Liskeard Athletic joint manager Darren Gilbert has criticised Cornwall FA after the club was thrown out of the Cornwall Senior Cup on a technicality.

The Blues had been charged with fielding an ineligible player – Stuart Bowker – in the 2-1 quarter-final win over Millbrook at Jenkins Park on January 17, and their appeal was thrown out on Thursday evening.

Millbrook will now play Wendron United in the semi-final to be played in mid-March.

Liskeard secretary Lianne Williams says she will be offering her resignation at the club’s next committee meeting, on Monday, and if that is accepted, she will then resign as a board member of the South West Peninsula League.

It has emerged that Bowker’s transfer from Dartmouth on the day of the quarter-final was registered 25 minutes after the deadline because of an email glitch – but Liskeard had verbal evidence that an official of the SWPL gave them the go-ahead to play Bowker.

Gilbert said: “I am very frustrated that we have not been treated fairly by Cornwall FA. We’ve been punished for something which can happen to anyone.

“A representative of the league had given us verbal permission to play Bowks. At ten to seven on the night of the game we were prepared to leave him off our team sheet but we had been given permission to play him.

“Then Millbrook put in a complaint to Cornwall FA after the game and they have upheld it despite us appealing with our written evidence.

“This decision has been made by paid officials against unpaid officials, the sort of people who keep clubs like Liskeard going without being paid a penny.

“People like Lianne (Williams), our secretary, who has a full time job and has to do her football work around that. We all have full time jobs, we do football for the love of it.

“I’m gutted for the players and I’m gutted for Lianne because she couldn’t have done more than she did and she does not deserve any criticism whatsoever.

“Without people like us, there won’t be any clubs. You only have to look at what’s happened at Godolphin Atlantic recently. What the Cornwall FA has done to us doesn’t make you want to carry on.”

Gilbert was also critical of Millbrook, saying: “If Macca (Brown, the manager) wants to go into a semi-final having lost to a lower league team in the quarter-finals, that’s up to him. I know I wouldn’t want to.

“It’s beyond belief how we’ve been treated.

“The Cornwall FA should have replayed the game, we would have been happy with that.”