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Date of publication: Wednesday 28 November 2018 9h32
Ballybrack FC, a member of the Leinster Senior League, faces a hefty penalty after falsely announcing the death of one of its players.
Ballybrack claimed that Fernando Nuno La Fuente had died from a road accident last Thursday, which caused the homage paid by his compatriots from the Leinster Senior League.
Some clubs have even observed a minute of silence for La Fuente during the round of this weekend, but it is now confirmed that the player is "healthy" in his native Spain.
That's what Liffey Wanderers did during a minute of silence for a player who, according to Ballybrack FC, died in a car accident but was alive and well in Spain. pic.twitter.com/uF0ofGILg1
– PJ Browne (@P_J_Browne) November 27, 2018
Ballybrack issued a statement from the club in which he apologized for "a flagrant misjudgment". It reads:
"The attention of the club, the senior players and the management team has learned that the correspondence sent by a member of the senior management team to the Leinster Senior League was vitiated by a serious misjudgment.
"This evening, an emergency meeting was held and the person in question was relieved of all his football duties within Ballybrack FC, his senior team and his roles within the club itself. The club has contacted Fernando to confirm his location, his well-being and he is grateful to have accepted our apologies on this subject.
"This serious and unacceptable error was completely false and was committed by a person who experienced serious personal difficulties without the knowledge of all the other members of the club.
"The club will continue to provide due diligence to all parties and provide the support it may need at this stage. This person had already greatly contributed to the club's senior team in recent years and to the wider football community in Dublin for decades.
"At this point, we can only offer our sincere apologies to the Leinster Senior League, to our opponents, Arklow Town FC, as well as to the multitude of clubs and footballers who contacted us or who have sent messages of support in recent days. "
Leinster Senior League President David Moran confirmed that Ballybrack had fabricated the story for the away match against Arklow to be canceled.
"We receive calls from clubs informing us that someone related to the club has pbaded away and that they need a match called all the time and that there is never a problem about it, "he told The Irish Times.
"But things started to go wrong when we did a follow-up on Monday to see if we could contact the boy's family and see if we could do anything. They said that the body was already back in Spain, which did not really give.
"We rang and we could not get an answer. We checked the hospitals, we checked everywhere. Nobody could find anything about this young man. Clearly, some of his teammates posted articles on social media, claiming that he had returned to Spain four weeks ago.
"Honestly, we do not know why they did it. It seems a bit extreme to do something like that to win a match. All they had to say was that they were climbing and they would receive their fine, that's all.
"It's a shocking thing to cancel a football game.
"We watched a minute of silence at all the other games and the players wore a black armband. You must have something that is wrong with you to do something like this.
"We will meet on Thursday," he added to the request for action. "One of the first things to do is to determine the rules they have broken. We have never had anything like this before.
Moran also confirmed that Ballybrack's secretary had resigned by SMS, but that there was almost no direct contact with the club.
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