Joe keeps Brolly up

There are two aspects of sports commentary I find particularly tiresome. The first is the use of shock tactics by career pundits to stay ‘current’ in their off season, the second is the insecurity of commentators who seek to define their sport in comparison to others. Joe Brolly brought both together in recent weeks in a saga which started when he offered his opinions on Roy Keane’s “deep-seeded psychological issues” before calling him a “soccer coaching Kardashian”. Brolly also said the following;

“It always amuses me to hear soccer players described as role models. They are nothing of the kind.”

Stephen Hunt waded into the conversation using his weekly column [of which many had been unaware] and emerged poorly as the public ignored the nub of his poorly made point; competing at the Elite level of any sport requires an individual to make sacrifices. Brolly responded by throwing a blanket over soccer players on the basis of class and education,

“It never ceases to amuse me when you see these young fellas – many of whom have have spent their lives playing soccer at the expense of education and come from very strong working class backgrounds – being described as role models because they’re famous.”

His comment has some truth of course, Football players are not role models. However, his snobbish implication behind the comments is ridiculous, and deserves criticism.

Football players are not role models. GAA stars are not role models. Rugby stars are not role models, neither are cyclists, swimmers and basketball players. It’s not your chosen sport which defines you as a role model, it’s your behaviour. There are footballers, hurlers and rugby players who are fantastic role models. There are footballers, hurlers and rugby players who are idiots and gobshites. Those in the public eye who uses their status and position to set a positive example for others and/or those who choose to contribute to their wider community can be role models. It’s down to the individual, not the sport.

There are no moral sports, there are no noble sports. There are moral and noble individual sportspeople, there are immoral and ignoble sportspeople. All sports offer great moments, some of those capture the imagination of an audience beyond that which the sport normally enjoys. Equally all sports regularly offer up turgid events and performances, moments that cause even the die-hard fans to shake their heads and ask ‘why do we bother’.

There’s an insecurity in being unable to enjoy your sport or your sport’s heroes without making immediate comparison with other sports or heroes in other codes. A big tackle in a rugby game leads to comparisons to diving and feigning injury in soccer; there was a ridiculous opinion piece in the Irish Independent recently by a commentator terrified that soccer culture was lowering the tone at Rugby games. An epic amateur hurling encounter leads to pundits discussing the money paid in other codes, and the pace and excitement levels of other sports. it was a card Brolly was happy to play when discussing Stephen Hunt;

“I don’t imagine Stephen would have lasted five minutes in the Ulster club final last Sunday. I wouldn’t fancy his chances standing on the edge of the square with Patsy Bradley.”

Hunt probably wouldn’t last that long in a high level Gaelic Football match, neither would Lionel Messi, LeBron James, Katie Taylor or Johnny Sexton. Likewise, Patsy Bradley wouldn’t last long in the English Premier league, the NBA, a World Championship boxing ring or an Irish Rugby international. These are ridiculous comparisons to make, Elite sportsmen and women make sacrifices to get to the top of their chosen sport, not every sport..

For the Elite inter-country GAA player the sacrifice may be his family and social life, cramming four of five days training [for no wage] around a full-time job, mostly in the depths of winter. For an professional footballer it can actually be education that is sacrificed, as travelling to the UK is seen as necessary at too young an age. But any footballing biography deals, at some stage, with family sacrifices similar to those of the GAA player; the missed Christmas for a St.Stephen’s Day fixture, the insecurity of short term contracts, moving from club to club, the lack of a fall-back option if your career takes a negative turn.

We can respect the commitment and sacrifice of people who compete at the Elite level of any sport. We don’t need to compare sports, we don’t need to compare sportspeople across codes. So why is Brolly doing this, why was he even commenting on Roy Keane in the first place?

Controversy isn’t new to Brolly, he regularly finds himself in arguments, mostly within GAA circles e.g. the comments that angered Kerry footballer Kieran Donaghy a few months back, or that which required his apology to Sky’s GAA anchor Rachel Wyse.

It’s the quietest time of the year for Brolly, the Championship season is a memory yet he’s in the public eye. He’s on Newstalk, RTE and splashed across print and online media. No one at RTE is going to lose his number between now and the start of the 2015 Championship season, when the RTE panel might need to be freshened up. He can enjoy Christmas safe in the knowledge that the producers in RTE sport will see his presence as a draw for viewers.

