Institute set to reject NIFL league proposal

It is believed all Premiership clubs will get the chance later this week to vote in favour of finishing the season or just wrapping the campaign up altogether.

One proposal believed to have been put to clubs is to play their final two league games before the split - which would mean each club would have played each other three times during the campaign - and then end the season after those fixtures. Anderson, however, is not in favour of that proposal.

“I haven’t seen anything, but I’ve been told by NIFL that no decision has been made and we are still in the process of discussion and consultation,” insisted the Institute Chairman.

“NIFL started with three criteria at the start of this whole process.

“The first was the health and well being of everybody and I think that gets compromised if you play any matches at this moment in time.

“The second was the financial survival of all clubs and I think that gets compromised if we play games behind closed doors. So the first two criteria that NIFL had set out get compromised by playing two games, therefore I wouldn’t support it.”

All Premier League clubs are believed to have used the government’s furlough scheme with some also receiving up to £25,000 on a government grant scheme run by the Department of Economy and set up to offer financial relief to businesses in the retail, hospitality, tourism and leisure sectors.

However ’Stute, along with Linfield and Ballymena United, due to the ownership of their respective stadiums, missed out on those grants.

“We haven’t been able to access any grant money because they were based on rateable evaluation that the clubs have on their grounds.

“Since the Riverside Stadium was flooded in 2017, we don’t have rateable value which meant we missed out on grants that were based on that rateable value,” explained Anderson.

“However, on the other side of the coin, we were able to put our professional players onto furlough, which has helped in terms of 80 percent of their salary. That has been helpful but we have had no other grants.”

The ’Stute chairman also confirmed that ‘differences’ between the Waterside club and the YMCA has held up the demolition of the Riverside Stadium but he revealed talks are ‘on-going’ over a new site for a new stadium.

“We would love to start some type of work at the Riverside Stadium.

“It is currently held up because of on-going discussions with the YMCA, who have some criteria in terms of the demolition that we can’t get started just yet,” he added.

“Ideally we would have already taken action to demolish the stadium but we haven’t been able to do that because of on-going differences between ourselves and the YMCA.

“The project to try and find a new ground is still on-going; conversations have been had and we are moving in the right direction but because of the COVID-19 situation, obviously everything has been put on hold.”

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