The Setanta Cup Draw Joke

Our group for the 2008 Setanta Sports Cup:

Linfield
Glentoran - 4th year in a row, out of 4
Derry City - 3rd year in a row, out of 3
St Pats Athletic - nearest Eircom League to us that we could have drawn

What a crock of shit. The dogs on the street could have told you we'd get the Glens and Dire City again. Whether it's for TV, security reasons or whatever, it's beyond a joke. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd be in my element. Why not just be honest, come out and say "And the Huns will draw their big rivals for TV and crowd reasons, Derry City, due to better potential for crowd control, and the nearest other available EL team, then those untrustworthy orange b*stards have less potential to cause trouble".

Thoroughly browned off.

Just for the record, they've extended the competition to both team's late seasons, therefore 2 periods of 3 group matches either side of the summer, which will be even more of a disadvantage for the outperformed N. Irish teams (Linfield excepted) and which IMO makes the competition far too protracted and uninteresting. Here's Linfield's fixtures:

Monday 10th March - Derry H

Monday 7th April - Glens A

Tuesday 15th April - St Pats A

Tuesday 2nd September - St Pats H

Monday 15th September - Glens H

Tuesday 23rd September - Derry A