It seems that all the hard work done during the past few years in Cypriot basketball scene is going down the drain, after some unfortunate events which saw AEL Limassol (Eurochallenge 2008 Final Four) to decide to continue in the league with tis youth team while AEK Larnaca wants to withdraw for good.
The reason, according to the two clubs, its the preferencial treatment APOEL Nicosia is getting from the Sports Justice.
But let's take it from the beginning. On November 20th AEL-APOEL was scheduled to played in Limassol in "Nikos Solomonides" Arena. Minutes before the tip-off it was made known that the arena's clocks were not functioning properly and despite the technicians' efforts the problem could not be fixed.
The referees of the game decided to postpone the game and APOEL appealed to Sports Justice claiming that AEL had sabotaged the clocks because they wanted the game to be postponed as they were missing two key players and would like to see the game played at a latter date. The Sports Courts accepted their plea and awarded them the game 0-20 and nullified AEL for that game, in a decision that was made known on Thursday evening.
As a result AEL board called for an emergency meeting where they decided to continue playing in the league with their youth squad as a protest. It is yet unknown if they will go ahead with this and in case they do what will happen to their senior players and their Eurochallenge campaign, which is in progress.
In the meantime another team, AEK Larnaca have stated that they will withdraw from the league once for all if the President of Sports Justice is not replaced immediately. They have also gone as far as threatening to create a new closed independant league with other teams.
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