I fear for the future of Irish domestic soccer, particularly with how the leagues operated over the past few years. With a lot of League of Ireland clubs in serious financial difficulties it has to be asked of the officials in the FAI running the national game why they have stood back and allowed such a situation happen. Serious questions need to be asked about the safeguards and monitoring that needs to be in place to realistically develop the sport in the long term. It is not acceptable to allow a near neo-liberalist approach be adopted, where clubs are free to do, and pay players, as they please once their initial obligations to the administrators have been met. As is evident from experience across the water some individuals are quiet happy to ride the wave of egotism once the team are reasonably successful, crudely mortgaging their clubs future on instant gratification and big name players spending. But the sport doesn’t belong to any single individual, it belongs to the community and without widespread support it has no future. How can we compare a cold Friday night in Terryland playing on front of a few hundred fans, against the exposure and financial might of, even say, Peterborough (who are 4 points adrift at the bottom of the Championship) who played Ipswich last night on front of 9,428 paying punters? Realistically, we have been setting the bar way too high over the past few seasons, and maybe that was down to the excesses of the Celtic tiger era. Only last season I learnt that the squad of 24 players at Galway United were getting, on average, approximately €700 a week. With crowds of fewer than 1,000 for most home games how can this be justified. Darlington are 5 points adrift at the bottoms of Division Two in England and even they had nearly 2,000 paying customers at their last home game. It’s time for some fresh thinking surrounding the game in Ireland and stop throwing good money after bad. A reassessment of the strategic goals of the league are needed. Do we want to compete directly with a superior product across the water (I would predict that far more people in Galway with go to the pub this Sunday to see football from England or Scotland than would travel to Terryland to see a game on any given night). Concentrate on a league that will maintain an amateur status for the foreseeable future and let players that believe they can earn money from the game try their luck across the water. Forget professionalism until the domestic game can wash it’s face. Any surplus money should be pumped into improving facilities and developing the skill-level at grassroots right across the country. It’s a bottom-up approach that’s required and the development of players and amenities should be prioritised. This is coming from a guy who spent many a Sunday afternoon in Terryland watching Galway United in the old first division, when the pitch was the other way round and the shed offered only cold comfort from the river. Enjoying a few pints beforehand and when we got bored chanting Michael D’s name… Ohhh the good times. The standard wasn’t always great back then but we had dreams of vast improvements in facilites and crowds to come. How silly were we!!!
The Condition of Irish Domestic Soccer
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