SCOTLAND – Players create Union after Thomas Cup selection

Craig Goddard, Alistair Casey, Keith Tunrbull and Jamie Neil, who are amongst Scotland’s best players, have created the Scottish Badminton Players’ Union recently as they launched a petition for a vote of no confidence in the Badminton Scotland management. The four players felt there was unfairness in the recent Thomas Cup selection when they were not sent to Warsaw for the team event in spite of their national rankings. They also invite other players to join the Union.

Goddard was quoted by the daily East Kilbride News as saying: “We’ve had a lot of responses from people who wish to join and we are holding our first meeting on Saturday at the Coburn Centre in Glasgow where the Glasgow Open is taking place, so we hope to see a lot of people there and we hope that they will have plenty of ideas for how we can take the sport forward.”

Scotland is only one of many countries that are experiencing problems with their Federations. Thailand’s best players are left out of the ongoing Thomas and Uber Cup Asia qualifiers after they called for a change in governing of their own federations, while three Dutch players are suing their national body over a conflict of interest between their own sponsors and the team sponsor.