Doubts over Cork's future continue to linger

LEAGUE OF IRELAND:CORK CITY'S future continued to hang in the balance last night despite the club's owner, Tom Coughlan, stating that he is to resign his position as chairman as a first step towards relinquishing control of the Turner's Cross outfit to a consortium of local businessmen.

Coughlan issued a statement through the club yesterday to the effect that he would be replaced by an interim chairman who will oversee what he hopes will be a smooth transition of ownership during the coming weeks.

The FAI, however, have not been directly informed of his intentions and in a statement of their own yesterday, the association reiterated their call for Coughlan to walk away immediately and open the way for new owners to assume control.

Coughlan ruled that out last night, insisting that the sale of the club would take “a couple of weeks” but the delay leaves serious doubts about the club’s ability to obtain a licence to play in the Premier Division (or any other division, for that matter), given the scale of the financial requirements that must be satisfied over the coming days.

First and foremost, City must pay all debts owed to players, managers and staff (past and present) for the period up to December 31st. Estimates of how much is involved vary but with former manager Alan Mathews seeking something approaching €150,000 in unpaid wages, the total figure is believed to exceed twice that with Paul Doolin, Gareth Farrelly and Colin Healy amongst the other significant creditors.

All those owed money could agree to settle for less but as of last night Mathews had still not been approached about the possibility of even opening negotiations. “Look,” he said, “if somebody had come to me at any point and looked to talk about things reasonably, there is no way we would be where we are now.”

In the event that the club does manage to meet these obligations by close of business today, it still faces a petition by the Revenue Commissioners on Monday to wind up its parent company over unpaid taxes of around €80,000.

The club narrowly avoided such an order last year when it benefited from, on the one hand, Ms Justice Laffoy’s willingness to give it every chance to save itself and, on the other, a substantial loan from an anonymous benefactor, widely believed to be Michael O’Connell, the Cork-based businessman who is a key figure in the consortium now looking to take control.

In its statement yesterday the FAI suggested that Coughlan risked doing “too little, too late” to avoid the club being thrown into even greater turmoil.

League chairman Fran Gavin expressed the opinion last night, however, that even if the various deadlines City face were not to be met over the coming days, the licensing committee would still have the latitude to grant or refuse the club a licence after assessing the club’s position on February 15th, when all of the applications are due to be considered.

The City players are meeting at 10am this morning to discuss Coughlan’s statement intend to stage a press conference afterwards.