There, But For the Grace of Rob, Sligo

Sligo Rovers have suffered the pain of being jilted at the altar, just before the beginning of the Eircom League season, by English cad and bounder Rob McDonald, a man whose serial obscurity and one-time failure at Newcastle United did not prevent him from gracing the same field as the likes of Johann Cruyff, Arnold Muhren, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten when he played for PSV Eindhoven in the 1980s. Nor did it prevent him from being offered the managers' job at the Showgrounds upon Sean Connors' departure late last year. Rob has already managed to encourage many of the club's better local part-timers to leave due to his new full-time policy, implemented at a time when many Irish clubs are in serious danger of going to the wall. Rob even managed to provoke mild-mannered RTÉ Northern correspondent and Bit o'Red fan Tommie Gorman to pen an impassioned article in the Sligo Champion before Christmas calling on him to resign before he destroyed the club. Well, now he has. Poor Rovers must feel like a gullible ageing spinster bride left in the lurch. Heartbroken, I tell you.