Messages

County Board obviously do

Major problem Co Board have at the minute is that the loan from Croke Park is in € yet majority of their income is in £. I heard that they have to pay €10,000 a month to Croke Park and that the poor value of £ is crippling them at the minute. I think they have to pay this until 2028/29 which is concerning for the immediate future of the County sides if we are putting the current slump down to a lack of finances/ centre of excellence

Some business heads - buying 'replacement' lands before they had secured completion of the sale of the land that they did own!

Interesting to know how many of those involved in those decisions are still part of or connected to or used by the County Board.

Definately still some involved (including executive). Why do the clubs nver vote to remove these people?

Downpatrick was a terrible choice of venue for a January game.

Grass banks and and exposed location.

County board will no doubt say they have fulfil a certain number of fixtures in their nominated second ground. Sorry lads, find another second ground if it's for winter fixtures.

Football wasnt good to watch but great to have a game in East Down for a change

f**k, don't start me on broadband.

I have been having it out with BT as to why I don't have Superfast broadband available to me when there's a fibre to the street cabinet right at the end of my lane, less than 100 metres from my front door. Most of my neighbours can get 60M plus. I'm getting 1M to 1.5M on a good day.
After several different departments asking me the same question I kept getting the stock answer that it wasn't available in my area and I was x number of miles from the nearest switch, but finally got through to some girl from South Shields in England telling me that infrastructure was nothing to do with BT but is now Openreach.

Openreach are like all BT companies a shower of shit for customer support with no contact phone number, so I've ended up sending them an email, but lord knows what response I'm going to get from it.

Sounds identical to my situation, we had a new cabinet installed 200 metres away about 18 months ago by BT but they still haven't been able to explain why we haven't been connected. The Openreach website is about as accurate as recent election opinion polls. We have gone from being at "build" stage in July 2015 to "under review" to "in scope" back to "under review" again.

We have been told to go done the Satellite route which I thing is ridiculous given two houses away get 50 Mbps and there is a new fibre cabinet 200 metres away and about 4 houses

Any one have any advice where I can get further info?

Kilcoo were in a very hard position last week and can really see where they are coming from but ultimately they did not show up for the fixture so they will lose the game
Ballymartin notified the county board this year that the were not playing against Ballyholland as they played a game 2 nights before and lost the game
Loughinisland failed to play Kingdom and lost the game
It will be very interesting tonight to see do they also take the same stance
If not you can guarantee a lot of Loughinisland and Ballymartin people will be disgusted
But yes I can see why Kilcoo failed to field

Kilcoo are chancing their arm. The match should have been played on the weekend of 22/23 October as stated in the Co Board statement last Thursady and Kilcoo shouldn't have been allowed any additional preparation time for the Ulster Quarter Final. CCC in 2015 refused the same request by Loughinisland and in doing so this should have been the precedent going forward. It seems that it is one rule for some clubs and another for others. What explanation can the CCC provide as to why even their own decisions aren't consistent?

If Co Board do award the fixture to Castlewellan, which is really their only option given their previous decisions this year, that will be the Div 1 and Div 2 champions decided by the CCC and not on the field of play. Complete farce

Loughinisland has a similar situation last year. They won the Down IFC on the Sunday and where made to play Longstone in a promotion playoff the following Saturday. Island assumed that when the Co Board notified them of on the fixture on the  Monday that the match wouldn't go ahead as the precedent in previous years was that a club in Ulster would have been allowed to focus on Ulster and there was also a wedding in Longstone on the Saturday. By Friday when it became apparent Co Board where not going to move the fixture, Island were told that if they didn't show Longstone would be awarded the fixture. Island showed up but were ill prepared tactically,physically and mentally and the result was a foregone conclusion.

Whether it's fair or not if Island had have been awarded the same treatment as Kilcoo/Burren/Mayobridge had been in previous years I have no doubt they would have beaten Longstone.

It seems the Co Board has taken the stance of get the fixture pencilled in ASAP as we need the gate receipts and to hell with the Clubs Ulster/League prospects

Given what they did to Loughinisland they surely have no choice but to award fixture to Castlewellan?

[We had four games postponed during the year and not once was that at our behest.]

You must give An Riocht serious credit for the way they have played the system here, obviously calling a number of games off to suit themselves and refixtures at times when most clubs have nothing to play for, its very smart work, Loughinisland should have seen what was coming and demanded the game be played earlier which would have put pressure on An Riocht. The situation should not have occurred in the first place, far too many games this year across the board have been called off or switched for silly reasons. Heavier fines and points deductions wouldn't be too long sorting the mess out.

Nobody in loughinisland is blaming An Riocht. They have done nothing wrong. The blame lies completely with the county board.

