Attention: We are sorry to announce a decision handed down by USSF in favor of Charleston Battery declaring last night’s game a forfeit do to an ineligible player on our team.

The player in question was “cup-tied”.

A “cup-tied” player is any player who makes an appearance for a club at any stage of the competition is “tied” to that club for all future matches during that season in the same competition.
When filling out the registration form the player named what he believed to have been his previous club. We turned in the forms and after review we got the approval from USL and USSF. Between his time with his previous club and our club, the player was asked to play in a amateur team, which he did, for 3 games in November 2015. One of those games just happened to be a US Open lower level qualifying match.

This morning we were contacted by a reported who had found information about one of those 3 matches letting us know that he would be running a article about us having an ineligible player on our team at last night’s game. After that information was out Charleston Battery appealed to USSF and after a brief call with our club we were told that the game was declared a forfeit in favor of the Charleston Battery.

In a phone call we were told that the USSF Panel that made the decision believed that we had not knowingly played a ineligible player but the game was given to Charleston Battery for that reason nonetheless.

Please know that in no way did we have any ill intentions or prior knowledge of this player’s ineligibility. If we had any prior knowledge of this we would have this player “sit out” the US Open Cup and continue to play on the PDL games.

All players gave their all on the pitch last night. We are very proud of our team, including the player in question, for what how they played.

We have until 5:00 PM tomorrow to appeal. If anything changes we will keep posted.

Thank you all for you support.

 

Charleston Battery Protest Decision Letter – FINAL (1)