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For Pete's sake...
The biggest buck I have is this TV3 ‘eircom League weekly’. UCD just don’t seem to get any kind of recognition or mention. There have been a couple of weeks in succession that the only time we were mentioned was for the result of our game and the upcoming fixture. So how can they say it’s an ‘eircom League weekly’. It seems to be more like a ‘Cork City weekly’.
Big Trevor Welch is like a fella with two mickeys. He’s drooling over Cork when they’re doing well, and now he’s nearly crying, like our Taoiseach was the other day, because they’re not doing so well.
It seems to be ‘Cork City this, Cork City that’. Thankfully last week we were actually playing Cork, and big Trev gave us a mention on the “Cork City eircom League weekly”, as I call it. That has been a buck of mine.
Then there’s all this you hear about certain clubs being told they were going to be in the eircom League Premier Division next season. The season is not even over. One case and point: I was speaking to Dundalk manager John Gill last week and he tells me that he was chatting to Tony McGuirk, the ex-manager of Bray Wanderers. It’s alleged he was told not to worry about Bray being bottom this year, because they were more or less guaranteed that they would be a part of the new format next year.
I have also just recently been in touch with Mark Dempsey, the assistant manager to Pat Scully at Shamrock Rovers, and they seem to think they will be in it as well. There are a lot of rumours going around, and it would have been better if we had have known the situation from the start of the season.
With no relegation or promotion this year, and just one spot to be taken up, what does the FAI plan to do? Will they just wait until the end of the season
when they will see if Rovers win the First Division, and then make the easy decision of promoting them as the league champions? And everyone will live happily ever after.
According to John Gill, he claims they were told they wouldn’t be in the First Division. If all of this is true, as far as I know, we weren’t officially told anything good, bad or indifferent. It’s strange what you hear and I know that you shouldn’t listen to rumours, but when so many people say these things, then you begin to believe it.
Also, there is the issue of these full-time clubs. We played Derry on Sunday night in the quarter-final of the FAI Cup, in probably the most important game of our season. This was our second time in the space of a month that we have had to travel to Derry on a Sunday for a 6:30 kick-off.
The first time, Derry didn’t play for a week before it. They faced Shelbourne in the cup the previous Sunday, and didn’t meet us until a week later. For a full-time team, with 24 players, what’s going on?
It is the same with Drogheda, we will play them on Saturday 14th October instead of the original date of Friday 13th. The reason we have received is that they’re playing Derry on the Tuesday and they want an extra
days rest.
Then you look at us and what we’re doing. We had re-arranged any possible replay against Derry for this Tuesday night. I have all confidence in the fitness levels of my players and also in the recovery programme that we use. What is going on with these teams? Is it insecurity on their part, do they need a weeks rest to recover from games?
I know Derry have been caught up in Europe, and they may tell you that they are leaving dates bare because of possible cup replays, but if that does occur, then deal with it then, not two weeks beforehand. Those are the kind of gripes that bug me about the league. There are a lot of things that are wrong and need to be put right, as soon as possible.
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