IN every level of football, from Sunday morning pub kickaround to top level Premiership professional, there are rules to prevent teams from playing ringers.

A league becomes meaningless if a team can field an ineligible player to help boost its results. Every schoolchild knows how infuriating it is when a rival school suddenly finds a way of drafting the county's best player into their team just to win an important match.

But West Ham have effectively done just that. They have admitted acting improperly over the signing of Argentinian Carlos Tevez, and they have been fined £5.5m by the Premier League for doing so.

Yet it has been well worth their while breaking the rules and paying the fine. Tevez's goals have kept them in the lucrative Premiership - which is worth about £30m a year to them. Naturally, Sheffield United, who have been relegated in their stead, are talking about legal action.

But the courtroom is not the place to settle football disputes.

Whatever level of league you play in, you agree to abide by that league's rules and disciplinary procedures.

West Ham have been properly disciplined by the Premier League. Although the sentence may be galling - and it is a sentence so lenient that in this case crime has paid - the unhappy clubs must act to reform the Premier League rather than drag the sport into the court.

This is all about an interpretation of the rules. The League insists that the most effective punishment is a hefty fine; some clubs insist that West Ham should have had points deducted.

If this case proceeds to court, the next logical step is for every interpretation of the rules to be contested in court. Therefore, every referee's season-changing decision would go before the bench: was he right to give the penalty that effectively relegated a club when TV replays show no foul?

Very soon, there would be judicial reviews into every offside decision.

The game cannot go that way.

But equally, the Premier League must know that if as a league it is to retain its credibility it must have a disciplinary code that works and teams are not encouraged to field ringers to help them avoid relegation.