Situation in Cork must concern all other clubs

If the country's second city cannot a support one full-time soccer team how can other towns be expected to?

BETWEEN THE long delay before it got off the ground and the English pilot's bizarre attempt to recount, while employing an appalling Irish accent, a conversation with ground staff about the long delay, yesterday's team flight to Oslo did not go entirely as planned.

Before we were even aware there would be a problem, though, there was an odd moment when one of the cabin crew requested that if a Francis Gavin was on board, he make himself known. "What now?" you found yourself wondering as we waited to see if the League of Ireland's director was indeed attempting to get away from it all for a few days. As it turned out, there was no sign of him.

Gavin has maintained in recent weeks that the tone of the coverage of recent problems at a number of clubs has been unfair and insisted that the league is moving in the right direction, with several clubs simply struggling to keep up.

Still, after several weeks of quiet speculation that things were in danger of coming badly off the rails at Cork City, the confirmation that Arkaga were aiming to saddle up and ride on out of town must have come as a bit of blow to him and everyone else out at Abbottstown.

The news overshadowed the rather bizarre yarn from Cobh where, it emerged, the players had been asked to nip into their banks, borrow a couple of grand and then hand it over in order, one presumes, to help pay their own wages. This, you would have thought, is the sort of scenario that even those American internet mortgage merchants might have baulked at.

"Will you be able to pay the money back?" asks your banker. "Well, maybe," you reply, "when you give me the money . . . although I might be back for more in order to meet the later repayments."

Anyway, the more serious side of the Cobh saga is that while the players may have ruled themselves out, it seems the committee and most committed supporters will be taking out personal loans to help clear the debts. Taken in conjunction with problems at Sligo Rovers, Galway United and Kildare County, it is a pretty grim state of affairs.

But perhaps not so grim in the great scheme of things as events in Cork where, depressingly, the news that Arkaga want out is just the latest in a long line of setbacks for a club that would appear to have the potential to be the country's biggest by some distance. However, it seems, the club also have a painful inability to take two paces forward without diligently retracing all of their steps.

As things stand, City are the league's best supported side. Though they did poorly in Europe, they are competing for domestic honours on three fronts. The team is predominantly made up of local players. They play in what is, by the league's standards, a decent enough venue. They have a sports-mad city to themselves.

Somehow, though, the numbers just aren't adding up for the club and if they aren't in Cork, quite a few people will have been thinking over the past week or so, then how can they be expected to even come close to tallying in places with smaller population bases and nothing like the chances of success.

Arkaga are aggrieved that in the midst of current events they are being portrayed as the bad guys. To be honest, it's hard to know what to make of them. Patrick Kenny, the closest thing to a representative of the company I have ever spoken to for more than 30 seconds, certainly seems like a decent person lumbered with a thankless task.

In a statement slipped quietly out into the public domain over the weekend, the company he works for stated they have put more than €2.4 million into the club they bought last year and rather bitterly, it seemed, asserted that this makes them the league's biggest benefactors. Garrett Kelleher might debate the latter point with them, maybe Ossie Kilkenny too, given the way his Tolka Park property deal rumbles on, but clearly that's a lot of money to wave goodbye to in such a short space of time.

Of course, nobody asked them to become involved with Cork City and few have ever claimed to understand why they did it, but what people would like to think they have the right to expect now is that the company honours its commitments and at least withdraw in a manner that safeguards the future of the club.

Major doubts have been expressed about whether they could really be bound by the commitments secured by the FAI under the licensing scheme but it would be nice to think that won't become the issue.

Arkaga arrived on the scene when property developer Owen O'Callaghan and others were considering a move for the club and nothing has occurred at the club that would significantly throw any financial projections they might have made upon taking over the reins.

Arkaga's departure will be a blow for FAI chief executive John Delaney who has talked more than once about the wealthy people who want to come in and invest in the league. Only with a number of such backers in place at clubs around the country can the senior game as a whole hope to move forward and the fact that Arkaga have decided to get out so quickly may serve to dishearten people like Kelleher and deter any others who might have been waiting in the wings.

If the club goes under it will be a blow to the league. Needless to say, a team will continue to represent Cork one way or another but the belief that the Republic's second biggest city can support full-time soccer may be shattered for some time to come and the repercussions of that will not be limited to Turner's Cross.