Whether they earn their money in GAA [Brolly] or football [e.g. Eamonn Dunphy], the most successful carer pundits offer a particular skill set. They don’t educate, they don’t really inform. They realise their function is to entertain and build controversy and discussion beyond their ten minutes chat around a sporting event.. If Keane is a “soccer coaching Kardashian”; Brolly with his controversial comments, designed to pick arguments and keep him in the public eye, seems to be targeting a niche as GAA’s Katie Hopkins. He’s played a blinder, he might even last five minutes on the RTE Soccer panel.

Note: While I’ve worked in Football in recent years and football is my own chosen sport, I do enjoy GAA and sit on the Juvenile Development Committee of my local GAA club.

Pay as you go

This morning I tweeted this;

I was asked, through a private message from someone who didn’t like the point I was making, to back it up or take it down.

So, I’m backing it up, which won’t take long. The numbers of red and yellow cards referenced below, I took from this morning’s excellent League of Ireland pull-put in the Irish Sun newspaper.

1. Affiliation fees: €19,000 x 12 Premier Division teams = €228,000

2. There have been 688 yellow cards issues this season, a €25 fine associated with each one = €16,700

3. 71 players reached four yellow cards, a suspension and further €50 fine = €3,550

4. 6 players reached eight yellow cards, a further suspension and further 50 fine = €300

4. 72 players received red cards, a suspension and €50 fine = €3,600

5. €228,000 + €16,700 + €3,550 + €3,600 + €300 = €252,150

6. The League Prize money is €241,500 as announced at the season launch.

Now, the above is the minimum figure that Premier Division Clubs have contributed to the League Office in fines and affiliation fees. I don’t have Red Cards and fines associated with Management nor do I have information pertaining to fines attributed to supporters, beyond Dundalk FC’s statement where they claim to have paid €5,000 in fines attributable to supporters in 2014, before the fireworks on the night they won the league title.

Clubs pay as they go in the League of Ireland and it is an issue which could have a serious knock-on issue. In the past year, a number of clubs are quietly, but pointedly, asking questions among themselves such as “Why am I spending €X,000 per week over 36 weeks on players to win €100,000?”

Don’t blame Roddy; we created him.

On Saturday I attended an Irish Supporters’ Network http://www.heartofthegame.ie conference which highlighted some great work by clubs and their volunteers. The http://www.extratime.ie report on the day is linked at the foot of this post.

One of the most interesting comments came during a panel discussion when the Irish Sun’s Owen Cowzer pointed to our League’s levels of newspaper coverage being driven by feedback on Twitter. That feedback to journalists is matched by purchase of papers. Supporters will buy a paper just for League of Ireland coverage, a trait not matched by other codes.

I wondered how I’d discuss the influence supporters can have on the media when Roddy Collins made a few disparaging comments about Sunday’s FAI Ford Cup Final on RTE 1 during the ‘Today with Sean O’Rourke’ show. These went viral, and have since been featured on most Irish online Sports sites.

Roddy is a divisive character. I learned that first hand when I hired Roddy to manage Athlone Town ahead of the 2012 season. I received a torrent of online abuse from Cork City fans who questioned if I’d “forgotten what he’d done at City”. Roddy is media savvy, it’s one of the reasons he remains a good managerial candidate. Through periods of employment and unemployment as a football manager, he’s maintained a media career in Print, Radio and TV [the subject of two Setanta documentary series]. This isn’t an accident.

Roddy knows which buttons to push to get a reaction; when you meet him after he drops one of his bombshells he’ll laugh about it, knowing that the reaction will only increase his profile and the desire for the next editor or producer to get his opinion. Eamon Dunphy on RTE is the other great master in this arena. If you meet Dunphy, read his books, or listen to the wonderful extended interview he did with Second Captains, it’s hard not to like him. But he has a living to earn and he knows that entertainment and controversy will keep him on RTE’s panel far longer than tactical insight.

