Richard Sadlier reason for quitting Irish Football.

[Dodge]

Personally, I think the reason Sadlier left the LOI was because his head was too big to get in the gates of Richmond Park. He strikes me as being self indulgent and arrogant and I find it very hard to listen to him.

Presumably you've never spoken to him. He's a sound, down to earth fellah

[pineapple stu]

First time reading through this thread. Did not Bohs fans criticise the FAI for stopping the Limerick Barca friendly, possibly on the grounds that it'd take away from the LoI v Man U? And yet they think it's perfectly fair to try and stop another Barca friendly because it'd take away from one of their games? Ridiculous insular attitude which really sums up the league at times, I think.

[Dalymountrower]

When did Bohs try and stop a Barcelona game?
Stopping a friendly because its clashing with another
meaningless money making friendly is a tad different to overshadowing coverage of a Champions League competitive game.

[pineapple stu]

Sorry, Madrid game. Point still stands. The clash with your game is irrelevant; just something you have to deal with.

(And I think the Salzburg crowd was 5000-odd? So it didn't seem to affect the crowd on the day; very good crowd for a relatively low-level opposition)

[Dalymountrower]

4,500 I think. Not sure if that included Richard Saslier.

[wexfordned]

When did Bohs try and stop a Barcelona game?
Stopping a friendly because its clashing with another
meaningless money making friendly is a tad different to overshadowing coverage of a Champions League competitive game.

This is the same guy who allowed anyone to make up stuff for bohs fans to explain. This is more of the same. Better to ignore him

[D.24saint]

nice fella is richie but the facts are he left because he was a hopeless club administrator end of. He let Jeff Kenna tear the club apart and did nothing to stop the rot on the bohs thing nothing surprises me in the LOI anymore its small minds that has the league in the sorry state it is currently in.

[Jicked]

When did Bohs try and stop a Barcelona game?
Stopping a friendly because its clashing with another
meaningless money making friendly is a tad different to overshadowing coverage of a Champions League competitive game.

It didn't clash - they were on different nights. And what do you make of my point above that it offered Bohs an opportunity, for once you had LoI all over the news for once in a positive light and Bohs decided not to bother try to take advantage of it. Also, how exactly did it affect Bohs' preparations - did you have a succesfull advertising campaign last year that didn't work this time because of Real Madrid being in the country a few days before hand? Was Bohs' gate negatively effected? I can't remember what attendance you had the previous year but surely it was around 4,500 and not too many thousands over that?

[Riddickcule]

Don't blame him, he like many others became disillusioned with the way things are done here. Fair play to him.

[SkStu]

this debate might actually be relevant if we actually did complain. We didnt.

Where were the accusations of small mindedness/pettiness/jealousy/sour grapes when Rovers wrote their (what was found to be totally baseless) letter to the FAI at the end of last season? Oh no, wait, that was fair game.


Pot. Kettle. Black.

[Dodge]

get up out of it, there's absolutely no comparison between trying to block a friendly and asking the league are their rivals affairrs in order

(and if you read the thread back then PLENTY of people accused Rovers of pettiness)

[SkStu]

both are petty (as you've stated plenty of people on that thread would agree). Therefore comparison is fair.

[Cuyahoga]

I knew Sadlier wouldn't last in that job it was too much like hard work. After been a professional footballer and then
a columnist he didn't realise how easy he had it.Also on MNS he said that whoever takes over from him should'nt
have a social life to be able to do the job!

[Dalymountrower]

It didn't clash - they were on different nights. And what do you make of my point above that it offered Bohs an opportunity, for once you had LoI all over the news for once in a positive light and Bohs decided not to bother try to take advantage of it. Also, how exactly did it affect Bohs' preparations - did you have a succesfull advertising campaign last year that didn't work this time because of Real Madrid being in the country a few days before hand? Was Bohs' gate negatively effected? I can't remember what attendance you had the previous year but surely it was around 4,500 and not too many thousands over that?

I said that the exhibition match overshadowed coverage of the Champions league match, the clash I refereed to was the Limerick v FAI debacle.
I do know what a difficult time Bohs Marketing people had the week of the Saltzburg home game trying to drum up commercial once- off sponsorship, trying to convince RTE to pay for live coverage of the game. The Madrid game dominated the limited coverage available to domestic football that week, that was the reality.
As for comparisons, we didn`t play in the Champions League the previous year. The last "big" champions league game against non-baltic opposition was against Rosenborg when we sold the game out, 6,500- 7,000 capacity at the time.

