Dublin soccer club are in hot water after it emerged they faked the death of one of their players to avoid playing a fixture.
Ballybrack FC reported that their player, Fernando Nuno La-Fuenta, was killed in a road traffic accident on Thursday evening on the way home from training.
But the accident, it seems, never happened, and Fernando is currently in Spain having returned there about a month ago.
The Leinster Senior League will meet on Thursday evening to decide what punishment will be handed down to Ballybrack after the club falsely reported the death of one its players in order to have an away game in Arklow called off over the weekend.
A number of other clubs posted their tributes on social media, with Liffey Wanderers and Templeogue United having a minute’s silence for Fernando.
League Chairman David Moran said they would call the game off in respect for Fernando.
The precise whereabouts of Fernando Nuno La Fuente remain something of a mystery but the good news is that he is reckoned to be alive and well somewhere in his native Spain. It seems he returned there about a month ago after time spent here in Ireland during which he lined out for Ballybrack
With the Spaniard gone and the team apparently in need of a postponement, somebody decided the thing to do was to tell the league he was dead, the victim of a traffic accident on the way home from training last Thursday night.
“We get calls from clubs saying that somebody connected to the club has died and they need a game called off all the time and there is never any hassle about it,” Leinster Senior League chairman David Moran reporters. “But things started to unravel here when we followed up on Monday to see if we could get in touch with the lad’s family and see if there was anything we could do. They said the body was already back in Spain which didn’t really add up.
“It’s a shocking thing to do to get a game of football called off,” he continued.
“We had a minute’s silence at all the other games and the players wore black armbands. You have to have something wrong with you to do something like that.”
After the news broke, the Ballybrack club secretary resigned by text, according to Moran, but that’s about as much direct contact as there has been since. “We’ll meet on Thursday,” said Moran, “one of the first things we’ll have to do is figure out what rules they broke. We’ve never had anything like this before.”
Ballybrack’s club secretary could not be contacted for comment on Tuesday night.
Leave a Reply