Mervue United and GUST in talks on possible League of Ireland alliance

Date Published: {J}

Keith Kelly

FRANTIC behind-the-scenes negotiations – believed to have involved top FAI officials, including CEO John Delaney – were held in the city this week in a bid to tackle the crisis facing League of Ireland soccer in Galway, less than two months before the start of the 2012 season.

With Galway United having withdrawn from the League for the coming season, and the licence application by the Galway United Supporters Trust doomed to failure, there was the real possibility that while Mervue United and Salthill Devon would play in the league, there would be no Galway representative side playing in the domestic league.

In a bid to address that, the FAI is believed to have asked Salthill Devon, Mervue United and GUST to consider an alliance where they would field one side in the league this year, but that proposal was ruled out as a non-runner by at least one of the three parties.

The GUST held meetings with the FAI two weeks ago, and again this week, where it was told its licence application would not be successful, and while Galway United is still technically in existence and on ‘sabbatical’ for the year, that effectively marks the end of a club which has played 35 seasons in the league.

However in a bid to retain for the league the one asset it has which neither of the two junior clubs can boast of – a large fan-base – it is understood that both Mervue and Devon have put proposals on the table to bring the GUST on board for the coming season.

Both clubs, and the Galway United Supporters Trust, remained tight-lipped throughout yesterday on the events of the previous 48 hours, but Tribune Sport understands that the meetings held this week were facilitated by the FAI in a bid to tackle the headache which was of its own making – having three teams from Galway City playing League of Ireland football.

The FAI met with officials from both Salthill Devon and the GUST in the Ardilaun Hotel in the city on Tuesday, but while an offer was put on the table by Devon, talks are believed to have broken down over a number of matters.

Tribune Sport understands that proposal involved Devon playing in Terryland Park in 2012 under the name SD Galway FC – the thinking behind the name is along the lines of the likes of Paris Saint Germain, better known as PSG, the French club based in Paris which was formed in 1970 after a merger between Paris FC and Stade Saint-Germain, and represents both the French capital and the suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Lave 12 miles away.

The members of GUST were invited to form a sub-committee in relation to the team, but that the team would be run by Salthill Devon, form part of the broader Salthill Devon club, and would not be established as a separate legal entity.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.