Harryville Homers issue statement following Junior Shield expulsion

The Saturday Morning League Club were kicked out of the competition on the night they were due to be playing in the final and were also banned from the Junior Shield for three years.

Homers this week issued a statement saying: “We have appealed this ban to the Irish Football Association as there are questions we feel are still left unanswered. It would therefore be unfair to comment further on the decision taken by the Co.Antrim FA or the nature of our appeal.”

The club also said the situation had been brought to a head as a result of “considerable inference and innuendo from those outside of the Club as to the eligibility of our players to participate in the competition”.

The statement continued: “Given the unprecedented level of interest and opinion that has been generated as a result of our passage to the Junior Shield final it was important we put to bed some of the rumours circulating within the local football community.

“At no time did the club seek to hide the identity of any of our players. It would not have been in our interest to knowingly have played ineligible players in any round of the competition but especially so in a high profile semi final where we would have been under particular scrutiny.

“We have made a genuine mistake in not researching and clarifying the status of certain cup competitions and not having done so paid a heavy price. It is not without irony that the players identified as ineligible have played in this competition in previous years up to and including a recent semi-final without any speculation or recourse. This only confirms our assertion that our mistake was just that, an error, and nothing more.

“To our supporters who travelled long distances encouraging us throughout the competition we apologise for the oversight and anti climax to what promised to be an historic occasion as we celebrate our 40th year in 2012.

“We apologise also to the committee of the Ballymena Saturday Morning League. While no blame or responsibility can be attributable to them they had worked tirelessly to generate maximum coverage, support, and exposure for both local teams and the wider football community in Ballymena to no avail.

“Apologies must also go to the teams we competed against to get to the final stage of the competition but particularly to fellow Ballymena Saturday Morning League Team, Randalstown Sky Blues, whom we met in the quarter finals and whose players and management team are well known to us.

“You can be assured there was no deliberate attempt on our part to cheat or gain an unfair advantage by breaking the rules of the competition.

“Finally but most importantly to the players of this club who worked so diligently to get to a showcase final in the Homers 40th year and who have been a credit to the club both in local competition and on our Junior Shield travels this year. As a committee we owe you our thanks and sincerest apologies for letting you down.

“Much has been said over the last few weeks in the form of allegation and counter allegation that is largely unfounded, unfair and serves no good purpose for junior football in Ballymena

It’s time for everyone to put that to bed also and we as a club promise to take the lead in doing so. Let us be clear, the error, whether knowingly or otherwise was ours and ours alone.

“We now want to put this episode behind us, learn from it and move on,” the statement concluded.