Far from Glory, this is the A-League's darkest day

It was always going to be a fair effort to top the sight of 11 professional footballers striding around an empty stadium on the Gold Coast with their shirts featuring the pointed message “Freedom of Speech”.

Perth Glory's Andy Keogh has been at the heart of Perth Glory's success and failure this season (Getty Images) Source: Getty Images

Yet here we have it.

In a football league barely 10 years in existence that’s already seen multiple clubs collapse, players hit match officials in the face and swingers, recalcitrant owners set up rebel organisations, and a 41-year old-swagger about the penalty box at Hindmarsh with the verve of an anaconda involved in a debate over time zones, today is the darkest of the lot.

It showed clearly on Football Federation Australia chief executive David Gallop’s face as he admitted today this was a position he hoped he’d never be in again.

The reading of a string of offences Perth Glory stands charged of committing went longer than stoppage-time in most games: fines for undisclosed payments and benefits in each of the 2012/2013, 2013/2014 and current seasons amounting to $269,000, and revelations that the club had been operating in excess of the salary cap this term to the tune of $400,000.

Those breaches featured payments outside the standard player contract, those to family members and agents plus pre-payments, third-party sponsorships and the provision of funds for travel, accommodation and motor vehicles.

It honestly wouldn’t have surprised if Andy Keogh had been found guilty of pocketing cash to be the face of the St Patrick’s Day festivities in Western Australia.

Four-hundred-thousand dollars is a hell of a pot at the end of a rainbow that should be regulated by the salary cap to ensure a level playing field.

Questions need to be asked about why it took a pair of journalists and a whistleblower to uncover what appear to be serious and deliberate avoidances of the cap, and whether the A-League can honestly guarantee the product they deliver is above board across the same item.

Perth Glory owner Tony Sage – a man more than familiar with financial investigations – is clearly not short of a coin and the fine, record though it is, will unlikely to do too much damage to a bloke who could lay down in a field of West Australian iron ore and dream of England.

By far the more significant penalty for a man, who by various accounts, had a burning ambition to see his side reach the AFC Champions League next season is the shuffling of his side out of the finals race.

The decision to ‘award” a team that, by the governing body’s own admission, stands charged with deliberate, significant and persistent breaches of the cap the ability to finish in seventh place at the end of the season is a curious one.

It shows a lack of understanding at just how deep the passion of the average football fan runs in a league where relegation or some various draft measures are not involved it’s the ultimate humiliation for any side to finish bottom.

So now we have an outfit which stands accused of “persistent salary cap breaches” finishing above both Western Sydney Wanderers and Newcastle Jets.

Central Coast Mariners, too.

I asked Gallop for an explanation, to which he simply responded: “That’s what we decided”.

I don’t think fans of Newcastle or Western Sydney view it so off-handedly. In fact, there would have been a couple of teams at the start of the season who would have probably viewed a seventh-place finish as a fair effort.

Not many pre-season predictions had Glory that high.

It’s not a great look for the game, and both Gallop and A-League boss Damien De Bohun admitted as much, coming as it does on the eve of the finals, indeed a Glory game day against title contender Sydney FC, and should the Glory decide to appeal – it has a seven-day window in which to decide that – the future is about to get a whole lot bleaker.

One thing that should not be up for debate is the importance of the cap (and floor for that matter) and fair play to FFA for digging through a trove of documents to uncover these breaches.

But more should have and needs to be done.

From the office of the game’s overseers in central Sydney, you see right the way down to Rushcutters Bay, where in 1908 Jack Johnson forever changed the face of boxing, champagne dripping down Tommy Burns’s legs between rounds as he suffered blow after blow.

The challenge now for FFA is to see off these blows of their own, ensure compliance and adherence across all clubs to the cap which is such a fundamental part of our competition.

Perhaps it could also explain to three other clubs just why a side that cheated its way out of the finals still manages to finish above them on the standings.