A JUNIOR football club is “devastated” after finding out they won’t be able to play in the Gwent Cup this year.

“We felt that we were victims of a situation out of our control,” said Phil Bowden, chairman of Fleur De Lys.

The club – who play in the Islwyn Junior League – had sent in the relevant forms and cheques twice to the Gwent County Football Association for their U14s and U16s team. On both occasions, they were lost in the post.

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On the third instance, the forms were received but the club forgot to include entry forms alongside affiliation forms.

Yet they only discovered they wouldn’t be playing in the cup when the first round of fixtures were released.

“The first we knew about it was that the U14s weren’t in the first round and we thought we may have had a bye (when a team is put through to the next round automatically)," said Mr Bowden.

“But when the same thing happened for the U16s, we thought there may have been a problem.”

The club felt confident that because they had made “genuine efforts to submit the forms” a solution could be found.

However, their appeal was rejected by the Gwent County Football Association.

“The real victims are the kids - they just want to play," said Mr Bowden.

“They don’t understand why adults would do this to them.

“There was no discussion over how we can make this better for the kids?

“Yes, ultimately the fault lies with us as a club, but we are desperately disappointed that between us as a group of adults we have been unable to find a solution.”

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Alan Watkins, Gwent County FA Secretary said: “Like the club, we are disappointed the club are not in the competitions as we want as many teams in as possible.

“The club admitted it was an administrative error on their part - they did not enter, but by the time they realised this, the draws had been done.”

Chepstow Garden City have drawn out of the first round for the U16s competition and Fleur De Lys enquired about taking their place.

However, Mr Watkins said: “If we then altered the draws because more clubs wanted to enter, we could have found ourselves breaching our own rules and landing up with appeals to Football Association of Wales.

“We have no pleasure in finding ourselves in this situation, but it is entirely not our doing.”

Mr Bowden said this could have been avoided if the “antiquated system” of sending forms and cheques in the post were replaced by an electronic system.