Point deductions, suspended players and the nightmares of a club secretary

When the news broke that Torquay United had been docked a point for fielding an ineligible player in the National League South, my heart sank for the club and for those tasked with club secretary duties.

I did that job for two years and hated it!

When I first moved to my hometown club after working at Plymouth Argyle for five years, my role was purely media, churning out match-day programmes and content for the club website. It was Christmas 2010, only 14 years ago, but we didn’t even think about social media back then.

Despite skipping that future hurdle, it was a baptism of fire, as United were a team in spectacular form during a winter that even eclipsed the wet weather we have experienced this year.

The Christmas schedule was a complete wash-out, leaving us with five home games to play in January, including the iconic FA Cup clashes with Carlisle United and Crawley Town. In my world, that meant producing five match-day programmes in quick succession.

While it was a gruelling task, I was still in my comfort zone. January 2011 was incredibly manic and exciting for all of us at Plainmoor, we had reached the fourth round of the FA Cup and a League Two play-off place was on the cards.

In the midst of the mayhem, our club secretary missed a crucial email. New loan signing Jake Robinson played in the home game against Hereford on February 1 but he had not yet been properly registered.

The realisation of fielding an ineligible player happened during the game. Robinson had already scored but we knew the game was gone and a future points deduction inevitable. The club secretary sadly lost her job because of this one oversight.

It was a brutal example of the pressures faced by every club secretary in the country.

Fast forward a couple of years and the roles of media officer and club secretary at Plainmoor were merged into a new head of operations position. I was given the dubious honour of fulfilling this new role, the media bit was routine, the club secretary bit was horrible.

Every Friday night / Saturday morning, I would be checking the Football League portal on eligible players. Even though I knew these guys were fine to play in the game on that Saturday afternoon, I still checked – it becomes an OCD experience.

In the Football League, we were supported by an amazing team based in Preston, Lancashire, who process all transfers and registrations. When a player is signed, you will receive an email to either confirm the registration is complete or another form with amends that need to be made on the paperwork.

In the case of a loan player, for example, this means the amends have to be approved by both clubs involved in the transaction, signed again, sent back to the League and then just hope it all goes through fine.

This is done in an environment where the manager is based in the next office, occasionally popping his head around the door to enquire: “Has it gone through? I need this player for Saturday!”

It feels like three points on Saturday rests on your shoulders, so when that final confirmation email comes through, it is a wave of relief.

However, the story does not stop there. Once you have approval from the League, the next waiting game is a secondary email from the FA. That’s right, the next Messi in Torquay Yellow is registered for the League but not yet cleared by the FA.

Only when that second email arrives can you skip down the corridor to tell the manager all is done, your dream player is fully signed. Job done!

And then, said player, is stuck on the bench, we lose 2-0 and he doesn’t even come on!

In the Football league, the process was stressful but it worked. In the National League, it is a nightmare. Put simply, they have a smaller team sorting through registrations and that slows everything down.

In the world of suspended players, you deal with a different department at the FA and the League, and they are very quick to point out ‘it is the club’s responsibility to ensure a player is not suspended’.

It appears United’s latest indiscretion was fielding Ross Marshall in the draw at Weymouth last month, when he was actually suspended. It was clearly an innocent oversight and, while someone has slipped up, I have huge sympathy for their situation.

As we know, there is so much going on at Plainmoor at present, it must be incredibly difficult for everyone at the club, juggling registrations, league rules, match programmes, tickets and everything else, all under the shroud of an administration process.

In 2024, at National League and Football League level, surely there could be a system where a club secretary logs the team sheet for a competitive fixture into a central computer 90 minutes before kick-off and that automatically generates a response to confirm all players selected are eligible for the fixture, fully registered and not suspended.

And club secretaries can sleep at night!