UNTIL now twitter’s victims have mainly come in the form of thoughtless footballers too fast-fingered to contemplate the size of a Football Association fine heading their way.
When Amersham Town‘s Matthew Stone took to the social networking site to have a pop at England’s Rugby Union failure against Australia, he didn’t know how much trouble he was about to cause.
Unfortunately for the Spartan South Midlands Division One side, the RFU hadn’t taken his criticism of the 20-14 Twickenham defeat to heart.
You see, Stone was named on Amersham’s team-sheet for their FA Vase clash with Rye United. The only problem was he was 70 miles away in Coventry grumbling about the oval-ball game – and the opponents’ officials were reading his tweets as the game was going on.
Amersham – who won the second-round tie 1-0 – have been expelled from the competition, made to hand back their £1,200 winners’ cheque and now face the prospect of a huge fine and a ban from the FA Vase for their deception.
The Quarterboys attempted to play Eddie Savage – the former EastEnders child star who played Peter Beale in the BBC1 soap until 2002 – under Stone’s name.
But they hadn’t banked on eagle-eyed Rye committee member Richard King.
Secretary Roger Bond explained: “We had been to watch Amersham play in the previous weeks and honestly, something didn’t seem quite right.
“Richard understands twitter and has been following a few of their players, which of course gives you access to what they’re saying online. Clearly when a player whose name was on our team-sheet was tweeting about the England rugby game going on when he was supposed to be on the pitch playing, it gave the game away!
“We then made contact with the player and he said he was at University in Coventry, and hadn’t turned out for Amersham in two months. Then we headed to the FA.
“They categorically denied it at first, which made us more keen to get justice done.
“We didn’t play very well and deserved to lose the game but it’s not the point. Maybe a few years ago they would have got away with this but eyes are everywhere now.”
Rye, 2010 quarter-finalists, will now play Combined Counties League South Park in round three.
Amersham chairman Lawrence Lipka declined the opportunity to comment.
