Derry has endured more than its fair share of hardship and injustice down the years and, on the banks of the Foyle, there appears a dogged determination to have the treatment of Derry City viewed in the same context.
This is the second time Derry have left a league under a cloud. In 1972, they resigned from the Irish League and those, such as Linfield manager David Jeffrey, who say they did so of their own volition is to ignore the circumstances of the time whereby the authorities effectively banned the Candystripes from using the Brandywell as their home ground.
On this occasion, the decision was imposed on them and yet they would appear to be more culpable for the course of events than they were 27 years ago. Effectively, this whole issue turns on whether you believe the word of Derry City chairman Pat McDaid and vice-chairman Stephen McCarron or that of FAI officials Fran Gavin, Pádraig Smith, Regina Coppinger and Richard Fahey. The four insist that McDaid and McCarron told them in a meeting last Wednesday that 20 or more players held dual contracts. It was on this basis that Derry were expelled from the League of Ireland by the FAI’s Board of Management. The Derry officials say they made no such admission.
While the FAI have not always been the standard-bearers for openness and transparency, I can’t help but find their version of events a little more convincing. There would appear to be no motivation for the quartet to say Derry confessed to their illegal practices unless they actually did so. While few will mourn the demise of Kildare County – and might secretly hope that a few of the other lesser lights go the same way – the League of Ireland can ill-afford to lose a club of Derry City’s standing.
The language used over the weekend by McDaid and the club’s solicitor Des Doherty was emotive. We heard talk of a ‘kangaroo court’, a ‘witch-hunt’, an ‘agenda’ and an ‘ambush’, with the situation even likened to the Siege of Derry. It is a vocabulary which has been used all too often in the Maiden City but it appears a little trite for it to be used in this context. Derry may well have legitimate concerns as to whether due process was followed but that should not distract from the matter in hand, whether or not players at the club had two contracts – one the standard players’ contract which was lodged with the FAI and another which, presumably, indicated what they actually earned.
There are huge implications if it is proven that they were cheating which is what this practice would amount to. The issue of tax evasion certainly arises but so could an investigation into possible fraud. If Derry are guilty, they should do the decent thing, put their hand up, clean up their act and concentrate on an application to rejoin the league. Because, if they are consigned to the footballing wilderness again, they will have nobody but themselves to blame this time around.
Derry’s situation has of course offered Bray Wanderers a second chance of staying up but I don’t think they are good enough to avail of it. I’m going to put €30 on Drogheda United to defeat them at 5/6 and €20 on a draw between Shelbourne and Sporting Fingal at 2/1.
