Members of Clones Town Football Club have voted to remove the name John Delaney Park from their club grounds.
The grounds will now be known as Clones Town FC Grounds, but the club say they remain “genuinely grateful” for the former FAI chief executive’s support.
Clones Town’s grounds at Carn were opened in 2009, and were officially named after Delaney in August 2013 following a function which he attended. The club said the request to name the pitch did not come from Delaney.
In November 2013, the FAI selected Clones Town as one of six clubs to receive a €200,000 grant under a “once-off special allocation” of €1.2 million from the Department of Sport.
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When Delaney exited the FAI in 2019 following a series of damaging media revelations about the association’s governance and finances, the club said it had “no appetite” to change the name of its grounds.
The vote to remove Delaney’s name from the grounds was held at an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) on Thursday.
“The club sincerely acknowledges the significant support and contribution made by John Delaney during an important period in its development,” a club statement on the matter said. “We remain genuinely grateful for that support, and the role John played will always be recognised as an important part of the club’s history and development.”
The EGM vote was called after a motion was tabled by club member Kevin Dowds.
The text of the motion, which has been seen by The Irish Times, argued the name John Delaney Park “links our club directly to the documented governance failures and financial controversies at the executive level of Irish football” and that “removing it protects our club’s reputation”.
The motion also stated that renaming the grounds would allow the club to shift “away from individual personalities” and “honour our local community, heritage, or town geography instead”. It also said removing the name would create a “blank canvas” which could “assist the club in securing local sponsorships and municipal grants”.
Clones Town also say reports suggesting the name of their grounds affected a planning application are incorrect, and that this planning application played no role in the decision to remove Delaney’s name from the club grounds.
In May, Monaghan County Council rejected a planning application for the installation of a new stand on the club grounds, partly because the address of the pitch in the club’s application to the council did not match the address printed in the planning notice section of the Anglo-Celt newspaper.
While the club specified the address of the club grounds as “John Delaney Park” in its application form to Monaghan County Council, it omitted mention of Delaney and referred instead to the “Clones Town FC Grounds” in its public site planning notice and in the notice published in the Anglo-Celt newspaper on May 21st.