Roddy knows the value of a well placed controversial soundbite. Supporters react, those monitoring social media report back and producers smile. We’ll wait for the newspaper columns Roddy writes and scour it, ready to be outraged again.All the time, RTE, Newstalk and the Star have more website hits, listeners and readers to put before advertisers.

The key point, to return to Owen Cowzer’s comment, is that our reaction is a positive. We can drive added discussion and interest through tools like twitter in a positive way. Do you like “Soocer Republic”, do you want to keep it? Do you like seeing League of Ireland coverage in the papers? Make those responsible for producing the items that interest you aware that you’re reading, listening and watching. We created Roddy, we can do a lot more.

http://www.extratime.ie/newsdesk/articles/13275/greatestleagueintheworld—report-from-supporters-workshop/

Parenting tips

Earlier this week John Delaney described the League of Ireland as the “difficult child” of the Association. The throwaway remark was poorly chosen within a brief but largely straightforward summation of the League’s issues. Supporters and clubs won’t be happy with the description and rightly so, but Delaney was correct that much of the negative attention the league receives is self inflicted, and much of the improvement within our own grasp.

Inspired by Daniel McDonnell’s thought provoking list of ten realistic ways the league can improve [link at bottom] and with Delaney’s “difficult child” comment in mind, here’s my top 6 parenting tips in addition to those Dan discussed.

1. Let the kids play together.

Clubs must take responsibility but it must be within an environment where they can do so collectively. There are great people in the FAI who give daily support to clubs however the Annual Clubs’ Convention is the only time that the association sits down formally with ALL clubs; and it’s happened only twice in the last 24 months.

The convention function is to elect, on alternating years, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the league. The 2013 clubs’ convention was the worst I’ve been at because of the apathy, from all parties. The meeting took under 90 minutes with an agenda so packed that clubs got little opportunity to discuss anything at length with the association.

Clubs meeting outside of this forum is treated with suspicion yet the association simply don’t hold sufficient meetings. Clubs should be meeting each other, with or without the FAI, on a monthly basis to discuss the league, it’s direction and issues. It’s basic; nothing works without effective communication.

2. Encourage the children to share

At a clubs meeting in 2011 I was still new to the boardroom level of the game and naive. I raised the topic of collective bargaining and sharing best practice. A rep of another club said “come on John, you’re talking about clubs that steal footballs from each other at matches”. Happily, it’s improved and the FAI have helped, running workshops through the licencing department on specific topics such as media practices, where clubs present case studies.

In the last 12 months clubs have acknowledged the need to share but it’s hard to shake the notion that the association don’t really like clubs talking to each other without an FAI presence. It is vital that clubs work together effectively (including collectively bargaining) to build solutions from within rather than creating an environment where they consistently look to external support, and let’s admit it, a blame culture.

19 clubs collectively negotiating with e.g. billboard providers will create better deals and better opportunities. Clubs must cooperate and the association must encourage it.

3. Pin your kids’ pictures to the fridge

We have genuine success stories and they should be celebrated. One of the simplest selling points the league has today, of which every supporter is aware, is the domestic background of many of our National Team. At the upcoming home game against Gibraltar you will have 12 former LoI players in one spot.

Photograph and film the 12 players in Irish kit, their former club scarf around their neck with a simple message “Seamus Coleman, former Sligo Rovers player” etc., and distribute those clips to clubs for use in advertising. Use them on the FAI’s central website, social media outlets and on the big screen at games. Make them available as stings, pre- and post- advert breaks, on Televised National matches.

4. Have rules for time in front of the TV

A televised home game costs money. That’s a fact. It can be a nice to inform sponsors of television exposure but it means little ultimately. In the absence of compensation for clubs, it’s long been clear that changing your kick-off time for TV costs you money. In Limerick’s first Premier Divison home game, after 19 years way, we conservatively estimated the cost to the club in changing the KO from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon at over €20,000.

Soccer Republic is a great highlights show but we just don’t need 30 live games per year. What’s more important is the games that are chosen, particularly European games.

As I said, chopping and changing kick-off times costs, European Football and TV are the primary causes of these changes; planning of both can be better.  If league games are going to be televised, pick Friday night with a 7.35 KO to limit impact on those getting to the ground. if this doesn’t work for RTE, stop choosing time slots such 3pm Saturday or 5.30pm Sunday, that decimate crowds. Don’t show a game for the sake of it.

