Home Business Ruaidhri Higgins makes ‘common sense’ call as NI Football Fund row rumbles on

Ruaidhri Higgins makes ‘common sense’ call as NI Football Fund row rumbles on

by wellnessfitpro

Coleraine boss says he ‘stands by’ his comments after last week’s announcement by Communities Minister Gordon Lyons

Coleraine boss Ruaidhri Higgins
Coleraine boss Ruaidhri Higgins(Image: INPHO/Brian Little)

Last week’s Northern Ireland Football Fund announcement drew criticism from a number of quarters with Coleraine boss Ruaidhri Higgins particularly damning in his assessment to the news.

Higgins branded it “a f**king disgrace” that Institute, who have been without a permanent home since 2017, missed out completely.

Several north west based clubs failed to progress in the Performance Programme, which is being delivered by the Communities Minister Gordon Lyons, with Higgins believing common sense should have been used in the process.

“I stand by everything that came out of my mouth,” said the Coleraine boss when asked about comments after last week’s announcement.

“Obviously I answered those questions a couple of hours after it had come out. We had just come off the training pitch and I had heard the decisions so I was obviously annoyed, but I stand by absolutely everything that I said.

“I just think common sense should have played a part in it. Yes, we can all fill in big fancy applications, and it costs a lot of money, not everybody has that luxury where they can do that, and Institute certainly don’t.

“I know they put as much money as they could into it, but whether an application is fantastic or whether it’s not fantastic there has to be a wee bit of common sense.

“Obviously I made the comment about the north west and I stand by it, but Ards can feel extremely hard done by, nobody needs it more than them and Institute.

“They say it wasn’t based on geography but not a single penny came to the north west so you have to understand why people from this part of the world feel it had a part to play

“If institute were 45 minutes closer to Stormont would they have got a bit of funding? And I don’t understand why you can’t drop from tier 3 to tier 2 and tier 2 to tier 1.

“Listen, I’m not a politician I don’t understand how these things work but surely there should be a bit of flexibility.”

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