Opinion: Ferguson emerges with credit over Boyce saga

Part of the agreement struck between managers Oran Kearney and Glenn Ferguson in the transfer of the striker from Coleraine to Ballymena was that Boyce would not play any part in matches against the Bannsiders for the remainder of this season.

Bearing in mind that this was not a loan move but rather a permanent transfer, it seemed a peculiar stipulation, especially given the fierce rivalry between the two clubs.

I think it’s absolutely right and proper in a loan move that a player cannot play against the club that effectively pays his wages - remember the uproar a few seasons back, before that rule came into being, when Rory Hamill, then on loan at Donegal Celtic, scored one of the goals which helped knock his club Glentoran out of the Irish Cup.

In that situation, a player shouldn’t play against his own club but when a player makes a permanent switch, surely the selling club shouldn’t be able to dictate which games their now ex-employee should or shouldn’t play in?

It was a clever move on Kearney’s part, to remove the possibility of Boyce coming back to haunt him and it shows that underneath his affable persona, there’s a shrewd thinker.

It all boiled down to that rarely-used phrase in football - the ‘gentleman’s agreement’.

There will be some clubs and individuals in Irish League circles who might have to look up the meaning of that in a dictionary but in the vast majority of cases, there will be a willingness to help out.

It may be dog-eat-dog on the pitch but there’s a certain earthiness about the Irish League where clubs will assist others, as evidenced by Crusaders loaning Yohann Lacroix to Ballymena during the Sky Blues’ goalkeeping crisis at the turn of the year. It also happens on a smaller scale with clubs regularly agreeing to change the date or venue for fixtures, in order to facilitate others.

There’s no doubt Ferguson took a major risk in agreeing such a condition in Boyce’s transfer - he did concede that it could have backfired in the event of a Ballymena v Coleraine Irish Cup final which, thankfully, can’t now happen.

Even in the race for a top six league place, it took guts for Ferguson to leave out a player who has been a regular starter since his arrival, in order to honour his side of the bargain. Ferguson must have had a wry smile, then, when Boyce’s replacement Michael McLellan took advantage of a rare start to score his side’s opening goal.

What the whole episode illustrated is that Ballymena have at the helm a man of integrity, who is not likely to go back on his word. While the actual Boyce stipulation might not have been to everyone’s agreement, Ferguson was entirely correct to honour it.

Boyce will return to the panel for this weekend’s home game against Warrenpoint, which Ferguson has already marked in the ‘must win’ category if that elusive top six place is to be realised.

Hopefully the weather will be more favourable than last weekend’s game, which took place in some of the most extreme conditions I’ve ever witnessed at a football match, illustrating that outdoor press boxes are more suited to Barcelona than Ballymena.

While you expect pieces of paper to be blown in the breeze (apologies to anyone who encountered my sheet of statistics which I last saw heading at around 70mph in the direction of Farm Lodge), I can honestly say it was the first time I’ve ever seen the wind move a laptop computer by a couple of inches!

* Follow Times Sports Editor Stephen Alexander on Twitter (@Stephen_Bmena).