Why sport ends up in court

JACK ANDERSON may be a law lecturer in Queen’s University, but he’s clear-eyed about his profession.

The author of a new textbook about sports law is blunt about the intersection of law and sport: “With sports law you’re generally talking about professional sport, and wherever there’s money there’ll be law, and lawyers.

“For instance, despite the recession, TV companies, sponsors and overseas owners are willing to invest huge money in the Premiership, and anywhere there’s huge money there are huge commercial interests to protect – and that often comes out in the form of legal protection.

“The point the book makes is that law has an impact on all levels of sport, amateur and professional.”

The one legal judgement that every sports fan can name is the Bosman ruling, of course.

“Fifteen years ago the European Court of Justice released the Bosman ruling, which changed the balance of power, from clubs to players, which is a big starting point for sports law.

“If you have a three-year contract then you’re free to move or stay at the end of that contract, but for the first one hundred years of professional football you couldn’t unless someone paid a transfer fee. The Bosman ruling threw that out, once the contract ended you were free to move, and now players can let their contracts run down and move freely.”

Such a ruling is relatively unusual – as Anderson points out, the courts generally let sports bodies govern themselves.

“All sports bodies are private bodies and can deal with matters internally as best they can. The Irish courts’ view basically is that they want very little to do with sports disputes – ‘deal with those yourselves’ is their view – and the GAA, FAI, IRFU and so on all have fairly sophisticated internal arbitration tribunals when it comes to the interpretation of rules and regulations.

“The obvious exceptions are cases where a player feels there has been a really serious breach of the rules and feels perhaps his case has been prejudged internally, and of course no sports body is immune from criminal law.

“Those internal tribunals often have a lawyer as a member, and that shows how law can contribute to sport – the alternative course of action, like proceeding to the High Court, can be very costly, while arbitration can take place for practically nothing and yet uses the same level of professional skill. That’s a good thing.

“On the other side, sometimes the arbitration can be too legalistic, and you may have to remember that it is only a sport.”

ARE there other potential Bosman rulings coming up? Anderson sees two possibilities.

“There’s an argument in professional football – something which arose a bit in Wayne Rooney’s case – that a player coming to the end of his contract could buy out the remainder of the contract – to buy out the wages remaining.

“That would be a lot to you or me but not to a professional player. There have been some Court of Arbitration of Sport rulings on this, but they tend to go back and forth on it.

“The other one is a drugs in sport issue – because the drugs cheats are so sophisticated, testers have to be more and more strict, and there’s the so-called ‘whereabouts’ rule.

“With that rule there’s a certain period when athletes must be in a certain place for one hour every day in case a tester calls, and if you thought about it, there are very few employers who’d get away with that.

“Some people view this as anti-human rights and anti-privacy and there’s a case rumbling through the European courts which has the potential to disrupt the anti-doping regime.”

In the amateur field, many GAA supporters are critical of the lengthy appeals process. Could GAA players sign up to voluntary code of practice whereby they’d accept one spin on the disciplinary merry-go-round?

“You can’t deny people access to the courts,” says Anderson. “In Donal Og Cusack’s book he said, about the Semplegate controversy, that the GAA disciplinary system was like Las Vegas, that you’d always get another turn.

“After a championship match you could have one tribunal hearing on the Monday morning, a set tribunal, and you have one shot at it. You could maybe have a very technical appeal but the whole thing could be done and dusted within the week.”

What about the complaints of managers and players that they’re tried and judged by the media?

“The ideal thing is always to deal with a disciplinary matter as quickly as possible,” says Anderson. “There are a lot of problems with media coverage insofar as the likes of Mickey Harte and Jack O’Connor have said that the more you’re on television the more likely you are to be caught doing something.

“There’s something to that but the other side is that media coverage of sports is inevitable, and is a good thing in a lot of ways. For instance, the GAA wouldn’t like a situation where the games were not being covered by the media.”

Anderson’s solution would be a disciplinary body meeting to review the weekend’s games at the same time as RTE’s flagship GAA programme, The Sunday Game.

“Ideally you’d have an independent tribunal looking over all the video evidence themselves at the same time on the Sunday night and then Monday you’d have a disciplinary tribunal meeting which could be covered by the media.

“After a while everyone would get used to that system – managers, players, media – and it would seem the best way to go about it. It’s surprising that the GAA doesn’t have an independent disciplinary officer, even.

“That’s the way it’s done in Australian Rules. All the video of the weekend’s game is sent to the disciplinary tribunal immediately and over time they develop their own precedents and so on.

“That means players in Australia have a fair idea that if they hit an opponent in the jaw, for instance, they’re likely to get a suspension of a certain amount of weeks when the tribunal meets, and they accept that pretty readily because of the precedents.”

Switch codes. What about that rugby tendency to double suspensions when they’re appealed?

“Suspensions should be proportionate, so the thinking would be that the first suspension given is proportionate, and if you chance an appeal which the authorities feels is trivial, they’ll give you something extra.

“It’s trying to make you accept the first decision, which they feel is fair, and the logic is that if you had multiple appeals – which can happen in the GAA, for instance – then it’s going on for a large part of the season and is disruptive to a lot of people, including managers and players.”

Anderson blames “human nature” for tit-for-tat citing in rugby.

“Sometimes it can be as competitive off the field as it is on the field. That’s human nature to some extent. In rugby they’ve made sure the citing commissioner is independent to see through the tit-for-tat aspect of things.

“The idea is good because you have one person dealing with an issue rather than getting the lawyers involved. Because then it can drag on and on, and no-one wants that.”

True. With all due respect, the fewer lawyers you see in sport the better.

* Modern Sports Law: A Textbook by Jack Anderson is published by Hart Publishing.