OFI secured their return to the Super League on Saturday after two years in the second division, by topping the Football League play-offs that took place in late July.
Two months after their scheduled start, the Football League play-offs that would determine who would follow Panetolikos and PAS Yiannina to the top flight kicked off in what was an emergency competition held within less than two weeks in mid-summer.
The delay was due to a number of outstanding court cases and appeals that originally had OFI deprived of their participation in the play-offs, as the Cretan side was deemed unfit to play in the Super League for technical reasons.
OFI took the case to a civil court and against all odds (given that football clubs usually get punished for resorting to civil courts), they won and entered the play-offs with a points' advantage after finished third in the regular season.
OFI, as well as Levadiakos, Doxa Dramas and Diagoras collected most of their players literally from the beaches for a round-robin mini-league of six rounds of matches, with all games played in neutral venues in Athens.
With Doxa and Diagoras having serious problems in fielding full squads, the play-offs were reduced to a farce in several instances.
Eventually, with the crucial game between OFI and Levadiakos drawn 1-1, the farce was completed on July 30 with the game between OFI and Doxa not taking place as Doxa did not have enough players to field a side.
OFI were awarded all three points, to win the play-offs mathematically with one more round of games left to play. In fact Diagoras have consented for their game with OFI on August 1 to be played at Iraklio, for OFI to stage their promotion celebration.
More: sportingreece
