KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: A potential successor to Isha Johansen as president of the Sierra Leone football association has been cleared to run by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Rodney Michael has appealed to Swiss-based CAS – world sport’s supreme court – against a ruling in March by the ethics board of the SLFA that Michael was ineligible to stand for “election to an executive position”.

Earlier this week Johansen the only woman to head an African FA, announced that she was quitting now that she had become a member of the council of world governing body FIFA and would be too busy to address issues within the troubled domestic game.

This left Sadick Deen-Nyarkoh, Thomas Daddy Brima and Rodney Michael to stand in Saturday’s presidential election.

Michael stands only thanks to CAS which ruled that electoral ineligibility was too strict a punishment for an attempt to sue the SLFA in 2014 instead of referring a dispute to arbitration. The civil claim is still pending

A CAS statement said “there was no concrete evidence that Rodney Michael was in breach of the ethics regulations at this time. The sanctions which have been upheld by CAS are of minor importance and do not affect the status of Rodney Michael to participate in the forthcoming presidential elections.”

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