The Oxfordshire FA have had it bought to their attention that Thame United Reserves fielded an ineligible player in the recent Intermediate cup semi final against Headington and have subsequently removed the team from the competition, despite winning the semi final 6 - 0.

We are deemed to have broken a rule 7C, playing three senior players in the semi final. We were completely unaware that one of these players made appearances for a Step 5 side earlier in the season, despite signing him from a Step 6 side and having no knowledge of any previous club.

We as a club would never knowingly break any rules and had no way of knowing this circumstance. The 18 year old in question played 30 minutes before going off injured. We had decided to play two young players who were 18 & 19 as our senior players. One of whom was promoted to our first team, who played the first half of this season for our reserves side, and another who was a regular reserve player who had played 31 minutes for our first team over three substitute appearances.

We are a club who want to encourage and promote our youth players, and feel that this breach was not only completely unintentional and beyond our knowledge at the time, but that our young players have been punished unfairly. We would like to put on record our deep disappointment in the ruling from the Oxfordshire FA and hope a further review of the rules around senior players and eligibility is carried out in the future, to make them fit for purpose.

We wish the best of luck to both teams who will compete in the final next Thursday.