Gold Coast United has not yet responded to Football Federation Australia’s decision to slap the Clive Palmer-owned club with a material breach of their club participation agreement.
Gold Coast United has not yet responded to Football Federation Australia’s decision to slap the Clive Palmer-owned club with a material breach of their club participation agreement.
The bottom-placed team had ‘Freedom of Speech’ plastered across the front of their shirts and on signage at Skilled Park during their 1-1 draw with Melbourne Victory on Saturday night, raising the ire of football’s governing body.
The FFA released a statement that revealed it considered canceling Saturday night’s match because Gold Coast did not have permission to wear the slogan and issued it with a 5pm deadline to remove it, but the club did not comply.
Chief executive Clive Mensink said immediately after the match that he had not received correspondence from FFA, but confirmed the message was not football related.
“I don’t know the content of the letter,” he said.
“I don’t know what the context or quotes (of what he said) were so unfortunately I can’t help you with anything tonight. We’ll take it to the board and go from there.”
Chairman Palmer has been at the centre of a storm of controversy surrounding his embattled club, following the ugly axing of former coach Miron Bleiberg and the decision to hand Mitch Cooper the captaincy on debut last week.
The billionaire is also currently suing hotel giants Hyatt, the parent company of United’s usual shirt sponsor Hyatt Regency Coolum, for $60 million.
The mining magnate alleges Hyatt has been siphoning funds from his recently acquired golf resort for the past ‘two decades’.
Signage at the Sunshine Coast hotel was blacked out or removed earlier in the week, but Hyatt won an injunction to remain in charge of the resort on Tuesday and a judge ordered that the hoardings be replaced.
Mensink said there were ‘issues’ with the club’s arrangement with Hyatt.
“Obviously there are issues with the sponsorship so that’s a different issue altogether. Other than that I’ve really got nothing to say,” Mensink said.
United caretaker coach Mike Mulvey said he ‘didn’t even notice’ the message on the front of his team’s jerseys.
“Did we have different shirts on tonight?” he said.
“You’re asking me to be a fashion expert now as well as a football coach. I didn’t notice.”
