ST PATRICK’S ATHLETIC manager Liam Buckley has questioned the relevance of Roddy Collins after his recent comments on the standard of Irish football.
Earlier this month, former Derry City boss Collins criticised the quality of the FAI Cup final, which saw the Saints claim a 2-0 victory over Derry City, and claimed the public were “deluded”.
However, Buckley admits being “embarrassed” by the remarks and says they aren’t beneficial to anybody.
“Who is Roddy Collins anyway?” Buckley said. “With the greatest respect to him, we all love him, he’s a great fella and all that sort of stuff but does his opinion matter to anybody?
“The cup final stuff was embarrassing. I find that embarrassing, he shouldn’t be saying things like that.
“He’s in the league 37 years or whatever he said, but we’re trying to promote the league and there are enough people out there trying to bash us and knock us, so we’ve enough of that.”
“Okay, I’ve seen better cup finals,” Buckley added. “I’ve been involved in a lot, but it’s an historic day for our club, the lads have burst their absolute guts all season.
In the cup we’ve done really well to get to the final and win it for the first time in 53 years and we’re writing about Roddy Collins?
“It just disappointed me a little bit bearing in mind the importance of it for our club and Roddy Collins is mentioning a guy from Luton Town, who only got out of the Conference last year, and he’s saying that the players wouldn’t get in his team.
“I don’t know what matches Roddy is going to but if he had have seen us when we played away in Legia Warsaw, would he have made a comment on that if the Luton manager had been over there?
“It’s very difficult to pick out a match. It’s a headline here, it doesn’t do the league any good and it doesn’t do anybody any good.”
