Grays Athletic Press Statement
June 26, 2007
 Grays Athletic appeared in front of an FA Disciplinary Panel on Thursday 21st June 2007 charged with failing to comply with a previous FA judgement against them; this was in relation to the non payment of salary owed to Ashley Sestanovich in respect of his contract, The FA had ruled that Grays Athletic were in breech of FA regulations by terminating his contract prior to his conviction.
Mr Sestanovich had only played one game for Grays Athletic in a Pre-Season friendly before being arrested on a charge of Conspiracy To Rob, this was in relation to an offence which happened 12 months prior to Mr Sestanovich joining Grays Athletic and when he was arrested Mr Sestanovich falsely stated to the club that he was being held on remand due to Motoring offences.
Once the full details of the offence were disclosed to Grays Athletic Mr Sestanovich was served with 14 days notice of termination of his contract which was cleared by the Football Conference, this termination was appealed by Mr Sestanovich through the FA which ruled in his favour.
In December 2006 Mr Sestanovich was convicted of the charge of conspiring to rob The Fahey Roofing Company in which 41 year old father-of-one Thomas Fahey was murdered, he was found guilty and sentenced to 8 years at the Old Bailey in April 2007.
During the FA Disciplinary Grays Athletic club Secretary, Phil O‘Reilly, pointed out the current FA Players Contract does not cover disclosure of information, the panel agreed that this issue needs to be discussed further and debated on to ensure that no other club finds its self in a similar situation.
Grays Athletic have been given until 31 December 2007 to pay Mr Sestanovich the disputed part of his contract, approx 5 months salary. Much as it sticks in our craw to have to pay a substantial amount of money to a convicted criminal who did nothing for this football club, we might have understood it better had we been asked to pay it to the family of the victim of this crime, perhaps Mr Stestanovich might have a pang of conscience and do the decent thing and, if he is at all remorseful rather than greedy, ask us to do just that!"
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