KEY POINTS:
A six-match ban slapped on Waitakere United striker Commins Menapi by New Zealand Football has been overturned on appeal.
Menapi will now serve the original one-match ban he was handed after being sent off in April's New Zealand Football Championship final at North Harbour Stadium.
The club's appeal to the independent New Zealand Football-appointed appeals committee succeeded with the committee also ruling the appeal fee should be returned to the club.
In handing down their decision, the committee, said. "New Zealand Football's disciplinary hearing procedure was fundamentally flawed and unfair" and, further, "it was wrong and unjust for the Disciplinary Committee to have convened and proceeded to do that which it had just indicated it would not do [take into account the upgraded charge of violent conduct]".
The six-match ban, which would have ruled the Solomon Islands striker out of almost a third of the coming NZFC season, was imposed by the New Zealand Football-appointed disciplinary committee after it was felt the initial [mandatory] one-match ban was insufficient given the severity of the tackle by Menapi on Auckland City defender Riki van Steeden.
But in their ruling, the appeals committee said "the case is even more fundamentally flawed because of our conclusion that the referee was not entitled to have increased the severity of the offence for which the player was sent off at the instigation of others following the conclusion of the match".
New Zealand Football chief executive Graham Seatter said "process and communication errors by New Zealand Football in the disciplinary process meant the incident could not be reviewed by the appeals committee in relation to Fifa statutes".
Seatter also said the national body had to take the verdict on the chin and learn from the errors.
"The referee has acknowledged his error and our efforts to put this right have failed. The result is a very light punishment for what we regard as an extremely serious incident."
Seatter said that it was never the intention the appeals committee should act on the upgraded "violent conduct" charge and that their decision should have been made solely on the original serious foul play decision of referee Peter O'Leary.
Waitakere chairman Rex Dawkins said "sanity has prevailed - but at a huge cost to the game.
"Nobody condones the tackle but if, at the time of the incident, New Zealand Football had asked us to consider it, we would have been in a position to conduct our own investigation.
"But, now almost five months on, it would be very unfair on Commins to reconsider it given what has transpired."
Dawkins said they are considering seeking reimbursement for legal costs.
