Omar's moving finger writes....

Its official then, the Irish Premier league has a new backer and in future it shall be called the ‘Carnegie’ Irish Premier league. Better late then never I say, but in my heart I had thought it would be never. What else have I come to expect from our wee I.F.A., it’s generally just ‘cock up’ after ‘cock up’. When England visited Windsor Park, didn’t they run out of programmes long before kick-off time. In all fairness it has to be said they did provide programmes for the England game to genuine supporters, when tickets were being collected for the Wales match. But as usual I digress; even though I’ve been told the reason Leeds University is backing the Irish Premier league, I still cannot see the logic in it. Any fool could tell you that the general run of ‘morons’ (and I include myself in that bunch), who attend Irish league games, don’t have the brains they were born with. So bang goes the theory that they hope to attract more students to their University. There is obviously some other reason behind it, but what it is, is anybody’s guess. The I.F.A. as usual just accepts any money thrown at them without worrying what the consequences might be. I can see their point of view also, £150,000 over three years is a tidy sum of money, one and a half weeks pay for Rio Ferdinand for example. I’m being somewhat facetious here, but for our wee league it is quite a tidy sum, all joking aside. We also have been told that part of the deal includes a new competition for Premier league youth teams. This is a great shot in the arm for youth football here and can only augur well for the future of the sport in our area. For far too long we have got by with just our local competitions, but now the youngsters will have something better to aim for. All in all, things are looking up and it is only a three year deal after all. I just hope in their ‘wisdom’ (and I use the word in its weakest form), Howard, Jimmy & Co have not tied themselves down with any ‘foolish’ conditions, like they did with the Daily Mirror. They couldn’t be that ‘stupid’ twice in a row, now could they!