Fort William have been deduxted 9 points and fined £150 For fielding an ineligible player on three occasions yet when hearts do it they get deducted 2 points and we go out of the bet fred cup. Makes a mockery of the rules and regulations and the application of them by the governing bodies on how rules are to be applied. Fort William obviously didn't get an advantage in fielding their player the same as folk on here have said hearts didn't against cove. Just proves if your a big team you can get away with doing what you want st the expense of the smaller teams.

has always been this way ....

I was on the committee of the Inverness & District Amateur FA for a few years with big George Davidson at the helm and when it came to disciplinary matters we were forced to impose decisions based on guidelines from the Scottish Amateur FA who are ultimately governed by the SFA. We tried to do things on a common sense basis most of the time but I lost count of the number of times where we made a decision, thought it was fair based on circumstances, then sent the findings to the SAFA only for them to reject it and send it back for us to impose harsher penalties.  5 and 10 game bans were common as were season long bans for individuals. Given that teams were amateur the fines were also draconian and caused hardship and in some cases for teams to fold. It was after my time but the IDAFA eventually broke away from the SAFA and this was one of several reasons for it.  

The only reason I came up with at the time for the behaviour of the SAFA was 'little man syndrome'. These were guys who - like their counterparts in the SFA - just wanted to be in charge and flex their muscles. They could not do it to the big guys, even at amateur level where there are some 'big' teams, so they went after those who had the least opportunity to strike back. Seems like they treat the non-league and semi-professional teams the same way.