Cork's plight could get a good deal worse

ON SOCCER:The Premier League badly needs to get its financial situation in order

AS KIERAN McCARTHY'S role as examiner to Cork City was confirmed by the High Court yesterday, there was a good deal of optimism that new owners will be in place by October 7th, when the period of protection is now due to run out. At this stage, though, it might just be that the club's plight is set to get worse before it gets better.

On the playing front, things are certainly difficult. As the end of the English transfer window approached and hopes that the club's situation might be transformed by a share of a multi-million pound fee for Kevin Doyle, John O'Flynn's move to Barnet and the expected departure of Denis Behan for a Scandinavian club will leave the first team short of fire-power.

They will soldier on in the Setanta and FAI Cups but a statement from the club to the effect that they would accept the 10-point deduction imposed by the FAI's Independent Licensing Committee last week suggests a line is already being drawn under the league season.

Taking points away from clubs as a form of punishment for their financial transgressions has always seemed to have a hint of desperation about it. The general idea is that a club gains an overall advantage when it seeks to clear its debts by going into administration or examinership, but the punishment still tends to look like more of a sop to rival clubs than an effective deterrent or appropriate punishment.

In City's case the wrong-doers, it is generally agreed, are Arkaga who took on the club, gave commitments to the effect that they would see it through the season and then decided to walk away. The London-based investment outfit will not, however, be hurt by the licensing body's sanction.

Rather, those who take over the club, the players who stay on and, inevitably, its supporters will be hit by the punishment for a situation that, they might argue, may have been avoided in the first place had the FAI's much heralded licensing system operated more effectively.

More than once over the last year or two the association's chief executive John Delaney had talked about the guarantees that would be required of owners regarding their ability and willingness to get their clubs through to the end of the season.

The wording of the actual regulations, though, seems less reassuring. What is referred to is a "letter of support" being required in instances where doubts exist that a club's finances will be secure for the duration of the licence.

Arkaga's representatives provided such a letter but there are stark differences of opinion amongst some of City's stakeholders with regard to the worth of the document in question. And when he spoke on Friday, Delaney's comments were decidedly downbeat.

It's one thing to describe Arkaga's role in the Cork City as a situation as "a disgrace" but the revelation that the system of financial guarantees currently in place essentially amounts to the association making a "subjective assessment" of those providing the assurances is something of a letdown, while his comment that "we (the association) could look at testing it (the document) legally" could hardly be construed as fighting talk.

The FAI, of course, are not the architects of City's difficulties, but their attempts to prevent such a situation arising has proven utterly ineffective. Those most directly affected by this failure are the players at City who have been obliged to accept a 70 per cent drop in wages, at least in the short term. Yet a request by their union that the transfer window be reopened or a dispensation granted so as to allow them to move to other Irish clubs was turned down on the basis that the "sporting integrity" of the league might be undermined by their dispersal amongst other clubs.

Given that this is the fourth straight season in which a top flight club has been docked points, with two of the three sides previously affected relegated as a result of the sanction imposed upon them, "sporting integrity" could hardly be described as the league's long suit.

In both of the instances that resulted in relegation, the clubs involved were being punished for financial transgressions and while it's easy to understand why rivals will see such punishments as necessary (or desirable), it seems a dangerous method of keeping order in a league where eight clubs this year have experienced problems paying wages.

Needless to say, Delaney's view is that the league, as a whole, is moving in the right direction, but given the painful familiarity of all of the issues at City, the suspicion is that things are, on the financial front at least, really trundling around in circles.

While it's true that the standing of the league is enhanced whenever an Irish club does well in a Uefa-organised competition, the more pressing matter remains the extent to which it is diminished every time a league table has a footnote to it related to financial matters.