By Chris McNulty

FINN Harps' move to full-time football this season came under heavy scrutiny from fans attending Friday night's public meeting.

The club took the chance to hear fans' views on the future direction of the club and it was claimed that the decision to revert to a full-time set up was 'crazy' and that the dividends from the move haven't reflected the cost to the club.

One irate supporter said: "You can draw up all the strategies you like, but full-time football hasn't worked. I don't know where we can get the money to sustain it.

"Someone came in, said we would go full time and the bridge was jumped. It was absolutely crazy management of the club. If anyone had wronged a company like that they would have been out of work a long time ago."

Aidan Campbell gave a detailed message to the gathering on the benefits of concentration on a youth set-up at the club.

"Players weren't aware of what it took to become full-time athletes and the sports science side of things should ben looked at. It is not 1980 anymore," he said.

"This is about where we want to go as a club. We need to go out and find out what the best practice is. We have apparently got the richest batch of talent this county has had for years, so we need to work on developing that.

"The first team should pay for itself and we should use the money raised to develop the youth set-up."

His comments were refuted by former manager Patsy McGowan, who said the idea was a 'myth.' McGowan said: "The team in England with the best youth set-up is Crewe Alexandra and all they do is produce players for other teams. They are always in the same division.

"I worked for Spurs for for a while and they took in 2,000 players every year from all over Britain. They would keep nine for the following year and if they were lucky one would come into the first-team.

"No-one will wait for it."

The first-team squad came in for some sharp words from the floor. One fan branded as 'a joke' the recent performance against Sligo Rovers and another added that it was 'disgusting to watch.'

Anne Kelly noted that there had been a 'very poor attendance' by players at fundraising functions this season and her fellow former director Denise O'Neill added that she had been 'turned down by four players for tickets to a recent fundraiser.' She added: "It is very hard to support a team that doesn't support itself. The team is so far removed from the supporters at the moment.

"If we do make ends meet - and that is not the aim - where do we go then? We now have to face the facts that we are raising money to stay in football and we cannot allow the same thing to happen again next season."

One fan felt that a going back to the First Division would actually benefit the club in the long-term.

"We don't have the structures to stay in the Premier Division, unless we are operating off a very tight budget," he mentioned.

"I think we would be better off starting back from scratch and concentrating all the energies into the new stadium. If we are up in the Premier, I can't see how we'll stay there if we restrict the budget to what we can afford."