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'You're trusting people you don't know' | League of Ireland's future

Shelbourne player Luke Byrne joined Dundalk manager Vinny Perth,  and Sligo Rovers treasurer Dav...



Soccer

'You're trusting people you don't know' | League of Ireland's future


Shelbourne player Luke Byrne joined Dundalk manager Vinny Perth,  and Sligo Rovers treasurer David Rowe as Off The Ball looked at what the future holds for the League of Ireland.

Byrne spoke about the dilemma for players in the League of Ireland who are torn between fears about contracting Covid-19 but need to earn a living from playing football.

"The longer we go without games," says Byrne, "then clubs are going to struggle to be able to pay our contracts, a lot of lads, a lot of people in the League rely on income from their clubs.

"[That is ] from speaking to lads, they have reservations about the first document from the FAI. Though I was stressing to then after being at a PFAI meeting that it was just a working document there will be more clarity and detail.

"I think we are all willing to put up with the small group training, the extra bus, if that's what we're told we have to do, the outdoor team meetings, which we may not enjoy but we'd be willing to put up with it if it meant we could get out and play on a Friday night.

"On playing on a Friday night, players would only be happy with it if there was more clarity around testing. In that first (FAI) document a lot of players had a lot of questions after reading it.

When asked what the concerns were, Byrne spoke about a variety including the recording of players' temperatures.

"Taking temperatures in the morning," says Byrne, "you are relying on a lot of people to do it, obviously you would hope that everyone would, but you're trusting a lot of people you might not know to do all of these things.

"There's also a lot of stuff around the cleaning of the training ground, the cleaning of the gear. From our point of view, at Shelbourne, we have lads who have day jobs so they are going to be exposed to more people.

"Are those jobs going to be taking the same measures the League of Ireland proposes to take? I'm not quite sure."

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