Setanta Sports Cup scrapped for 2015 due to scheduling difficulties

The Setanta Sports Cup appeared to go the way of the earlier Blaxnit, Texaco and Tyler backed versions of the cross-Border competition yesterday when the organising committee finally conceded defeat with regard to setting a tournament schedule for this year that all of the participants could agree on.

There was upbeat talk about coming back next year but unless a major new sponsor can be recruited, one willing to provide the sort of funding that originally made the event attractive to northern teams, then it is hard to see how there would be much point in having it stagger on.

“We all felt it was best to break for this year,” said Brian Quinn of Setanta the company that had originally provided the competition with generous backing from 2005 when it was first run.

At that stage, the novelty of the cross-Border games at a time when the island’s leading clubs were faring comparatively well financially meant there was considerable public interest and some really genuinely contests.

When the broadcaster reduced its backing, though, a new title sponsor couldn’t be found and the interest of the northern clubs steadily waned. The different timings of the seasons north and south was certainly a factor but the fact remained that while the Airtricity League clubs continued to see the event as being worth going out of their way to compete in, Linfield had declined to enter for the second successive time this year and there difficulties with others before the competition was finally abandoned.

The various changes made to the format and timing over the past couple of years were primarily intended to make things easier for the Irish League clubs, who secured just two titles in nine years. The constant tinkering, however, also devalued the tournament prompting a lot of question lately about whether it was really worth persisting with.