Any ejit with even an ounce of objective rational thinking could see we have been royally shafted here. We had four games postponed during the year and not once was that at our behest.  During the lull in the summer we contacted both the other teams and county board to try and get them played, but try as we might they could not be arranged, through no fault of ours. 

An Riocht asked for the original fixture to be postponed, which we have no issue with. I notice another poster suggested we should have made them play it. I  must remember not to knock on your door it we are looking a fixture re-fixed if there is a death in Loughinisland. When all is said and done , we were being told to play away from home (which we actually considered, until the fixtures were later rearranged and would have given An Riocht an advantage, as referred to a couple of posts back) against a team we were directly challenging for promotion. Bear in mind they had the privilege of playing us at their pitch and we were being denied the same right when we requested it. 

The County Board were simply more interested in trying to meet their dead lines and to hell with any sense of natural justice. It was a case of run along boys and take your oil. Our committee had to make the decision whether to play the match, or not take the field and lodge a protest. You can bet every pound you have in the bank that had we played it, the county board would have then simply said, 'move along nothing to be seen here.' and they would not have given a fiddlers. Now we at least can shine a light on their duplicity.

Their big issue was that all fixtures must be played by the cut off date. If this goes to the Ulster Council how do they explain that they were /are willing to fix one game in Division two after the cut off and two further games in division three. How exactly will they explain that does not set a precedent boggles the mind.

IMO this high lights all that is wrong with out leagues. Get them over and done with and who gives a hoot about any sense of fair play.

With regards to the mathematics. Kingdom have to play Darragh Cross. If they lost and our match the Kingdom was rearranged we had every thing to play for (subject to is beating Annaclone). In the event they beat Darragh Cross we could still have got promoted by playing An Riocht, but would have had to have beaten them by 16 points, which is very unlikely, but not  impossible.

Two of which where called of by the Co Board at short notice to facilitate County training and one of them they then tried to schedule during the July Holidays Problem for Loughinisland in rescheduling these fixtures was that all the teams that they had outstanding fixtures with made it to the later stages of the SFC/IFC

You must give An Riocht serious credit for the way they have played the system here, obviously calling a number of games off to suit themselves and refixtures at times when most clubs have nothing to play for, its very smart work, Loughinisland should have seen what was coming and demanded the game be played earlier which would have put pressure on An Riocht. The situation should not have occurred in the first place, far too many games this year across the board have been called off or switched for silly reasons. Heavier fines and points deductions wouldn't be too long sorting the mess out.

What a load of bollocks. This game was called off by us originally due to the sad death of the mother of 3 of our players. Other than a match with St Johns, which we moved 2 days earlier and lost bth, we have not called any other games off. Loughinisland had a backlog of games and to their credit submitted dates and venues for their back fixtures. We just happened to be one of them and that was last Tuesday.

Extra time, would you not agree that asking Loughinisland to play Sunday and Tuesday would have given yourselves a physical advantage in the match and if scenarios had of been reversed you would have done the same?

From my understanding Loughinisland requested for the CCC to postpone the fixture following their match on Sunday on Sunday afternoon when they learnt that An Riocht vs Leitrim had not gone ahead. Their concerns being that An Riocht had more preparation time and that  An Riocht vs Leitrim would be played after 8th given that An Riocht where playing on Tuesday night and Leitrim on Wednesday and that it would be unheard of for a team to play two matches in two days given the scheduled matches on Saturday, ruling out a Thursday/Friday match. With that being the case they also felt that they shouldn't have to give up home venue either then.The CCC told them they would hold a meeting on Tuesday evening to make a decision, which at that stage the match would have been played and it would have been too late. Also if An Riocht/Leitrim had of been played with the other fixtures Leitrim where still in danger of being relegated, but following Sunday's results that was no longer the case for the refixture

Another question is that as the  CCC made no indication to Loughinisland that An Riocht Leitrim would be palyed before Saturday where they hoping that An Riocht beat the Island and that would remove that problem? If the match had of went ahead on Tuesday and Island won would An Riocht Leitrim have been played last night?

All that Loughinisland wanted was fairness, and Loughinislanfd feel that they have been subjected to a witch hunt by the co board following what happened last year with their playoff with Longstone when they where forced to play a playoff whilst preparing for their Ulster Championship campaign when in previous years clubs had been allowed to focus on Ulster

Another issue is that due to the AIF replay all matches being moved to Sunday from Saturday and with An Riocht match being postponed on Sunday,Loughinisland would have to play a must win game (1 day recovery) against significantly fresher opponents. An Riocht vs Liatrim being called off gave An Riocht a significant physical advantage going into aTuesdays match