St Patrick's Athletic boss Tim Clancy fears yesterday’s match-fixing arrests will make it harder for the League of Ireland and clubs to bring in investment.
Ten people were arrested by gardai yesterday, including two current and five former League of Ireland players, on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud.
Clancy was a member of the Bray Wanderers squad that in 2017 was quizzed by officers in relation to unrelated suspicions of match-fixing.
No arrests were made on that occasion and the probe was dropped due to insufficient evidence.
Clancy said: “Anything negative about the league puts it back. It damages the league.
“It’s a brilliant league to be in because of the access to players for fans, managers, we all mix.
“Anything like this just tarnishes the league.
“We’re at the stage where we want to develop it and improve standards, professionalism and everything else.
“And when stories like this come up every couple of years, it puts us back.
“You’re looking for investors, looking for structures to put in place. When you hear stuff like that, it damages it.”
Clancy recalled the time when he was quizzed along with Bray team-mates.
“That was an incident and everyone was interviewed and nothing ever came up after that. And that’s more or less it,” he said.
“I’ve never gambled, I don’t gamble, I don’t have any gambling accounts or anything like that.
“It’s probably something that can be highlighted and if they are struggling with gambling issues, it can be more accessible to go and seek help rather than getting involved in stuff that might tarnish the league themselves, whether that is something we can help in highlighting it.
“In fairness, we only met last week, Fran Gavin and the FAI put on an integrity meeting about gambling and helplines that were available.
“The structures are there, it’s just whether we can tie in with the players’ union to get players to open up to speak about it and get the help that they need.”
Clancy added that there was no contact from gardai after the initial interview in– not even to let him know that the probe had ended.
“No, I got the Drogheda job a few months later, that was it. They’d obviously seen something, they investigated it and that was it,” he said.
“We weren’t told there was anything either. They just went in and spoke.”
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