TAKEN at first glance, it does seem harsh Havant and Waterlooville defender Justin Gregory hasn't been allowed to line up at Liverpool in the FA Cup today.

But, playing devil's advocate, I believe the FA are right to firmly enforce their rules by forcing the 32-year-old mature student to sit it out.

Gregory is the luckless trainee physiotherapist who inadvertently racked up five bookings in the relatively obscure surroundings of Blue Square South football, earning him a one-match ban.

It's a one-match ban that just happens to rule him out of the plucky non-league outfit's visit to Anfield in the fourth round.

So he's going to miss out on the chance of a lifetime - a one-off opportunity to play at the home of the five-times European Cup winners in front of a capacity 44,000 crowd.

Imagine that, lining up against world class stars like Steven Gerrard, Sami Hyypia and Fernando Torres.

Pitting your wits against multi-millionaire Premiership players, with the outside chance, albeit a very outside chance, of inflicting the biggest FA Cup upset of all time over the Reds.

Havant, who have already pulled off giant-killing acts over Notts County and Swansea City to get this far, tried to bend the rules to make Gregory available for today's clash.

They fixed up a hastily re-arranged league match against Thurrock on Wednesday, fielded seven reserve team players and used only four who are likely to start at Anfield.

The idea was to grant Gregory a late cup reprieve on the premise that if he missed that match, it would mean he had served his one-match ban.

But the Football Association quickly saw through that little ruse.

According to them, games cannot be arranged in order to have suspensions lifted.

A Soho Square spokesman clarified the situation, saying: "We looked into the matter and are satisfied that, on Havant's admission, they rearranged the game to complete the suspension."

It's irrelevant the match was abandoned after 19 minutes because of floodlight failure, annulling the fixture and wiping it out of the record books, including for player appearance and suspension purposes.

The point is that rules are rules. No matter how big or small a club, they have to adhere to the regulations.

That's why it's right Gregory won't be able to strut his stuff on the pitch today.

After all, the player, whose nickname is Psycho' because of his uncomplicated approach to tackling, is the architect of his own downfall.

He is solely responsible for picking up five bookings, the crucial fifth one coming at Bishop's Stortford on January 8, the day after the fourth round draw had been made.

Before any dreamers start bleating on about the romance of the cup' and suggest that's why Gregory should be allowed to line up' think about the precedent it would set.

What if he scored the winning goal? What if he completed the last-minute goal line clearance that clinched Havant the mother-of-all-triumphs?

The Kop would probably go nuts about the injustice, so would Reds boss Rafael Benitez as well as Gerrard, Hyypia and Torres.

Yes that scenario would create a new cup fairytale, but it would also be grossly unfair.

Just as it would if Liverpool hastily re-arranged a fixture so that Peter Crouch could beat a one-match ban to specifically line up against Havant and then scored the winning goal.

Finally, before you start having too much sympathy for Gregory, just remember this.

It's not as though he hasn't played in the FA Cup fourth round before.

He lined up for Farnborough against Arsenal in front of 35,000 at Highbury in 2003 - exactly five years and one day ago to be precise.

It doesn't get any better than that!