A league of their own

I enjoyed the Irish game tonight, the first Irish game I’ve enjoyed for quite a while. Of course it was a pretty facile win given the standard of the Oman team, but it was underpinned by occasionally good football and a sense that we were watching some of the next generation of [exciting] players coming through. Most would argue that players like Shane Long, James McLean and Seamus Coleman are good enough to be regular starters already but Giovanni Trapattoni has only used them infrequently.

The game tonight featured six players who took their formative steps in football within the League of Ireland. David Forde, Seamus Coleman, Shane Long, Kevin Doyle, James McClean, David Meyler all featured in League of Ireland matches, coming through underage ranks at Irish clubs before they moved cross channel. A seventh, Stephen Ward, didn’t feature tonight, already a regular at left back under Trapattoni.

Something that all seven have in common is that they travelled to English clubs at a time in their life when they were older than has classically been the case for kids moving cross channel. Most had completed secondary school and all were mature enough to recognise the opportunity before them and appreciate the work they would have to put in to continue their development.

The League of Ireland has, in recent years, produced a number of players who have gone on to represent Ireland. It’s something that should be a huge source of pride for supporters, clubs and sponsors. With the national U19 League improving domestic competition at that age level and a national U17 league in development to provide the same, there’s no reason why the domestic game can’t continue to develop international class senior players.

Turkeys voting for Christmas

The last few minutes of last night’s [03 Sept 2012] MNS show on RTE2 was given over to discussing the potential move to a single division. It was interesting to hear the opinions of the panellists, former players  Pat Morley and Tony McDonnell and from Richard Sadlier, formerly CEO of St.Pats. Ideally, the opinions of all stakeholders within the game would be taken into considerations, including that of supporters as we face into what’s potentially a radical overhaul of the league, but with clubs already preparing licence applications and planning their 2013 budgets, most realise that the decision on next years structure is needed very soon.

During the MNS discussion a couple of points were made which need to be clarified, the primary one being that the club will make the decision, that it was ‘Turkeys voting for Christmas”. This simply isn’t the case. The clubs will meet and vote to make a recommendation, which will be brought to the National League Executive Committee [NLEC]. The NLEC, and they alone, will make the final decision; it’s worth pointing out that while Eamon Naughton, Chairman of the League will bring the club’s recommendation to their next meeting, no direct representative of any club will have access to that meeting or can argue the point on the day. Club’s can recommend, but ultimately will not decide.

Richard Sadlier made the point that standards could drift to that of the weakest club and that licencing and the participation agreement might as well be turn up. The truth of the matter is that clubs have already broadly accepted that with a move to a single Premier Division will come an expectation to up their standards. It is expected that a pre-requisite to entry in a single premier division would be the possession of a Premier Division licence.

Also, the participation agreement isn’t legislative in the way licencing is. It was updated at the start of this season with the change to a 12 team Premier Division and it can be updated again to accommodate a new structure with the dilution of other key aspects of it.

There is also a keen awareness in the clubs’ discussions that 19 teams, should that many qualify to play, can only be a short term interim step and that over time it has to be reduced to a 16 team Premier, as most clubs wished was passed over two years ago at the last round of talks. Contrary to the belief on last night’s panel, this was advocated most vocally by one of those clubs who, in theory, would be in the greatest danger of failing to make the future 16 team league. Their stance is ‘if we’re not strong enough, then we’ll exit, but at least we exit a stronger league.’

Finally, all clubs recognise that there has to be a trapdoor and a penalty for a bottom place finish and there has been good work, led by the Airtricity league clubs, on building a bridge to the junior and intermediate game to ensure that clubs exiting the league have somewhere to continue in football, and that those in the junior game have a strong league to aspire to.