The future of Bray Wanderers Football Club looks extremely bleak as club chairman Denis O'Connor released a statement at half-time of Friday's match with Dundalk that suggested that it was 'not viable' for the club to continue due to financial issues.
Poor attendances and a lack of financial support from the league were cited as reasons for the club not being able to play the players' wages until the end of the sesaon, but once the statement went live, a number of questions were raised.
The fact that Bray were able to obtain a licence to play in the league despite doubts over being able to support the wage bill was made to look very strange, as was the expectation that more people through the gates would be the answer.
Alan Cawley, who was in the Carlisle Grounds on Friday night when the initial statement was released, did an excellent job of summing up the view looking in on this ugly situation.
Speaking on tonight's episode of Soccer Republic which will air on RTÉ 2 at 10.55pm but was released to the RTÉ Player in advance, Cawley expressed his disappointment at the naivety the club showed.
It was bizarre really, the fact that there was a match ongoing and this statement was released with such serious consequences it was very concerning, and for me I thought there was a complete lack of respect for the players.
A lot of those lads would have went in, maybe opened up their phones and had texts messages from partners or wives, or whoever, obviously concerned about their income and their wages if there was going to be problems.
In all the commentary I've heard so far, in statements that have been released and the interview Tony [O'Donoghue] had with Denis O'Connor, he seems to absolve himself of any blame in any of this.
He's blaming everybody but himself, and I think that's wrong because he was the one who entered into some crazy contracts, on crazy money from what we're hearing, and if you can't honour those, I think that's a mistake on their part.
Of course it's naive, because when you look at the figures, it's never going to add up in terms of the crowds and the expenditure.
I also think, if he's projecting finances based on getting an extra few people in the door, it was always doomed. You didn't have to be Nostradamus to see where this was going to end up. It was always doomed from day one, everybody said this.
I think he needs to stand back and take a look at himself and ask, where did they go wrong?
He's spot on.
The fanbase has never been there. Despite the size of the town, and the proximity to Dublin, there has been a disconnect between the football club and the rest of Bray for a long time. To expect an upturn in performances to provide the financial boost needed to pay the players is extremely naive.
The timing of the statement too is a good point, and further supports the idea that the players' opinions and feelings were never taken into account at any stage.
It's a mess, and there doesn't appear to be a solution to clean it up anytime soon. Cawley's views did a good job of summing up why the response from Bray Wanderers has been so frustrating, and you can see it in full over on the RTÉ Player.
