statement Re: Shamrock Rovers ground Problems

Angry City reject accusations

18th February '04


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DUBLIN CITY FC has rejected claims that they are attempting to put Shamrock Rovers out of business because of their refusal to relocate to Dalymount Park.

Vikings Chief Executive Ronan Seery has reacted angrily to the claims and stated: " It's absolutely scurrilous and has nothing whatsoever to do with this club. We have been dragged into something that is really not of our making and we really shouldn't be put in a position where we have to defend ourselves in this matter."

A request had been made to Dublin City asking them to forego on their contract with Shelbourne FC to play out of Tolka Park thus allowing Shamrock Rovers to take up the spot created by us agreeing to vacate Tolka Park for the season and play out of Dalymount Park."

"Dublin City was approached last Thursday by interested parties inquiring if we would be agreeable to a move to Dalymount Park. Understanding the reason's behind the request a series of consultation meetings were held with management, players, fans and investors. Having canvassed the opinion of all parties, it was decided that in the best interests of Dublin City FC, basing ourselves out of Tolka Park in our natural fan base area was the correct thing to do. In light of determining this position, I relayed the decision to the relevant parties and informed them that this decision was based purely on footballing and not financial reasons. At no stage did Dublin City FC seek to benefit financially as a result of this approach to relocate. This decision was taken in light of the opinions garned from people who have put a to of time and effort into the development of this club and while we understand that Shamrock Rovers may be discommoded by our stance, we must do what is best for Dublin City FC.

We have nothing but respect for the management, players and directors of Shamrock Rovers but this decision has been taken in the best interests of Dublin City FC and not the best interests of Shamrock Rovers FC. For this, we make no apology and cannot be held responsible for historical or political pressures which have been brought to bear on this issue. We have been inadvertently dragged into a situation which is not of our making"

The coming season is of immense importance to Dublin City FC. The request to locate was considered but with much of our logistical pre-season work already underway and the mindset of the players focussed on Tolka Park as our home venue, the decision to operate out of Tolka Park was arrived at in a considered and measured way. This arrangement was put in place last March and was taken regardless of whether Dublin City was a first Division or Premier Division club.

We believe that we have a better chance of success on and off the pitch by basing ourselves out of Tolka. We also feel that there are alternative solution which could also be explored which could address the Shamrock Rovers issue in a beneficial way. As such we reject any notions which would hold us to ransom in telling us where we should or should not play our home games this season. We have put a lot of time and effort into ensuring best practice was in place and late approaches to move elsewhere do not help us as a club. We make no apologies for staying put in Tolka Park"

As first division champions we appreciate the huge effort it is going to take to make an impact in the Premier Division this season but Dublin City intends to give a thoroughly professional and committed showing this season and with all these elements considered, it was decided that in the best interests of the club, we should take up the arrangement which has been in place for close on a year.

http://www.dublincityfc.net/news.php?id=590

Natural fan base area ???

What happened to the support base stretching form Bray to Balbriggan ???

If anything Dalymount with it's larger reception areas would be better suited to your purposes for investors sponsors etc. Apart from games against Bohs there I couldn't see a situation where you'd fill the Jodi.

Logistical pre-season work ???

''We also feel that there are alternative solution which could also be explored which could address the Shamrock Rovers issue in a beneficial way'' agree 100%, eg the FAI back down and allow both to play at Tolka.

Are Belgrove moving to Whitehall ?

No matter what anyone might say, Dublin City should in no way be dragged into, or try to be blamed for, the mess that Rovers are in.

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Originally posted by patsh
No matter what anyone might say, Dublin City should in no way be dragged into, or try to be blamed for, the mess that Rovers are in.

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rovers failed to get a licence because they had no ground , why do rovers feel its everyone elses fault. Their over 18, about time they took responceability for themselves.

I don't see why other clubs should be put out by the actions of a **** board of directors. dublin city do right to reject this stupid idea and maybe when rovers are at their lowest ebb in dalymount then they will get their act together. the scum element even attmpted to pick fights at the ireland match so to say they are non existant is simply brushing the matter under the carpet. I would love to see a strong S.R.F.C but its their own fault that they have slipped since the 80's so let them deal with it

While I do feel that this problm is completely of SRFC's own making, I wouldn't go along with the tone of the messages above. It saddens me to see them slip like this. THe league needs them. It's not like there are loads of other clubs pushing to sign up and relace them if they fall apart. And they always draw a large crowd when they visit the X.

The league would be much poorer without them.

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Originally posted by liamon
While I do feel that this problm is completely of SRFC's own making, I wouldn't go along with the tone of the messages above.

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Thanks for the sentiment.

As for some of the other comments, it makes a mockey of the whole "EL United" movement.

interst by Shamrock Rovers to ground share with Drogheda United
? I think it would work out !

Bit rich when Cork insisted on wearing their home jersey's for that game last year...

