Sport: Fan pressure and questions of morality

Football supporters may be forgiven for thinking that contracts are not worth the paper they are written on in professional football, such is the way players and managers are perceived to move club or be transferred when “in contract”. Typically, contracts will be fixed term, reflecting many variables that can exist, including form and fitness, for the professional sportsperson.

In the Scottish Professional Football League (“SPFL”), clubs are obliged to use the template contract of employment for professional football players, in a form mandated and published by the SPFL. The detail regulates the relationship in many areas, including player remuneration, image rights and intellectual property. The detail also reflects the significant regulatory backdrop cascading down from FIFA, the international federation, and principles flowing from FIFA regulations concerning player status and transfers. There are, in addition, many behavioural provisions. All of this makes the situation between Raith Rovers and David Goodwillie most intriguing.

Club’s problem

Goodwillie’s recent on-field reputation as a goalscorer is in marked contrast to his off-field history, having been successfully sued in 2017 in a civil action for rape. That action did not end his professional football career, but Raith’s signing of Goodwillie in January 2022 prompted outrage from supporters, leading to the club declaring that they would not be playing Goodwillie and would be seeking talks with him to terminate his contract. But can the club refuse to consider Goodwillie for selection, and does the club have grounds to terminate his contract, given that matters surrounding Goodwillie are well known within football and would have been well known to Raith Rovers before signing him? A cursory glance at the template SPFL contract discloses little obvious hope for the club in reaching an early resolution.

Away from football, many employers and employees will contract on the basis of either statutory notice or a relatively short period of notice being due to terminate the contract of employment. Until two years’ service is attained, very few protections exist (aside, of course, from protections around equalities, whistleblowing and health and safety matters). Common law remedies based on inducement or misrepresentation may possibly, although rarely, assist an employee terminated early on in their relationship, but while any such remedies might theoretically be available to a footballer terminated in term and without cause, if a club was to change its mind as to the signing it has made, the football regulatory landscape can cause severe difficulties for clubs and players alike if they do not observe the sanctity of the footballer’s contract of employment.

Unilateral termination is vehemently discouraged by the regulatory landscape in football. Stability in the contractual relationship is seen as vital, to protect both player and club. Typically, football regulations will, in certain circumstances, impose both financial and sporting sanctions on the party who does not observe contractual stability and who terminates without cause. This typically means that where players and clubs wish to part company, an agreement is negotiated and reached. Football dispute jurisprudence would suggest that Goodwillie’s two-and-a-half year contract with Raith Rovers will need to be valued, and absent any early termination provisions, the club could face significant difficulty. Leaving Goodwillie to train alone and not selecting him is unlikely to be a solution, as that itself could leave Goodwillie well placed to terminate the contract and seek sanctions and significant damages against the club. In all, a very difficult situation.

Morality regulations?

Should Goodwillie have been allowed to play football in the professional league at all? That is a separate and complicated matter that goes well beyond the moral issues arising from his circumstances. We have, however, undoubtedly entered an era where questions of morality and behaviour are far more prevalent than before in sport and need to be considered. Possibly, this may be due to enhanced media exposure for sports in general, through the internet and social media.

The outrage caused by West Ham United footballer Kurt Zouma and his treatment of his pet cat has prompted calls over whether enough is done to regulate the behaviour of persons who are prevalent in the public eye. A fine and donation to the RSPCA seems to have been the extent to which Zouma’s club has been prepared to act – unlike in rugby, where leading English club Exeter Chiefs cleverly rebranded to remove all native American imagery in order to ensure that it could maintain its most important property, its brand name, while swiftly changing its logo, to ensure that fans in the sport could no longer criticise and in turn jeopardise its standing and reputation with commercial partners and supporters of the club.

Whether developments such as these will take us to “morality” regulations being enshrined in sports regulations will require further careful consideration.