LEAGUE OF IRELAND NEWS:AFTER A good day in court yesterday, Drogheda United officials promptly embarked on the process of trying to secure the club's top-flight survival.

Before lunch, the High Court had approved the club’s proposal for coming out of examinership and by last night candidates for the position of manager were being interviewed, while work was stepped up on preparing the documentation required to obtain a Premier Division licence for the coming season.

“We’re delighted with the way the court hearing went,” said club spokesman Terry Collins. “The sad part is that many people have received only a tiny fraction of the money they were owed but the fact remains that we were at a very low ebb and we said we weren’t going to take it lying down. We took the action that we had to and now we move on to the next stage of things which is to try to ensure that we have a team in the Premier Division again next year.”

The club faces difficulties on a number of fronts, primarily in terms of financial criteria and facilities but Collins remains upbeat. “For all the problems we’ve had we remain an ambitious club and we’d like to think that we can be back challenging for honours within two or three years. For the moment, though, the major task is consolidation and, while there’s a lot more work to be done, we believe we can obtain a licence to play in the Premier Division and start to move forward again.”

The club envisages having a budget of around €600,000 for the coming season, down from more than €2 million, but that hasn’t deterred candidates from expressing an interest in succeeding Paul Doolin as the club’s manager.

Roughly a dozen people put their names forward for the job and more that half have been offered interviews.

Earlier the club’s chairman, Vincent Hoey, said the court’s decision in relation to the club’s examinership had been a success for the people of Drogheda generally. He said: “There has been a loud and clear message sent by the people, the supporters and the friends of Drogheda United that they appreciate the club is important to the community, that they wanted to save it, that it could be done and now it has been done. It’s upward and onward from here.”

Galway United have confirmed that Jay O’Shea’s proposed move to Derby County is definitely off. The club says that the under-21 international has resumed training with Ian Foster’s squad ahead of the new league campaign.