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Originally posted by Macy
Bit rich when Cork insisted on wearing their home jersey's for that game last year...

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Insisted or just that Rovers (the board) never protested/voiced an opinion?

Whatever you might say about Dolan, he is spot on here.

In its present precarious state, the EL stands or falls together. If Rovers end up going to the wall over this it'll be the last feckin time I'll "support the EL" by going to support the other local clubs in european games.

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Originally posted by Macy
Bit rich when Cork insisted on wearing their home jersey's for that game last year...

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Yeah, that will surely turn out the final nail in the coffin....:rolleyes:

Clubs should help out Rovers, but no club should get grief for looking out for themselves first.

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Originally posted by Ringo
rovers failed to get a licence because they had no ground , why do rovers feel its everyone elses fault. Their over 18, about time they took responceability for themselves.

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Only an idiot would say it was EVERYONE else's fault when the two other clubs agreed and Continuity Home Farm wouldn't. BTW since you haven't answered it I take it you agree that insisting on Tolka makes a mockery of the whole ''we're not Home Farm'' thing.

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Originally posted by TommyT
Only an idiot would say it was EVERYONE else's fault when the two other clubs agreed and Continuity Home Farm wouldn't. BTW since you haven't answered it I take it you agree that insisting on Tolka makes a mockery of the whole ''we're not Home Farm'' thing.

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I've never said its everyone elses fault, its Rovers fault. Dublin City do not own a ground Pats , bohs etc do. Not quite sure what your last comment is. But we've been playing at Whitehall for most of the time we've been formed, so Tolka does make sence to our fan base. Thats why last March we signed a contract to lay there. Believe me, Home Farm were delighted to see the back of us. You could see the disgust on the faces as we won Match after match, last season. When we won the division last year, Home farm weren't rolling out any champagne. Do you not think Rovers board should have sorted something out before applying for a licence. Its like going for an NCT we 4 bald tyres and no bulbs, there was no way they could get a licence. Ask yourself the question, why won't clubs in Dublin rent their grounds to Rovers

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Originally posted by fergalr
Whatever you might say about Dolan, he is spot on here.

In its present precarious state, the EL stands or falls together. If Rovers end up going to the wall over this it'll be the last feckin time I'll "support the EL" by going to support the other local clubs in european games.

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Its hard enough to run our own clubs, without having to run Rovers as well. Dolan wouldn't be falling over himeself to rent out "the stadium of light" if he was still there. Why doesn't he rent out Turners X to them.

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Originally posted by TommyT
[B]Natural fan base area ???

What happened to the support base stretching form Bray to Balbriggan ???

If anything Dalymount with it's larger reception areas would be better suited to your purposes for investors sponsors etc. Apart from games against Bohs there I couldn't see a situation where you'd fill the Jodi.
[B]

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That's what you never answered

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Originally posted by Ringo
[B] (a)I've never said its everyone elses fault
(b)But we've been playing at Whitehall for most of the time we've been formed, so Tolka does make sence to our fan base.
[B]

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(a)Your saying Rovers are blaming ''everyone else'' I just pointed out that everyone else apart from Dublin City had been very helpful
(b)Fan Base ??????????
FFS you're talking about 30 people max. If Tolka is handy then so is Dalymount (I live about 1.5 miles away)

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Originally posted by Ringo
[B]Dolan wouldn't be falling over himeself to rent out "the stadium of light" if he was still there. Why doesn't he rent out Turners X to them.
[B]

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He did and he already has. Kind of.

[SIZE=8]FINALLY, A SOLUTION FOR ROVERS[/SIZE]


Go get a ground or else just fcuk off and stop annoying everyone.


:rolleyes:

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Originally posted by TommyT
That's what you never answered



(a)Your saying Rovers are blaming ''everyone else'' I just pointed out that everyone else apart from Dublin City had been very helpful
(b)Fan Base ??????????
FFS you're talking about 30 people max. If Tolka is handy then so is Dalymount (I live about 1.5 miles away)



He did and he already has. Kind of.

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A) how have they been helpful? suggesting Dublin City move!
b) no one in EL can slag of fan bases.
c) What is kink of??

You still have not answered, why the board of rovers did not sort out a ground before applying for a licence?

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Originally posted by Gary
Go get a ground or else just fcuk off and stop annoying everyone.

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Surely you mean get use of a ground.... Most other clubs don't own their own ground, they rent it.....

Besides in this thread, it's a bit rich when the club that are blocking Tolka are a club that have made no effort or spent no money trying to sort out their own ground at all. Could be argued that while their first division challengers were trying to at least have plans in place if they got promoted (eg Bray with the new stand, Harps with the new ground) Home Farm just took the easy and cheap option...

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Macy
Surely you mean get use of a ground.... Most other clubs don't own their own ground, they rent it.....

