Fleas

The Stalinist tendencies of the regime governing the various Athlone Town FCs have not yet led to a Great Terror or a famine. But Ol' Uncle Joe would certainly tip the hat to seeing a bit of history being rewritten, a bit of whitewashing. And this is where we are today. 

The 2024 accounts of Athlone Town AFC CLG were released last September. You wouldn't have known it from looking at the website of the Companies Registration Office. There they languished at the end (pre-2015), not at the beginning (post-2024) where they should have been. They have since disappeared from the site in that form, been re-registered and placed in the front section three days ago. A resolution made on January 5th however remains in the end section. So, what is going on and why is the CRO the latest national institution to be playing silly buggers with the public on behalf of the boys?

The big news (assuming nobody is surprised that 'loans' attributed to the ever generous Messrs. O'Connor, Hayden and Dully for the year are given as E42,084, E47,601 and E43,715 respectively) is that the stadium property is now valued at E1,934,259 - an almost 1,200% rise from last May's valuation of E161,961. A separate ''value'' of E1.5 million is put on ''the land and stand of the stadium'' (the valuation is ''an estimate made by the directors'', not a professional valuation), marking a divide between the planned astroturf pitch  - currently the grass-covered training pitch - and the rest. 

The accounts state that ''The company's ownership of the astroturf development ... need (sic) to be renewed in the next three to five years''. This strongly suggests that the c3 acres of the astroturf part of the stadium property will be moved - presumably with an eye on future development - into the ownership of Lissywollen Sports Limited or some other company owned by Messrs. O'Connor, Hayden and Dully. And that the rest of the property will stay under the CLG's ownership. 

The E1.5 million is nowhere near the stadium's value. It is a little pricey for the sale of a League of Ireland club with security of tenure alone, but it is not excessively so. As with everything else, the amounts received by the three men have not been made public, but E1.5 million was unofficially reported last Spring, as was E1.2 million. I suspect that the contracts have been renegotiated following my warnings to Nick Giannotti and that additional sums of not more than E1 million each have been paid to the three men in return for ceding their claims to the ''land and stand''. Alternatively, pulling the 'settlement' on the investors might not have been a cast iron threat and the three acres might have been the compromise. That would leave Garda Dully as the only one of the three men not to make a million.  

All of this is in defiance of the High Court order, now almost seven years old, which says that all of the property must be transferred to a ''third party to hold same on trust for the benefit of the Club or any successor club''. The accounts state that ''The company's freehold interest in the Athlone Town Stadium is registered to the company following lengthy legal actions''. This is technically kind of true but wilfully misleading, i.e. it can only be true in the time before the 'settlement' is obeyed. It is beyond belief that this position is being taken by the same people who claimed to have negotiated a settlement in the first place, when Michael O'Connor and John Hayden came to an arrangement on May 23rd 2019 with the ex-FAI President Paddy McCaul.  I thought I had seen everything leprechaun law has to offer, but this takes the biscuit.

One of the many crooked things we were subjected to by the pro-settlement coalition in the High Court was the backdating of an affidavit on December 5th 2019. But I've never seen any forward-dating and didn't know such a thing existed. It now appears that the entire takeover by the 'new' investors is being forward-dated to this year. The January 5th resolution purports to be a decision taken that day to admit Nicholas Giannotti, Zach Goldman and Eric Perez as members of the company, as if that hadn't happened a long time ago. 

As ever, the reasons for this are not revealed. But it is very likely that history will be rearranged so that Valeo's Athlone Town Associated FC will be given an extra year of existence in 2025 and the latest 'A' (still keeping my fingers crossed for 'Aubergine') can then be rebirthed this year. Consequently, 2025 gets a clean-up and no new club will have competed in the Champions League in the place of Associated, which won the league in 2024 and thus qualified for the competition. The CLG will need the assistance of the FAI in this and will get it. As with 2017's match fixing and money laundering, the Abbotstown gang does not lack for motivation.

                                                                             *****

Just before Christmas, Garda Dully's summons server served me with yet another summons. As it was not in an envelope, it went straight into the fire. My solicitors Martin Egan & Co. have made it clear that they will refuse to defend me from any action taken by Dully and his solicitor Richard Stapleton, so there is obviously no point in engaging. You'd think that even a group as morally challenged as High Court barristers would have had enough of the shenanigans by now, but I wouldn't bet on it. None of these guys can ever get enough.

I've also received a couple of pieces of information. One, which I don't quite believe, is that the new investors intend to build four houses and/or apartments at the corner of the property beside the school. The other, which I fully believe, is that Westmeath County Council are going after the CLG for the E507,000 charge on the property (which yet again does not appear in the accounts) now that that no longer means a liability for Messrs. Dully, Hayden and O'Connor. No explanation will be offered as to why the Messrs. have effectively been granted a half million euro bonus by the council.

And so it goes on. Astonishing sums of money move in the direction of the same three men and nobody in authority manages to smell anything fishy around any of it. The once squeaky clean Giannotti, Goldman and Perez are just the latest bigshots to be lured, pathetically, into the web. They are now compromised. How does that saying go? Lie down with dogs ... 

 

As a final word to the people of Athlone, you may yet prove me wrong but I have given up on you. If you have been persuaded that the stadium has been stolen from me and is therefore fair game, then you have been played for a sucker. The stadium never belonged to me, it belonged and lawfully belongs to you and to your children. The owners of St. Mel's Park, the supporters and taxpayers/lottery players paid for it. It is therefore public property and must remain public property.  

There is no shame in falling for a scam. All of the shame is in not fighting back.