EFL's Parry confident play-off result will stand amid Spygate fallout
EFL chair Rick Parry is confident the result of the Championship play-off final between Middlesbrough and Hull will stand as the ‘Spygate’ saga threatens to rumble on. The sides were due to meet at Wembley on Saturday afternoon following Boro’s reinstatement, the consequence of Southampton’s expulsion for spying on a training session at the Teessiders’ Rockliffe Park base ahead of the semi-final between the clubs. However, Hull owner Acun Ilicali has indicated the Tigers could take legal action if they lost the final, while Southampton were unhappy after their appeal against the punishment was rejected.
Asked if he believed the result would stand, Parry told talkSPORT: “I hope so, yes, of course. We have to move on, the season has to finish – players are going off to the World Cup on Monday. “We all need clarity now and we all need certainty and what we have a habit of doing in football, all the precedents say that however frustrating it can be at times, you tend to look at punishments prospectively.
“If you had to unravel the whole of the previous season’s league table, you would never get a competition finished, so that is always a guiding principle – punishments happen forwards, not backwards. ” Whether ‘Spygate’ has been settled once and for all remains to be seen, but the outcome at Wembley will not necessarily bring closure amid suggestions Hull should have been handed a walkover. Ilicali told the Press Association on Thursday: “Our lawyers think actually that it’s not fair an eliminated team have come back and go to the final.
That’s so simple. “But is it, at the moment, time to talk about it? No.
So I would just stop this conversation for today. It’s 48 hours now and we are fully focused on this game. ” Speaking to the BBC pre-match on Saturday, Ilicali said: “Our legal team says that we have to go for action, that’s for sure.