The Championship play-off final may not go ahead on Saturday 23 May, with the English Football League investigating Southampton over the Spygate scandal. A hearing will take place on or before Tuesday 19 May, and the league says it has a number of contingency plans if the match has to be moved because of the case and any appeal that follows.
Southampton are due to face Hull City at Wembley for a place in the Premier League next season, but the club has been charged by the EFL with breaking rules by observing one of Middlesbrough's training sessions before last Saturday's semi-final first leg at the Riverside. The timing matters because the Championship final is the first of three play-off finals held across three days at Wembley, with the League One final on Sunday and the League Two final on Monday.
The hearing has put a tight summer calendar under pressure. After the football finals, Wembley is also due to host the Rugby League Challenge Cup final on 30 May, the Women's FA Cup final on 31 May and a major music event on Saturday 6 June, leaving little room for any disruption to be absorbed without pushing other events in the schedule.
The case also underlines how quickly a disciplinary issue can spill beyond one tie and into the wider football calendar. Southampton's charge is not about the result of the match they played last Saturday, but about what happened before it, when they are said to have watched Middlesbrough train. If the hearing or any appeal process slows the final down, the EFL will have to use one of those contingency plans, and Wembley's packed run of fixtures means there is almost no spare time to waste.
What happens next is now fixed to the hearing before Tuesday 19 May. By then, Southampton, Hull City and the EFL will know whether the route to the Premier League can stay on the date already set or whether the final becomes the latest casualty of a case that began with a training-session watch and could end with a reshuffled Wembley agenda.