Besides in this thread, it's a bit rich when the club that are blocking Tolka are a club that have made no effort or spent no money trying to sort out their own ground at all. Could be argued that while their first division challengers were trying to at least have plans in place if they got promoted (eg Bray with the new stand, Harps with the new ground) Home Farm just took the easy and cheap option... [/QUOE]


How are we blocking Tolka?. We signed a lease last year, because we knew that whitehall would not pass the UFEA licence. Shamrock Rovers did fcuk all & now its everyone elses fault.
Have you seen the price of land in Dublin?

As regards Home Farm, they have no interest in what we do & we have no interest in what they do. Considering Dublin City is only up & running in the last 3 years we've done rather well.

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Originally posted by Ringo
As regards Home Farm, they have no interest in what we do & we have no interest in what they do. Considering Dublin City is only up & running in the last 3 years we've done rather well.

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In which case, were you ever actually elected to the league?

We've the same Uefa licence as yourselves.

If you're a different entity to Home Farm, were you ever elected to the league?

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Originally posted by Ringo
[

Considering Dublin City is only up & running in the last 3 years we've done rather well.

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That's so smug it could have been said by a gypo. You are basing your self-rightousness on the fact that you managed to rent a ground. Well done.

Oh and answer Macy's question while your at it.

KOH

As with most clubs ownership has changed , throughout time.

A (Very) Brief History of Dublin City Football Club:

Although Dublin City Football Club was not founded until 2001, its origins stretch back much further. Dublin City’s predecessor (in League of Ireland terms at least) was Home Farm, a club founded in 1928. Home Farm soon developed a fine reputation for producing quality youth teams, and provided the springboard from which many an illustrious career in professional football was launched (including those of Irish legends Jackie Carey and Ronnie Whelan; the tradition continues to this day – current Ireland internationals Ian Harte, Gary Kelly, Kenny Cunningham, Mark Kinsella and Richard Dunne are all Home Farm graduates.) In fact, so successful were Home Farm at youth level that, for many years, the club was a regular fixture in the Guinness Book of Records by virtue of the record-breaking 79-game winning streak achieved by one of its schoolboy teams between 1968 and 1970.

Home Farm’s senior team would not, however, reach such heights after its admission to the League of Ireland in 1972. Although a Home Farm team composed entirely of amateur players despatched Dundalk, champions Cork Celtic, St. Patrick’s Athletic and Shelbourne to win the FAI Cup in 1975, it was to prove an isolated, if thoroughly laudable, achievement for Home Farm at this level. Never again would the team win a major honour (or, for that matter, compete in Europe, as they did against Lens in the following season’s Cup Winners Cup.) Home Farm never finished higher than ninth position in the League of Ireland, and when a new second-tier division was inaugurated in 1985, Home Farm always looked likely candidates for the drop. They were relegated in 1987, and would not return to the top flight until almost a decade later. In 1996, Home Farm (by now known as Home Farm Everton, thanks to a somewhat controversial link-up with the English Premiership club) beat Athlone Town on penalties after a two-legged promotion/relegation play-off to return to the Premier Division. Their stay in the top flight was brief and undignified; Home Farm won just three games all season and were relegated whence they came long before all fixtures had been completed.

A further change of name to Home Farm Fingal in 1999 did little to dispel the torpor at Whitehall, as the club slumped to consecutive seventh-placed finishes in the 1999/2000 and 2000/2001 seasons.

Home Farm appeared to be fading into comfortable anonymity, but a new phase in the club’s history was (along with yet another name change) just around the corner. Chief Executive Ronan Seery outlined an ambitious plan to bring Premier Division and even European football to Whitehall, where the club formerly known as Home Farm (and Home Farm Fingal and Home Farm Everton, also incorporating Drumcondra…) would compete under the name Dublin City. Seery’s vision was dismissed as pie-in-the-sky by many observers, and the club’s new title came in for a great deal of criticism. This was, to some extent, understandable; after all, Home Farm had been always been the smallest and least successful of Dublin’s six modern-day league clubs, and as such was hardly entitled to appropriate the name of the entire city. Dublin City’s exact relationship with Home Farm was also ambiguous, but crucial, given that the new club claimed its eircom League status as a successor to Home Farm Fingal.

The club’s links with the city it now claimed to represent were strengthened by its adoption of the county’s traditional GAA colours of sky blue and navy, along with a new nickname; The Vikings. These measures were greeted with disdain by those who saw them as vain and superficial attempts to bolster the popularity of a moribund club, but even the cynics had to sit up and take notice as Dublin City raced to the top of the First Division in its first season of independent existence. The new club’s challenge eventually ran out of steam, and a final total of fifty-three league points was good enough only for third place, a position (and a point) below the promotion play-off spot.

