St Francis Directors meeting with the fans.

[pete]

Setanta.com

IMO as an interested neutral the meeting sumed up all thats wrong with irish football.

- For a club thats effectively been takenover there was maybe 30 middle aged supporters.
- Directors (formerly trustees) arranged the mergers/takeover behind the backs of the members/supporters & had no EGM to discuss.

Meeting got a bit nasty towards the end when a misguided comment from a director about the teams poor performance last year (1st time to finish last in any league) annoyed the manger & a player in attendance.

St Francis directors tried to appease their members about ir truelly being a merger saying the new" club would be renamed 'Dublin saints' in a couple of years. Needless to say the couple of pats fans in attendance believed this would meerly be the nickname of the club. Whose kidding who?

I'm not sure whether they said it could 100 or 160k to run St Francis every year but 160k sounds way too much. Directors weren't in favout of dropping back to the LSL as costs would be similar to the eL.

Directors seemed to be saying the merger was the ONLY solution to prevent the widing up of the club.

BTW maybe i am a closet Francis fan as i've never been to one of their games so I seemed to have a bit in comment with some of their own "fans"

[joe]

Thanks Rebel,

no surprise to see the controllers of a club working behind the scenes without consulting the fans.

[pete]

I'm sure Pat Dolan is going to get a grilling on the possible name change. Pats fans seem to be dead against that name (who would blame them) & it'll be interesting to see him get out of this one....

BTW it may be of interest to people the categories those applications for dept of sport grants are accessed. Franis applied 3 times in as many years, spoke to govt chief wip, Mary Harney etc... & even paid 5k to a consultant comapny for the last application but got 0/35 points.
- level of disadvantaged area, extent to which facility will increase participation, access by local community, level of sustainability, whether club could pay for upkeep, size of area they represent etc..
Apparently last year just lest than 1/2 the applications to the dept were approved for funding. Think they start with whoever gets highest points.

One of my ideas is Dolan will use the merger to claim Pats are now representing a larger community in an effort to get the 3 million for their new stand at Richmond (recently got planning permission)

[EddieL]

....from two guys involved inside the club,Andy O'Callaghan and a senior member of the board (both of whom I feel have the best interests of Pats at heart) that we will ALWAYS be known as St Patrick's Athletic and that Dublin Saints is merely a new NICKNAME to replace Supersaints.Considering the way that the St Francis directors treated their manager,players & fans I would not be so ready to believe a word they say.Having said that,I have no doubt that our own board know that we are watching developements closely and face a strong protest should they even THINK of tinkering with our proud name.

[pete]

I'd be extremely surprised if Dolan tried to change your name.

I think the Francis board were trying to appease their own members fears that Francis would just be amalgamated into the St Pats. They seemed to be using a possible new letter header design to explain this.....