An Irish football team has been forced to issue an apology after they pulled the frankly insane stunt of claiming one of their players had died in a car accident in order to postpone a match.
Third-tier football team Ballybrack FC was set to play Arklow Town on Saturday, but it was cancelled when the Leinster Senior League was informed that Fernando Nuno La Fuente had died in a road accident.
The only issue was that the Spanish national was absolutely not dead. He was just in Spain. This became awkward when other teams in the league started doing minutes of silence for Fuente – who, as I said, was very much alive.
Leinster Senior League chairman David Moran informed local media that the person responsible had resigned from the club. “We can’t get confirmation from Ballybrack FC but we got confirmation that their secretary had resigned this afternoon.”
“[The player is] in Spain apparently, thanks be to God,” Moran said. “That’s the one good thing about the story. The young lad didn’t die in a motorbike accident last Thursday. He went back to Spain four or five weeks ago apparently.
Ballybrack FC issued a statement on Facebook apologising for the “grave and unacceptable mistake” after the enormous backlash:
It has come to the attention of both the club, senior players and the management team that a gross error of judgement has occurred emanating from correspondence sent from a member of the senior set up management team to the Leinster Senior League.
As of this evening an emergency meeting was held and the person in question has been relieved of all footballing duties, within Ballybrack FC, its senior team and roles within the club itself. The club has contacted Fernando to confirm his whereabouts, wellbeing and are thankful for his acceptance of our apology on this matter.
There’s definitely a lesson in here. I think it might be: don’t pretend someone died to get out of a game. There are way better lies.
