Clubs' silence baffles Drury

SOCCER NEWS:PLATINUM ONE chairman Fintan Drury has admitted the failure of clubs backing his company's proposals for an all-Ireland League to raise the issue at last week's FAI agm has cast serious doubts on the project's future.

"It's a curious situation," he said yesterday. "We've been meeting with clubs for several months now and they've been telling us that the serious problems they are facing can only be tackled by a radically new approach, but they don't seem to have gotten angry at all when their plight didn't merit a mention in the agenda for the association's annual meeting.

"We're in a situation now where there are two views on the league. On the one hand you have the FAI view, which is that everything's fundamentally okay and that we'll get there over the next three or four years. And then there's the alternative view, which is that the basic issues haven't been addressed and can't be really as long as there are so many clubs playing senior football on the island, a large proportion of them in the two major population centres of Belfast and Dublin.

"Now, I'm not saying that I've come around to the FAI view or that I'm packing up my tent and going away but what I would have to admit is that the failure of the clubs to raise the situation under "any other business" last weekend came as a surprise.

"Our initiative was predicated on the fact that there was a serious problem - the clubs came to us and told us so - but their actions in Castlebar (where the agm took place) wouldn't seem to bear that out and I can certainly understand how John Delaney might see it as having justified his position."

At the meeting, Delaney said he was broadly in favour of a 32-county league but the timing of the proposal was poor and he was, in any case, helpless to progress the matter given IFA opposition.

Cork City, Drogheda United, St Patrick's Athletic and Bohemians are among clubs in the Republic to have expressed support for the idea, while Linfield and Glentoran are believed to be interested in joining if the two associations get on board.