YOU HAVE TO wonder what the 500 Drogheda United supporters who sold out the away allocation of tickets for tonight’s Louth derby with Dundalk will be thinking about as they head for Oriel Park.

They should be arriving with a mixture of confidence and mischievousness, ready to lord their superiority from the top of the League of Ireland Premier Division over their newly-promoted rivals who were denied an away win in Derry City because of a dubious penalty award in stoppage time of their opening fixture.

Dundalk, of course, nearly went out of existence around the time of their relegation in 2024, only for a last-minute rescue package to save them from liquidation.

The Lilywhites are currently under their sixth different ownership structure since 2016, with Dublin-born Chris Clinton taking an 85% stake last November, and his fellow US-based investors John Keenan, Kevin Brayton, and Michael Cianci holding the remaining shares.

For Dundalk, the last decade has been a period that has witnessed some great success and very public pain.

And yet, after the last 48 hours, nobody in the away end tonight should feel any degree of comfort in doing what football fans do best: taking the piss.

Drogheda’s ownership, with a hybrid board structure of American venture capitalists and a Sinn Féin TD, now appears to be unravelling.

Joanna Byrne, a born and raised supporter of the club who was elected to the Dáil as a representative of Louth, released a statement on Wednesday evening claiming that the club’s board have said her position as co-chairperson is untenable following her calls for a boycott of the Republic of Ireland’s Nations League games with Israel.

Ben Boycott (yes, really) is Byrne’s co-chairperson, as well as being the founder and chief executive of American investment firm Trivela Group that has held control of Drogheda since 2023.

The club lifted the FAI Cup under boss Kevin Doherty – appointed two years before Trivela’s arrival – in 2024 and also have plans for a new 4,500-capacity stadium, although they missed out on the most recent round of funding through the Large Scale Sports Infrastructure Fund (LSSIF) in the same year of that Aviva Stadium showpiece triumph.

Byrne, Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on sport, said the club’s board informed her of their concerns over her stance on Israel “with an expectation that I would resign, something I have told them that I intend to resist”.

She went on to describe the board’s move as “unwarranted”, “profoundly hurtful” and “deeply unsettling”.

Drogheda responded with a statement of their own on Wednesday night and insisted that “the concerns expressed to Ms Byrne by her fellow directors are unrelated to anyone’s specific political or moral views, and at no point were any such concerns expressed.”

However, it was by expanding on the crux of their dispute that the Drogheda board left themselves wide open to claims of hypocrisy.

“What was expressed was a concern over the open criticism of Uefa and the FAI, regulatory bodies to whom the club is subject, as well as each club official’s responsibility to respect the neutrality provisions of the Fifa Code of Ethics and the Uefa Statutes.”

So let’s take that at face value.

Firstly, if the club had any concerns with Byrne’s “neutrality”, they would surely have made this clear much sooner and possibly even brought it to attention when the board was reconstituted last November.

Byrne, it should be stated, remained in situ.

Also, it was breaches of those same Uefa Statutes that Byrne, Drogheda’s representative on the FAI’s General Assembly, cited last November along with a 93% majority of delegates at an FAI EGM when they voted in favour of putting forward a motion to the European governing body to ban Israel from action in competition.

By his own admission, Trivela founder Boycott likes to take “wise words and good counsel” from “lawyers, PR teams, and trusted advisors”.

While his name was not put to the club statement released in response to Byrne on Wednesday, he was keen to do so in June of last year. That is when the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld Uefa’s decision to expel Drogheda from European competition after they had qualified for the Conference League as FAI Cup winners.

Uefa stated multi-club ownership (MCO) rules – Trivela own Danish side Silkeborg, who also qualified for the competition – and a missed deadline for the reason why Drogheda were punished.

Boycott declared that he “absolutely respect[s] Uefa’s aim to uphold sporting integrity in European competitions”, but that “the process has lacked consistency, clarity, and fairness. And Drogheda United is paying the price… That disparity, however inadvertent, should not exist in European football. But it does.”

Boycott went on to issue a rallying call. “Let me be equally clear: this setback will not define Drogheda United’s future. We care deeply about this club and this town, and we are committed to its long-term success.”

The issue now is whether this controversy could define their tenure, and if those long-term plans have been put at risk?

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Sullivan & Lambe, primary partner of with naming rights for their current ground, issued a statement on Wednesday in support of Byrne and said they would be considering their ongoing sponsorship. Will others follow if they feel a lifelong fan and advocate such as Byrne is expected to resign for what she described as “expressing a moral view” and “from a deeply held belief in equality, human rights and the power of sport to take principled positions”?

With plans for that new stadium and the earlier disappointment of missing out on the last round of LSSIF, what impact could the fallout now have?

Boycott admitted “accountability ultimately falls on us at DUFC and at Trivela Group” for the multi-club fiasco in that open letter last year, and now another layer of pressure has been placed on manager Doherty’s shoulders with a squad that he had to rejig over the winter after a host of key players were plucked away.

So maybe it’s easy to guess what Drogheda fans are now thinking: just what exactly have the Trivela Group been good for since arriving?

Fixtures (7.45pm kick-off unless stated)

Premier Division – Tonight: Waterford v Sligo Rovers, Shelbourne v Galway United, Derry City v Bohemians, Shamrock Rovers v St Patrick’s Athletic (8pm), Dundalk v Drogheda United (8pm, Live on Virgin Media Three)

First Division – Tonight: Finn Harps v UCD, Wexford v Cork City, Kerry v Athlone Town, Treaty United v Bray Wanderers; Tomorrow: Longford Town v Cobh Ramblers (7.30pm).