Friday evening’s Sligo Furey’s Coaches senior football league Division 1 final between St Mary’s and Shamrock Gaels goes ahead as scheduled at Markievicz Park at 7pm.
St Molaise Gaels objected to the line-up for Friday’s final and took their case to Connacht GAA on Thursday night.
The three clubs had finished level on points at the end of the regulation Division 1 season on 18 points each.
Although Molaise had a superior scoring difference to the other two clubs, Sligo GAA confirmed Mary’s and Shamrock Gaels as the finalists on the basis of the head-to-head rule governing the number of points won by each team in the games against each other.
Following Thursday’s online hearing with Connacht GAA, the appeal was defeated – and so Friday’s Division 1 decider goes ahead as planned with St Mary’s and Shamrock Gaels the competing teams.
Molaise issued a club statement on Friday afternoon.
It reads as follows:
“St Molaise Gaels express their disappointment with the decision made by the Connacht Hearings Committee last night, which did not uphold our appeal against the ruling by Sligo CCC to remove us from the Senior League Final.
While we recognise that there was widespread agreement within the GAA Community in Sligo and beyond that our removal from the competition’s final was unjust and unreasonable, we understood that our appeal needed a stronger argument to succeed. We were confident that there were
significant errors in the application of the rules that influenced the competition’s outcome, leading us to believe our appeal would be successful.
Unfortunately, the Appeals Committee did not share our perspective, and we must respect their decision, which brings this matter to a close for the club.
We hope that lessons are learned from this situation to prevent any club from facing a similar issue in the future. We feel deeply for our senior players and management team, who had an outstanding league campaign and were aiming to add more silverware to our early season Kiernan Cup victory.
The squad and management will now shift their focus to the Championship, aiming to make a strong showing. Although we are disappointed not to be preparing for a Division 1 Final this weekend, we eagerly anticipate the Division 3 League Final against Enniscrone/Kilglass on Sunday.”
Lastly, we extend our gratitude once again to the entire GAA community for their support throughout this matter.
Friday’s Division 1 final game will be livestreamed by Sligo GAA from 7pm.
