Union strips Monivea of promotion

IT’S a story heard countless times a year up and down the country: player plays under an assumed name, opponents smell something fishy, complain and succeed in getting the result overturned.

The sport on this occasion was rugby and the consequences for the team involved could hardly have been more devastating, with Monivea RFC stripped of promotion to the AIB League for the first time in their history.

The game in question was last month’s play-off between the Galway club and Waterpark, with the winner playing Division Three rugby next season and the loser being consigned to the junior ranks.

Expectation and hopes were high on the day that Monivea could finally make the historic breakthrough. Two busloads of supporters travelled to Ballinakill in Waterford for the game, as well as countless G-reg cars.

They were rewarded for their efforts when the Junior League champions secured the win, but celebrations were halted yesterday when an IRFU Hearing Committee upheld a Waterpark objection that “Monivea were guilty of playing an illegal player and of impersonating another player on their team sheet”.

The union statement said: “As a result of this finding, the Hearing Committee decided to award the match to Waterpark RFC, who retain their status in AIB League Division Three for season 2008-09 subject to any appeals lodged in relation to the ruling.”

The decision compounds a miserable month for coach Hohepa Dan Panapa’s Monivea side who lost out to Galwegians in the final of the Galway Junior Cup the weekend before their successful trip to Waterpark’s Castle Grounds.

The punishment will be all the harder to take given the fact that the club had been on the brink of qualifying for the AIB League for the past 10 years before last month’s achievement.

In 1998, 2003, 2004, 2005 and again last year they qualified for the round-robin series from which promotion to Division Three is attained, but now their 35-3 win last month has been consigned to the bin.