It's win or bust for First Division clubs

Possibly nothing more cogently expresses the mixture of dismay and desperation felt across the League of Ireland First Division at the scrapping of the promotion-relegation play-offs than the proposal, aired at a meeting of club representatives in Wexford last week, that the top three teams in the second tier would take part in an internal play-off at the end of this season, with the front-runners facing the winners of second v third in a one-off game to decide promotion to the 10-team Premier Division in 2018.

Cobh Ramblers manager Stephen Henderson was not privy to those discussions but, as an articulate and outspoken opponent of the decision to scrap the play-offs — which means three teams will be relegated and only one promoted at the end of this season to facilitate a reversion to two divisions of 10 in 2018 — his views on how First Division clubs have been forced into this corner carry considerable punch.

“I think it’s really sad that that’s something we’ve come up with,” he says. “It’s sad that we’ve got to a stage where we put forward the scenario that a team works extremely hard over the whole season to finish on top, and then the best we can come up with is that they have to win a one-off match to win the league. I don’t think it’s in keeping with the fairness of the game. It’s silly, to be honest with you, and it just shows where we are in the First Division that we’re basically grasping at straws to come up with such a naïve scenario.”