Also, clubs who put clips of goals etc., online should not be punished, they should be advised how to do it in a way that drives viewing figures for Soccer Republic.

5. Ensure kids clean their rooms

People hold up better stadia as an attendance solution and they’re right, Infrastructure in the league is admittedly poor. As much as I love the league, there are grounds I can’t visit with my kids due to poor toilet facilities or lack of a roof on rainy days. Large scale capital investment is a long-term project but grounds being clean and safe would be a start; some aren’t.

Add to this, most LoI clubs do nothing to encourage away fans. We hope Rovers, Cork & Dundalk will bring a crowd, we expect UCD to bring no-one. There’s a soft €20,000 per annum for any club who proactively puts effort into welcoming away fans. Make sure the ground is as clean and comfortable as possible, give them a roof, some decent hot food, a cup of tea and train stewards specifically to cater to away fans. Treat people well and they might come back. Treat them poorly, they won’t.

6. Don’t use their pocket money to buy cigarettes.

The League of Ireland is not a financial burden on the FAI. It couldn’t be.

The starting position of most European top flight football is the allocation of TV money. In Ireland, after coming through a lengthy licencing process you hand over €19,000 for the right to play the game. That’s €228,000 into FAI coffers from the Premier Division clubs alone.

After this, clubs pay officials for each game [including inter-club friendlies, which is causing clubs to play ‘behind closed door’ friendly games so save referee fees while getting fringe players some game time]. Clubs pay a significant fine structure [Dundalk have stated they’ve paid €5000 to the FAI for flare offences in 2014 already]. Every yellow card is a minimum €25 which opens up a double punishment in terms of finance and loss of player for bans.

Then clubs must pay professional players for a week long holiday over the unnecessary mid-season break which compounds fixture congestion. This despite the Standard player’s contract guaranteeing sufficient time-off for professional players.

The League Cup is a huge cost and also compounds fixture congestion. It’s a competition on which Cork City just broke even in 2011 despite hosting the final and finishing runners-up. It cost Limerick FC significant money in 2013 with two poorly attended home games [with split gates], Limerick actually made a few euro on it in 2014, losing away to Cork City in the first round The share of the gate covering the cost of the bus and pre-match meal. The Association get money from EA for sponsorship, but I don’t know a single club who value the competition and that’s reflected in supporter apathy.

All of the above sources of club expenditure have to be debated with the association; I’m not saying there should be no consequence for offences but would a single flare be lit by Dundalk fans all season if they were facing a 3 point deduction rather than €500 fines on each occasion? I doubt it, so look at alternatives, communicate!

Cherish your child

When your child is being difficult, the parenting books I’ve skimmed [and pretended to read] state the most effective process is to get down to your child’s level, look them in the eye, listen, understand the difficultly and communicate. It might take a while before you can all walk down the aisle of a supermarket without a tantrum, but in the end, you get there.

The Daniel McDonnell piece referenced earlier; http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/league-of-ireland/ten-realistic-ways-we-can-improve-the-league-of-ireland-30623058.html

Designs on a more attractive League

In recent weeks an uprooted penalty spot, a Palestinian flag and failing floodlights caused deserved negative coverage of our league. I decided it worthwhile to celebrate an area where the League of Ireland collectively and quietly do a good job, an area which has improved greatly in the past twelve months.

In a league suffering from public apathy and struggling infrastructure Artwork & Design might not seem important, but there’s a growing awareness that it may be the first interaction a potential supporter will have with a club. While we must acknowledge that the league has work to do to retain new supporters, there are green shoots in the increasingly well crafted and artistic imagery that clubs are using to turn the heads of potential supporters.

Club Media officers, predominantly volunteers covering a licencing requirement, create volumes of strong content. However, it’s their growing familiarity with social media alongside reports of the World’s largest companies turning to visually led social media campaigns that have led to clubs’ using eye catching imagery and clever artwork to increase awareness. Despite football’s global popularity and ubiquity, the League of Ireland remains a niche pursuit and this gives us licence to take risks and try new ideas rare among global football brands and our own National Association. It’s something we’re good at.

