June Gloom!

We have no good news, only bad news, only doom and gloom. We can't afford to sign any more players and on top of that we have a reduced first team squad, thanks mainly to offering Archie, Dwayne and Cush improved contracts. If that's not enough to get Sky Blue fans pressing the panic button, our talisman, the irrepressible Cush, was in the Mater hospital last week suffering from a collapsed lung, if we get any update on that we'll let you know. Omar, who says it like is, has been banned from the Irish league forums, for no other reason than he was getting at the truth, no doubt he'll give them a piece of of his mind when he returns in August. He attended the shareholders meeting and made sure he was early this year, but in his words, 'it were a waste of time'. The shareholders meeting consists of the Ballymena board saying what good boys they were, their one aim is to keep the club afloat and they do that in spite of the economic times we live in.

After all this mutual patting on the back, we find their pessimism coming to the fore. They say they've done a quick audit of the clubs finances for the coming year and we are going to have a shortfall of £33,000 at least and therefore the manager can't have any more money to spend on players. It's that negative attitude of the United board that we at 'Sport find so galling. It's 'the glass is half empty' syndrome, instead of the optimistic, 'the glass is half full'. There was a good turn-out of shareholders, but when the financial report was read out, not one questioned it (was it a ploy to only to be given them on the night, surely we should've got them with our meeting notice). Just to clarify, we are talking about the 'royal we' here. The manager was next, he blamed the injuries, he gave us a diatribe about the long weeks of recovery of Johnny Taylor, Jenks and Jamie Davidson to name a few, Omar tells us he was thinking about that old advertisement about Chocolate Home Wheat biscuits (or is it digestives), 'give me McVities, not excuses'.

When he finished, no-one asked a question except Omar, now Omar had a stroke over two years ago and his speech is not good and he doesn't like speaking in public, but needs must. Omar tabled a question on line for the 'meet the manager' session last season, but Kingo didn't ask the question, that question was, 'did you learn anything from the two big defeats to Linfield and Chickenville'? This time he decided to go with a different tack, he stated to Spike that in his opinion, 'we are vulnerable to a team playing football'. Fergie's answer was an emphatic 'no', he said only one team played football against us, Chickenville. He discounted that Glenavon, Crues and Coleraine, never mind Dungannon Swifts, Warrenpoint Town and DC gave us a football lesson, in short against these teams we were chasing shadows. Omar was waiting for somebody to agree with him and question Fergie further, but nobody took up the gauntlet, they all sat like 'mutton dummies',they're all yes men. Brian Thompson raised the point that the board should think about giving Spike more money and promised he had an idea that was going raise £10,000 by Christmas and a further £10,000 by season's end, but the board wouldn't commit anymore money, it wouldn't do to take a chance, hell we might win the Irish cup or 'god forbid' the league and where would we be then?

It's an old saying and it's a true saying, 'you got to speculate, to accumulate', but our board are scared to take a chance, so it looks like we'll be fighting for scraps this season again, never mind top six, we think we'll be lucky to avoid relegation'. Of course our board will trot out the same drivel next year, we are solvent, not like like some we could mention, never mind they won the Irish cup, or the IRN BRU or god forbid the league, we got to the semi-final of the County Antrim Shield and that's a great achievement. If that's not enough to depress you, take a look at our list of friendlies, starting off with Ballymun United in Dublin on the 13th of July, who we confess we've never heard of and continuing with amateur league and 1st division teams and only one match at the Showgrounds. Then when the season starts proper the first three games pit us against, Glenavon, Crues and Dungannon Swifts, it doesn't bear thinking about. But enough of gloom and doom, maybe when the United legends play on Wednesday, we could tempt some of them real heroes out of retirement and they can show our players what it means to wear the Sky Blue jersey with pride, we can only hope, COSB!