[Tealeaf]

There was a report out today, in a somewhat different spere and that was the report into the Mexican Gulf blowout. What has that got to do with Stanley, you may say? Nowt - other than the principle of company responsibility. Just as it now appears that BP management and operatives were only partly responsible for the events leading up to the blowout, nevertheless the company has to take full responsibility.

The same principle applies now with Stanley; we have to take the hit. We may at some point be able to obtain retribution from other parties, although I somehow doubt it. I don't think Halewood FC or Mr Potterill himself would be suitable cases for legal and financial redress. What is important is that a lesson should be learnt. However, I doubt very much that it will be; it is not the first time that something like this has happened and it is unlikely to be the last.

The real problem lies with the governing authority, the FA which taken with it's various offshoots, has the collective intelligence of a fruitfly. A system of player passports linked to a simple database, using smartcards and costing very little is all that is needed. Unfortunately, that will not arise in the forseeable future because the buck for any cock-ups would then pass to them.