[pineapple stu]

So you dropped a thousand or so for less attractive opposition in a recession without the impetus of a first round win behind ye? Not the biggest shock there ever was.

[Charlie Darwin]

The Madrid game dominated the limited coverage available to domestic football that week, that was the reality.
Surely it expanded the range of the coverage. I'm sure the Real game did overshadow the Bohs tie but it's not as if the total coverage of both events was limited to the usual 2-page spread in the Star. The total effect of Real's visit was to put a spotlight on football in Ireland and, from the sound of it, Bohs failed to capitalise on that increased attention.

[Dalymountrower]

So you dropped a thousand or so for less attractive opposition in a recession without the impetus of a first round win behind ye? Not the biggest shock there ever was.

it was the second leg of a game we had drawn away v a first leg. Your anti -Bohs polemic is really embarrassing at this stage

[Dalymountrower]

Surely it expanded the range of the coverage. I'm sure the Real game did overshadow the Bohs tie but it's not as if the total coverage of both events was limited to the usual 2-page spread in the Star. The total effect of Real's visit was to put a spotlight on football in Ireland and, from the sound of it, Bohs failed to capitalise on that increased attention.

Right , so now we failed to take advantage of the publicity afforded to us by dint of err coverage of a friendly game, jesus wept. What gained the league more respect , Bohs away draw and agonising home defeat or the Darby O Gill tilting at Windmills extraveganza in Tallaght? Oh sorry you`ve answered that,

[pineapple stu]

Well done on completely ignoring my point. I was talking about a first round win as opposed to a first leg result. Something to get the home fans even more into things.

[Charlie Darwin]

Right , so now we failed to take advantage of the publicity afforded to us by dint of err coverage of a friendly game, jesus wept. What gained the league more respect , Bohs away draw and agonising home defeat or the Darby O Gill tilting at Windmills extraveganza in Tallaght? Oh sorry you`ve answered that,
Who said anything about respect? I'm saying the Real game brought unexpected news interest to domestic football that week and Bohs could have capitalised on the attention to sell more tickets. There shouldn't be anything controversial about that basic fact.

[SkStu]

its not a fact. Its your opinion. And its flawed. Bohs v Salzburg should and could have "brought unexpected news interest to domestic football that week". But it didnt because the majority of the attention went towards a meaningless friendly. The media by and large gobbled it up as did the barstoolers, gloryhunters and glamour junkies that might otherwise have headed to Dalymount. Also, tell me how exactly Bohs "could have capitalised on the attention to sell more tickets"?? Its hard enough to get people off the barstool more than once a year for a domestic game as it is and its ignoring the fact that Bohs advertised and promoted as much as they could that week. I've heard that chestnut a few times on this thread and quite frankly its meaningless rubbish.

[PartySaint]

its not a fact. Its your opinion. And its flawed. Bohs v Salzburg should and could have "brought unexpected news interest to domestic football that week". But it didnt because the majority of the attention went towards a meaningless friendly. The media by and large gobbled it up as did the barstoolers, gloryhunters and glamour junkies that might otherwise have headed to Dalymount. Also, tell me how exactly Bohs "could have capitalised on the attention to sell more tickets"?? Its hard enough to get people off the barstool more than once a year for a domestic game as it is and its ignoring the fact that Bohs advertised and promoted as much as they could that week. I've heard that chestnut a few times on this thread and quite frankly its meaningless rubbish.

Honest question here Stu, Do you really think more barstoolers would have went to the Bohs game if Madrid werent in town that week?? You no aswell as I do they barstoolers wont get off their holes unless a 'proper' club is coming to town i.e United, Real or Barca i just dont think Red Bull Salzburg would have wetted their appetite enough for them to get up and go to the game

[SkStu]

honestly PS - probably not a whole lot. Certainly no more than a few hundred. Though quite a few came for Rosenborg who wouldnt be a huge draw either despite their calibre. My bigger point here is that Madrid v Shamrocks wouldnt have helped and that Bohs were right to consider this. We didnt act on it though by way of a formal complaint so its a stupid argument and its a stupid thing to have a dig at us for. Considering our own interests on the eve of our biggest fixture in years is not a bad thing.

[Charlie Darwin]

its not a fact. Its your opinion. And its flawed. Bohs v Salzburg should and could have "brought unexpected news interest to domestic football that week". But it didnt because the majority of the attention went towards a meaningless friendly.
You've got an exaggerated impression of how much press coverage would have been generated by the fixture had Real never come to Ireland.

