Derry City boss Declan Devine hails FAI-R decision

Devine praised the Brandywell club’s officials for successfully challenging the FAI’s decision to charge Derry for failure to fulfil its league fixture against Shamrock Rovers last week.

The City boss reckons the Disciplinary Committee arrived at the correct decision when refusing to enforce sanctions but now he must quickly prepare for two away matches inside three days, starting with a trip to unbeaten champions, Shamrock Rovers tomorrow afternoon (k.o. 3p.m.).

Players and staff at the club have been self-isolating and haven’t trained for 14 days and while Devine expects it to be a real challenge, he’s happy to have the group back together.

“It’s been a desperate couple of weeks not being able to see your players on a daily basis,” said Devine.

“It’s been completely unusual. It’s unheard of that a whole squad had to go into lockdown.

“The players have all found it difficult having to isolate, especially away from families.

”It has been difficult, there’s no doubt about it, and now it’s crazy that we’re straight into two games in the space of three days but that’s the nature of it and we accept that.

“The club worked extremely hard to get the game on and I think the club deserves huge credit for the way they challenged the decision that was made.

“I think to be fair to the FAI, all year they’ve been very good in terms of getting football back on the island of Ireland. They’ve made a lot of calls this year to help the clubs out but it was a strange one for us to accept.

“I think it’s the right decision. Everyone has to play the same amount of games.

“We’ve been put in the position ourselves when games were called off at the last minute too.

“It is a fair decision and the right decision and thankfully we can go now and get ready for the game itself.

“At the end of the day, all the players at this club are here to play matches. Now this gives us an opportunity to get on a level playing field with the rest of the clubs.”

Derry will set off for Dublin tomorrow morning and will continue south to Cork after the game at Tallaght Stadium ahead of Monday’s clash at Turner’s Cross.

“It’s up to us now to try and put two performances in over a short period of time. As much as it’s going to be strange as we haven’t had any preparations leading into the games, it’s still our profession and we have to get ready for two really tough games.

“The one positive thing about it is we now have a bit of time to spend together after being apart for two weeks.”