Keighley Cougars chairman Gary Fawcett claims he is seeking legal advice after the West Yorkshire side were relegated from the Championship yesterday.
Fawcett is upset at two key decisions made by the RFL that have directly impacted the Cougars’ season. Firstly, player-coach Paul March was given a two-month stadium ban for questioning a match official, then, more recently, some of the club’s relegation rivals were let off punishment for breaking dual registration rules.
In a statement, Fawcett said: “I spoke to the RFL yesterday straight after the match expressing that we are feeling very hard done to.
“Simply put, our Head Coach was found guilty of transgressing one of the rules of the game (although I looked at and analysed the video footage from one of the allegations against Marchy and could find no evidence that he was guilty) and he was punished with a 4 match ban followed by a 2 month stadium ban.
“On the other side it is agreed that Doncaster and Batley broke the rules and fielded ineligible players one of which, Jacob Fairbank, scored the winning try for Batley during the game in which he was ineligible.
“For breaching this rule Batley and Doncaster were found guilty and deducted 3 points by a disciplinary panel which were somehow, miraculously, reinstated the following week and, as far as we know, neither club has been punished at all.
“There is no publicly available information informing us why the points were re-instated. May I remind the reader that, when the same thing happened in football earlier this year, the team in question were thrown out of the competition!
“Currently, we are seeking legal advice regarding this problem.”
