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DC Get League Score Breakdown - Appeal Put Back
Next year the Irish League will be reorganised with clubs invited to participate in the top flight based on various criteria in addition to league performance. Based on this criteria Donegal Celtic were excluded even though they finished several places above Bangor, who will be involved in the new Irish Premiership. This is because Bangor managed to do a better job of satisfying the off-field criteria (finance, infrastructure, business planning, personnel, attendances) and therefore placed 12th, above Donegal Celtic, in the final rankings.
Despite the fact that Donegal Celtic (winners of the Reserve League and Irish League Paintball Challenge) were as aware of these criteria as everyone else, despite their awful ground, despite their poor attendance all season and despite the fact that it was public knowledge that they were ranked 12th at the start of the season (up from an original ranking of 17th following an appeal, with 12 teams qualifying for the new IFA Premiership) they were surprised that they ended up being one of five Premier League clubs who failed to gain entry to next year's IFA Premiership.
They made an appeal, which was due to be heard today, but this has been postponed to give the club time to study the detailed breakdown of the scores (awarded by independent parties) which they had asked for and have now been given.
Follow up:
I was initially disappointed to see Donegal Celtic lose out on a place; I stated publicly that I wished them a speedy return but the political messing about that has followed has been disgusting. Sinn Fein have been true to opportunistic, bandwagon-jumping form and Gerry Adams spoke at a "protest" arranged at DC's Suffolk Road ground . News reports claim "hundreds" of people turned up to show their support. Fans of other clubs have pointed out that it would have been nice if these hundreds of people had bothered to show their "support" on a Saturday afternoon instead, since away fans often outnumbered home ones.
A lot of the arguments for DC's inclusion (not made by the club themselves, it must be stressed) seemed to be based around the fact that they should be exempt from the criteria because of the religious and/or political affiliation of their fanbase - arguments made most vociferously at those who shout the loudest about any perceived slight. I'm sure they know that should the IFA have made such an exemption, they'd leave themselves open to challenge from the club who would lose out (in this case Bangor), who could rightly argue that they then were the victims of discrimination.
The problem is that the people making these arguments (again, I believe the majority if not all of them are not DC fans) know this and don't care. Most are more interested in branding the Irish FA as sectarian bigots, perhaps for fun or perhaps to enable them to bring about their wet dream of another Northern Irish club playing in the Republic's league (which, for so many reasons, is not going to happen) or, ultimately, the Irish FA's demise. They seem to miss the irony that the Irish FA's scoring system was inspired by the criteria used by the FAI when they set up the FAI Premier Division in 2007.
The Irish League needs more clubs from predominantly Catholic areas. It also needs more clubs generally from the west of the province. Nevertheless they cannot and should not discriminate against clubs who have played be the rules (which all parties knew of and agreed to) as a political sop. It's quite telling that the major news story has been Donegal Celtic failing to make the grade rather than Portadown, the Irish League's most successful non-Belfast club, were excluded for handing in an application minutes late. I wonder why that is.