By taking advantage of strong visuals, many containing tongue-in-cheek humour, League of Ireland clubs can push awareness into markets and regions we’d otherwise miss. Embracing creative Art & Design is not brand new concept though it’s use in the past year has been particularly clever. Below is some of my favourite work from the past year, in no particular order;

Bohemian FC

Right from the off, the ‘Bohs Graffiti Jam’ to redecorate Dalymount Park was a huge success driving interest and awareness of the club, solidifying the club’s brand colours black, red and white as the club played around with the familiar and traditional Red and Black stripes of the home jersey

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St. Patrick’s Athletic

St. Patrick’s Athletic include the strong Graffiti Art around Richmond Park into Press Days announcing new players, as they did with Keith Fahey. The ‘Once a Saint, Always a Saint’ artwork is a hugely strong visual, tying in well with the club’s branding, with the theme continuing through the club’s website and social media outlets.

Cork City FC

Cork City FC has worked with Kobe Designs this season for programme design and match posters, the latter in particular driving strong social media interaction as part of the club’s hugely successful marketing push this year. The Kobe design posters have raised awareness and have become the subject of news features. Quirky and professional, they’ve strengthened Cork City’s output this season.

Limerick FC

Limerick FC’s quality has improved dramatically since the introduction of Kreo Creative & Anthem to the club. The quality of the publications and match posters, combined with strong negotiating by the club, means they are one of the few in the League of Ireland producing a profitable match programme. The strong imagery is consistent across the club’s social media and website.

Sligo Rovers

Sligo Rovers create a really strong, eye-catching series of posters, notably the ‘Clash of the Rovers’ comic book series for games versus Shamrock Rovers which are among the best the league produce.

Dundalk

I said no particular order, but my personal favourite over the past twelve months is this brilliant minimalist Richie Towell cover on the Dundalk FC matchday magazine, adding brilliant design to the outstanding content that keeps it the League of Ireland’s best programme.

Liam Buckley. Gent.

St. Patrick’s Athletic deservedly clinched the Airtricity Premier Division League title last Sunday and in a congratulatory tweet I mentioned the fact that I thought manager Liam Buckley was “a gent”. A few people didn’t share the opinion with me, mainly because they don’t know the man; and because he’s the St.Pat’s manager and not their own. So I started typing.

Firstly, I don’t know Liam Buckley well, I’ve met him a handful of times and he’s always been polite but first impressions count and my first real impression of the man came in 2010, the day after FORAS (where I was Chairman) had been granted a licence to enter a Cork City team  (of which I had just become Chairman by default) in the First Division.

We had received the licence at approximately 9.20pm on a Monday night. Seven people suddenly become the board of a football club, with hundreds of members simultaneously becoming owners of their football club. We had ten days to put a manager in place, build an admin team, find and register players, organise a training base and a home stadium; and book a bus to Derry for our first game of the season. Only Ten days.

In the midst of this chaos I received a phone call from Liam Buckley, then manager of Sporting Fingal. He’d gone to the trouble to find my number, he called to wish us luck and to offer us a pre-season friendly the following weekend [the final weekend before the season kicked off].  He told me it was great what we’d achieved in Cork, how great it was to see the club continue and he let us know that there were countless “great people within the league” who’d be there to help, a fact made abundantly clear over following years.

Liam didn’t need the friendly match, his pre-season was almost complete, but he knew our new manager would need one. He offered to put his team on a bus to Cork the following weekend, at his club’s expense, to do a favour for a bunch of supporters now running a league of Ireland club.

Unfortunately, the game never happened, through no fault of Liam. When he rang, we hadn’t a ground to play any match, had neither a manager nor a single player. I thanked him for his generosity and admitted we’d be lucky to have things pulled together for the league opener never mind the following weekend. As it turned out, nine days later, Tommy Dunne took 11 players and 2 subs [one injured and one goalkeeper] to the Brandywell where we secured a draw in one of the best night’s I’ve had in football.

Cork City went on to win promotion in 2011, but Liam Buckley’s generous offer will stay long in my mind. There’s a lot of talk about “real football people” in the media these days, Bucko is one, and he’s a gent.

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.