We have to sit down and find a solution says Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter says it is imperative Irish League clubs sit down and thrash things out to find a solution to the impasse local football currently finds itself in.
Crusaders boss Stephen BaxterCrusaders boss Stephen Baxter
Crusaders boss Stephen Baxter

It's been three months since a ball was kicked in the Danske Bak Premiership after is was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, but we are no closer to a return.

Two proposals put forward by the game's governing bodies - the NI Football League and the Irish FA - were rejected by the majority of clubs last week.

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Nine of the 12 Premiership clubs were reported to have turned down the official options of playing two more rounds of fixtures from July 20 or decide the table by a mathematical model.

This in turn forced NIFL to defer its deadline to inform UEFA of its plans to finish the season until a "later date" to allow clubs to discuss more options on how to conclude the current campaign.

Clubs seem to favour a model to finish the remaining seven games at a later date with European prize money being shared out amongst the 12 teams, but it seems it does not have the full backing of the entire league.

Crusaders boss Baxter told BBC Radio Ulster Sportsound on Saturday that he felt the Irish League was "too late to the party".

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"I would love to be back playing football tomorrow," he said.

"However, we have got to make the right decisions and get round the table and thrash it out.

"We are too late to the party here, and now we're all getting upset around it and falling out. Then we're all making up again.

"But some of the solutions hitting the table and being forced were just ludicrous. There needs to be more rationale and more thinking, better thinking, to protect our game.

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"Get the solutions on what we're going to do. Everyone is fighting their corner, I get that completely. But we need to find solutions."

Baxter added: "We all need to find our way out of this, and people are charged with working it all out.

"My concern is we're sitting here today, the 13th of June, and it seems to me we have let this whole thing drift and now it's all crisis talks.

"We have had 13 or 14 weeks of this, and now we're in the middle of trying to sort it out at the last hour. This should maybe have been talked about over a longer period so we didn't end up in the situation we're in.

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"When there are only two options given to vote on, I think that's what's caused the big problem here.

"If you're given ultimatums and backed into corners, that's when you have to decide what your vote is. That's why you've got the situation you have.

"Clubs have looked at that and said 'well, if that's all we're voting for then the answer is no'. And that's then when all the discussions come off the back of things that have been mentioned.

"What we need to emphasise here, more importantly, is that we have been sitting here in a worldwide pandemic, where thousands of people have lost their lives.

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"First and foremost, it is the health and safety and wellbeing of players and managers and fans who come back into this game that is of paramount importance.

"So forget when we start games and how we start games. It is when the chief medical officer gives the Executive permission for football to return. That's when it is safe for people to go back and play football, and not before."

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