Large winners of Biarritz (R2) during the fourth round of the French Cup (1-4), the players of FC Bassin d’Arcachon (N3) are nevertheless deprived of the following round this weekend. The Gironde club was eliminated from the competition after a complaint by the Biarrots following an entry error on the computerized match sheet.
Nicolas Duval, usual goalkeeper of team C, appeared on this one in place of his brother, Florian who came into play for the last quarter of an hour. A confusion that the FCBA was quick to communicate to the League on Sunday to “prove our good faith and protect us from any suspicion of cheating”, contextualizes Jacques Walkowiak, the president of the Maritimes in an open letter broadcast this Saturday on the Club Facebook. However, someone rushed to give this information to the Biarritz club. And the Basque club took advantage of it by filing the complaint which led to a first decision leading to the defeat of FC Bassin Arcachon on the green carpet.
“Play a 5th round in our place”
The basin club obviously decided to appeal, hoping for the same fate as another Basque club: “The Bayonne Crusaders won their case in April 2023 after losing on the green carpet, despite a 5 to 1 victory on the field,” adds the president in his letter. However, this Thursday, October 10, the ax falls: the decision to maintain the defeat of a defeat on the mat towards the FCBA is maintained. Jacques Walkowiak laments out loud in his letter: “The appeal commission remained deaf to our arguments, hiding behind protagonists who do not remember much.”
But the ire of the maritime president does not stop there. If he doesn’t even pay attention to the person who gave the information to the Biarritz club, he is especially angry with its president for having listened attentively. “Thanks to an ill-intentioned person, you are going to play a fifth round of the France Cup in our place even though you lost 4 to 1 on the pitch,” recalls Jacques Walkowiak. It is because there are men like this that the football we love so much and amateur sport in general is slowly declining. »
« Frustration normale »
On the occasion of this letter, the president of the Maritimes took the opportunity to recall the special atmosphere of the meeting: “The local public being in the permanent insult of our players, racist insults in addition, even going so far as to interrupt the game. the game by the referee for more than five minutes. He recalls that these facts, not reported in the report of the meeting, were “passed over in silence in the name of solidarity between Aquitaine clubs so as not to cause the Biarrots to suffer the consequences”, indicates Jacques Walkowiak. Enough to add to the anger of the boss of the FCBA.
After reading the letter, Nicolas Morel, the president of JA Biarritz, preferred not to enter into the controversy: “It is normal that there is frustration among the president of Arcachon but my players and volunteers would have I would have been frustrated in turn if I had let this mistake, which can happen to anyone, go unnoticed. For the rest, he has the right to file a complaint and that would be completely normal.”
