Tom Dick (Head)!

Did you read the article by Glentoran Chairman Tom Dick last Friday in the Belfast Telegraph calling for a ten team league, in order to cut down the number of games played each season? What a load of rubbish is what sprung to my mind! To start with, all Tom Dick is thinking about is one thing and one thing only, money. So forget about 18 games, what he wants is 36 games, 8 more than we play at present. To accommodate this he wants the C.I. S. cup to be solely a knock-out competition and to relegate the County Antrim Shield to a junior competition. Let’s look at this objectively, after all nobody forces teams like Glentoran to enter the County Antrim Shield. As for cutting the league down in order to play Setanta Cup matches on a Saturday, could the Glentoran chairman enlighten us as to what the other six teams in his supposed ‘super league’ are going to do on a Saturday? I’ll tell you what, absolutely nothing, as at the end of the day he doesn’t give a fiddlers. The Glentoran chairman is thinking of one thing and one thing only, how many pay days that the Glens can have against the Blues and how much money they can make playing teams from south of the border on a Saturday. Yes we admit this league is not perfect, but we’ve tried all sorts of permutations and this is the best we can come up with. Instead of looking at changing things he should be thinking of ways to enhance our league as it is. If he wants to decrease the number of games, maybe we should try an eight team split after 15 games, the top half play each other once and the bottom half likewise. This would reduce the number of games teams have to play till 22,therefore leaving ample free Saturdays for Setanta cup games. But it still wouldn't suit the 'Big two' as they'd be losing out on a guaranteed fourth meeting. That's what you have to acceptTom, even in a perfect scenario it wouldn’t be perfect, so let’s just make the best of what we have!