400 girls, mainly in Dublin and East Meath, have been left without a league to play in, following the collapse of the Dublin Metropolitan Girls’ League.
The Minister for Sport has reiterated that funding will be withheld from the FAI if issues around girls football in Dublin and East Meath are not resolved.
400 girls have been left without a league to play in, following the collapse of the Dublin Metropolitan Girls’ League over the last two years, which had been run by the NDSL.
The majority of the former MGL teams transferred to the Dublin District Schoolboys/Schoolgirls League (DDSL) but the remaining MGL teams only found out they had insufficient teams to form leagues after a DDSL club transfer deadline passed in August.
Sports Minister Thomas Byrne told ‘The Michael Reade Show’ today that the current situation is unacceptable: “It’s a really, really serious problem. We are really serious about it. We will not be giving money to the FAI unless they sort this out and that’s a message that I think FAI staff probably accept and probably agree with in the office.
“But the leagues and all of the structures underneath the FAI that make up the FAI need to hear that message very, very clearly. No child should be excluded from football. It does not happen, for all its faults, it does not happen in the GAA. There’s a club for you. There’s a pathway up to the county that does not exist at kids football in this country in soccer”.
