Omar's moving finger writes....

At last it seems the Irish F.A. have got their collective fingers out and got a sponsor for the Premier league. The announcement was supposed to be made today, but I haven’t personally heard anything on the box or read anything in the papers or on Teletext, but I assume it’s a done deal. But maybe I’m wrong to assume that, as I also assumed the winners of this season’s C.I.S. cup were going to be the ‘fourth’ team in the money spinning Setanta cup. But in a somewhat more ominous statement the I.F.A. announced that Dungannon Swifts, the team that finished fourth in the league table last year would be our representative team. Why the change of heart I ask myself? Alas I can come up with no obvious answer, but it somehow smacks of ‘skulduggery’. The underhand methods of Jimmy Boyce and company have been well documented over the years and I can just see their ‘grubby’ little hands at work here somewhere. We are now told that this years C.I.S. cup winners will qualify for the 2007 tournament, that’s of course if there is one still going then. No harm to Distillery or Portadown, but most Irish league directors and managers, not to mention fans, will be hoping that the winner is either the Blues or the Glens, as even at this early stage, one wouldn’t bet against them filling two of the first three positions in the league at the end of the season. That should also mean then that the fourth placed team can waltz into next seasons Setanta cup, if they haven’t qualified already that is. At least I think that’s what it means, maybe that only happens when it’s a leap year or when Christmas falls on a Thursday, or some other ‘daft’ idea thought up by the I.F.A... It doesn’t matter which way I look at this, I still don’t like it, there’s definitely some hidden agenda here and until it comes out it’s going to leave a bad ‘taste’ in our collective mouths. Come on Jimmy, tell us the real reason, did somebody tramp on your toes or put one over on you? You know the truth will come out eventually, so get it off your chest now and let’s get on with the ‘farce’ that we call the Irish league!