A quicky before I brave the sleet and the A3 en route to Oxford tonight.
Regular readers may remember my trips across the Irish sea to report on Cork City in the Eircom league, which you can check them here.
Well, as of 2pm this afternoon, they are no more.
To cut a long story short, in Ireland you need a licence to play, and Cork were refused one last night. Constant running up of debt (over €1m) thanks to a guy called Tom Coughlan, and getting deadlines extended to try and keep the licence finally reached a head, and CCFC (Munster version) have done what CCFC (BSP version) should have done ages ago.
Needless to say, there’s a “new” Cork City on the horizon, owned by Foras (the supporters trust, and is the basis for me suggesting that the Dons Trust should charge £100 – Foras charge €120 a year).It does have a great working name though – Cork City Foras Co-Op, which sounds a bit like a convenience store.
Interestingly enough, they’ve got a licence to play in the division below the Eircom league top flight – what that will mean is that in a couple of years time CCFC will be back in the top flight of Irish football (and therefore eventually European jaunts again) anyway. Furthermore, due to the state of Irish football in the last few years, two of the opposing clubs I mentioned in my original reports (Shelbourne and Derry City) are either in or just got promoted from the same division, in similar circumstances.
Anyway, they can still use Turners Cross, because it’s owned by the Munster FA, and no doubt your editor will somehow find some money to pop over there again to see how it’s all panning out. Not to mention see if we can wangle a pre-season friendly in the rebel country…