The 2002-2003 season, truncated to allow for the introduction of summer football the following season, was a disappointing one for Dublin City; with Whitehall unavailable because of ongoing work to the ground’s superb pitch, the Vikings were forced to play their home games at Tolka Park and Morton Stadium in Santry, and could finish only seventh.

Since then, however, Dublin City has cemented its status as one of the most forward-looking clubs in the First Division (if not the eircom League as a whole.) Highlights of City’s home games are usually broadcast on TV3’s “eircom League Weekly” round-up programme, which goes out on Monday nights; rather than wait for TV3 to cover the games themselves, the club have provided their own footage to ensure maximum exposure on national television. On the field, things are looking just as rosy. Tony “Toccy” O’Connor, a close-season signing from Bohemians (where the full-time nature of the club had proved too demanding for O’Connor, a part-time player) has been one of the key figures in Dublin City’s charge to the top of the table. John Gill, City’s new manager and formerly Dermot Keely’s assistant at Kildare, can call upon a host of quality players this season, including strikers Robbie Farrell and Alan O’Connor, midfielders Robbie Dunne and Barry Burke and goal-scoring centre-half Thomas McGauley, to name just five.

At the time of writing, Dublin City stand one point clear atop the eircom League First Division. Automatic promotion is a definite possibility, but a top-four finish, carrying the reward of a place in the promotion play-offs, may be more realistic. In order to achieve their goals, City need the support of every football fan they can get through the turnstiles, and this is where you come in. If you want to see some great football (of which, I promise you, the Robbies are very much capable) in a friendly atmosphere at a charming stadium with the best pitch in the league, then come along to Whitehall and cheer the boys on.

What? You live in Malaysia? I'll accept that excuse for now, but if City are in the Premier next season, you better be there!


http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=sherlough

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Originally posted by WeAreRovers
That's so smug it could have been said by a gypo. You are basing your self-rightousness on the fact that you managed to rent a ground. Well done.

KOH

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And you didn't where were you planning on playing, Fairview Park?;)

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Originally posted by Ringo
[

As regards Home Farm, they have no interest in what we do & we have no interest in what they do. .

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Your potted history kind of contradicts the above statement, don't you think?

Either you are a stand alone entity that was elected fairly and squarely to the League or you are Continuity Home Farm. Which is it?

KOH

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Originally posted by WeAreRovers
Your potted history kind of contradicts the above statement, don't you think?

Either you are a stand alone entity that was elected fairly and squarely to the League or you are Continuity Home Farm. Which is it?

KOH

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Is this going anywhere? We’re like an adopted child that has fallen out with its parents. They've disowned us. We don’t care. Ownership of most clubs has changed down through the years. Its bit like me saying “Sure aren’t you just fans of Louis Kilcoyne’s company.” No team has pure blood, no matter what they think.

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Originally posted by Ringo
They've disowned us. We don’t care. .

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At least you got a new song out of it. :)

I actually think Dublin City are blameless in all this ground-sharing palaver but don't expect me to ever accept you in the League - I'm still unable to accept Cork City and they're a positively ancient 20-years-old.

KOH

Because we've been in the First division, we havn't been part of the whole slag Rovers/all the fans are scum thing, thats been going on. We were asked at a very late stage to move & it just wasn't the best thing for Dublin City & our small but growing band of merry men. I hope you get sorted out soon & we can get on with playing football. Tallaght would be great for the whole league if it got of the ground. As regards being in the League, sure aren't we going straight back down;)

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Originally posted by Ringo

A) how have they been helpful? suggesting Dublin City move!
b) no one in EL can slag of fan bases.
c) What is kink of??

You still have not answered, why the board of rovers did not sort out a ground before applying for a licence?

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Tallaght, Tallaght, Tallaght. The board were trying to sort out a PERMANENT ground, something your board has made no progress towards. I think EVERYONE else in the EL is entitled to slag off YOUR fan base. I think even Limerick outnumbered you in Whitehall.

Kind of as in Rovers played Cork City at the cross last year-though obviously the MFA own that.

For what it's worth I think Dublin City should agree to play in Dalyer and allow Rovers play in Tolka. It's hardly going to affect their crowds, if someone wants to go to a Dublin City game they will go whether its Tolka or Dalyer. Fcuk sake they're only a few minutes away from each other. It's not as if they have much of a fan base to disrupt anyway (well neither do Rovers I suppose!).

Rovers can't be absolved from blame either though. They should have had the foresight to see that this type of situation could arise. They'll either have to sort things out quickly or face the consequences.

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Originally posted by Colm
It's not as if they have much of a fan base to disrupt anyway

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why does everyone pick on the new boys. We're only little.:(

Excellent post Colm

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Originally posted by Colm
Rovers can't be absolved from blame either though. They should have had the foresight to see that this type of situation could arise. They'll either have to sort things out quickly or face the consequences.

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excellent post colm;)

Yes I did mean the whole thing. :D