Sport

League clubs given reprieve

Soccer Licences The four National League clubs which failed to gain a FAI club licence have been given until next Friday to …

Sat Feb 12 2005 - 00:00

Soccer LicencesThe four National League clubs which failed to gain a FAI club licence have been given until next Friday to meet the demands of the appeals committee which met on Thursday.

FAI Cup winners Longford Town and First Division trio Dublin City, Dundalk and Kildare County were all refused licences by the independent appeals committee. But, because all four are close to meeting the standards required, they have been given an extra seven days to get their houses in order.

All four have failed in the legal and financial areas, but are confident that they can meet next week's new deadline.

Kildare County secretary Jimmy Dowling said his club failed only because they had not received certain vital documents. But these had now arrived in Newbridge and had been forwarded to the FAI.

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Dublin City secretary Ronan Seery admitted that he was awaiting just one further document in the post, while Dundalk chief executive Seán Connolly claimed his club were close to meeting all the criteria.

Longford Town also insisted that they were just short of meeting the criteria, and issued a short statement saying: "We are addressing the areas of concern and hope to have this completed in the next week."

Any club which fails to receive a licence could be thrown out of the National League, though the FAI stressed that that was a decision for the league alone.

However, FAI interim chief executive John Delaney did reveal that Longford Town would not be allowed to compete in the UEFA Cup should they fail to gain a league licence, though they would still be allowed to compete in the Setanta Cup.

Despite the failure of the four clubs to gain a licence, Delaney hailed the process as a success. "A few weeks ago, no club had crossed the line and now we're at the stage where 18 have. We were confident that most clubs were making significant progress and this has proved to be the case," he said.

"We knew that it was a lot stricter on financial and legal criteria, which meant that clubs and the licensing department had to get through a lot more paperwork."