Joanna Byrne still backs the new owners of Drogheda United and their future ambitious plans for the club, despite being removed from the board as Co-Chairperson.
In an emotional interview with Adrain Kennedy on the LMFM Agenda Show the Drogheda Sinn Fein TD said she wants a line drawn for the good of the club in the row over her calls for the FAI to boycott their forthcoming game with Israel in protest at the genocide in Gaza.
She believes she behaved honourably at all times in the month-long dispute and rejected the argument from some quarters that politics and sports should not mix.
Joanna said Drogheda United was in her blood and her grandfather the late Micheal Byrne was a former chairman of the football club. The whole saga had been extremely emotional and difficult for her.
She told LMFM she believes wholeheartedly that the American owners the Trivela Group is good for Drogheda.
The former co-chair stated: I’m not critical of their ambitions for Drogheda United. I believe wholeheartedly that they are good for the club. We’ve seen huge strides since they took over the club.
They’re investing prudently. They’re doing it in a steady, sustainable manner, which I agree to and that’s one of the reasons why I adopted confidence in them at the beginning, and I still have that because we’ve seen other clubs come in and receive external investments where huge amounts of money were thrown at them overnight, and that’s not sustainable.
And they have a glory day for a while and then they collapse and they fold and they’re back to where they were, if not worse off, before the investment came.
So I do believe in that way. Perhaps their people management skills aren’t wonderful or perhaps their understanding of the league itself in Ireland or the political arena in Ireland or the crossover between the relationship that fans of a community club have with the local people who sit on the board. That I’m critical of.
But do I still have confidence in Trivela? Do I believe they’re right for Drogheda United ? Do I believe they’ll take us to the next stage? Yes I do.”
Her interview will help avoid a big split among the fans and help the club but the whole sorry saga behind them.
