be given a date from which their suspension will start and the player will sit out his side’s next fixture, irrespective of which competition it’s in.

I ask the question - is it fair that a player should miss a vital cup game because he has picked up five bookings in the league or a different cup competition?

You could take that to an extreme example - in theory, a player could miss the Irish Cup final - the pinnacle of his career - because he has made five fouls in the previous NINE MONTHS!

There have also been examples at Ballymena in recent seasons of players missing the first game of the new season because they picked up five cautions before the end of the PREVIOUS campaign! What is that all about?

Surely there must be a system where cautions in the league results in suspensions in league games and cup bookings resulting in players sitting out bookings in that competition, similar to that employed in the Champions League or World Cup where a couple of bookings along the way means a player misses the next game in THAT tournament.

I can already hear the argument about that bringing further paperwork - and it’s not being untruthful to say that the governing body hasn’t exactly been flawless when it has come to the area of administrative matters in recent years.

And then comes the loophole which makes an already ludicrous situation even worse, in my eyes.

Faced with the prospect of missing Cushley and Jenkins for their potentially season-defining Irish Cup game, Ballymena simply call Cliftonville and hey presto, the sides’ outstanding league game is conveniently rescheduled for this Tuesday night, thus eating up the suspensions and leaving the players free for Saturday.

I’m not criticising Ballymena for doing that - it is perfectly within the rules - but it makes a bit of mockery of the whole system that you can effectively pick and choose what games you want your players suspended for.

It’s something that goes on quite a lot - supporters of senior clubs who play in the Mid-Ulster Cup joke that the fixtures for that competition are scheduled around when clubs need players’ suspensions cleared for more important games.

My plea is very simple - introduce a system whereby the punishment for crimes committed in one competition is served in that competition rather than the scattergun approach which currently takes place.

Whether it would be feasible is another question but it’s certainly high time the current disciplinary procedure was shown the red card.

* Follow Ballymena Times Sports Editor Stephen Alexander on Twitter (@Stephen_Bmena)