The average Irish team in Europe gets, what, perhaps a dozen pre-match articles in the nationals? On that particular week, I'm guessing the majority would have been focused on Bohs (I can't remember if there were teams in the UEFA that week as well).

I wasn't in the country at the time, so I can't be sure, but having followed it online I can fairly confidently say there were at least a couple of hundred articles in the nationals about the Real game, not to mention the locals in Tallaght. If Bohs could have piggybacked on even 5% of those articles, they'd probably have already gained more coverage than they would have in the average week.


The media by and large gobbled it up as did the barstoolers, gloryhunters and glamour junkies that might otherwise have headed to Dalymount. Also, tell me how exactly Bohs "could have capitalised on the attention to sell more tickets"?? Its hard enough to get people off the barstool more than once a year for a domestic game as it is and its ignoring the fact that Bohs advertised and promoted as much as they could that week. I've heard that chestnut a few times on this thread and quite frankly its meaningless rubbish.
This is where good PR comes in. The Rovers game was a PR's dream because of Ronaldo and Benzema making their debuts, but there was also a lot of work put into little stunts and light news articles, and Rovers and Platinum One have to be given plenty of credit for that.

What did Bohs do to leech off the publicity? Not being funny, but it doesn't sound like they did anything, and it's pretty poor form that the richest club in Dublin couldn't sink a bit of extra money into publicising a potentially money-spinning clash. And, I'm sorry, as somebody who has worked and trained in PR, if the Bohs game got as little publicity as you say it did then the clubs needs to sack its public relations team.

[SkStu]

okay, as someone who has worked and trained in PR, what were they supposed to do? How can they "leech" off the Real v Shamrocks game? All they can do is what they always do, issue press releases, put ads in the papers, posters etc. As you said yourself you werent in the country, how can you say they did nothing? How do you know what they did? And thats ignoring the fact that we (or any LOI club) are supposed to have a "public relations team"... one full day after the Real friendly was when the attention switched in full to the Champions League game. Everything before that was the little stunts and light news articles that you are fawning over. From my experience with CL and europa coverage there are numerous articles, previews and interviews and general filler in the lead up to these games.

By your very own post you have confirmed that the press coverage was saturated with this other stuff to the detriment of the competitive and far more important game to Irish football that week (half dozen vs. couple of hundred articles). Either way, whats done is done but thank you for backing up my point and further convincing me that Bohs were right to be concerned about the negative impact on the CL game.

I still dont understand how a club is supposed to piggyback or leech off another game. But youre the expert, so you tell me.

[passinginterest]

As someone who attended both games, I have to say I thought the Bohs attendance was definitely boosted by all of the attention around the Rovers game. There was a vast amount of barstoolers at the Bohs game and loads of fans of other league of Ireland clubs wearing club jersies, I thought the whole week there was a really positive vibe around Irish football in general and in the ticket queue for the Connaught St there was a real mix of people, and from the general conversations a lot of them were at their first game involving a league of Ireland team.

Whether or not it made it harder for Bohs to attract one off sponsorship or not is hard to say, there would obviously have been some serious competition in this market and they may well have lost out, but you would hope that the excellent performance would have drawn some of theses potential one off sponsors into longer term sponsorship.

[Jicked]

Whether or not it made it harder for Bohs to attract one off sponsorship or not is hard to say, there would obviously have been some serious competition in this market and they may well have lost out, but you would hope that the excellent performance would have drawn some of theses potential one off sponsors into longer term sponsorship.

I wouldn't believe that for a minute. The companies involved with the Rovers - Real game were drawn to the game on the back of it being broadcast live around the world and included many international business. It was a very different advertising market to the one Bohs would have been offering. We'll see how many global companies are involved with Bohs' Champions League tie this year but I don't expect it to be too many.

[marinobohs]

get up out of it, there's absolutely no comparison between trying to block a friendly and asking the league are their rivals affairrs in order

(and if you read the thread back then PLENTY of people accused Rovers of pettiness)

Yea because making a formal incorrect (written) complaint about the team that just pipped you to the title is far less serious than ehh making no complaint at all (which is what happened). Dodge mate, you are in a hole now put away that shovel ;)

Still no substance to this at all - who alledgedly phoned Saddlier ? what capacity were they acting in ? why was nobody else contacted ? given his "outrage" why did it take Saddlier 12 months to raise it (not like he has no access to the media) ? all a lot of smoke so far. As almost all posters here (including Pats fans) accept, the central tenet of the story - that this phone call was the reason he gave up Pats - is simply ridiculous. Based on that its difficult to see why the rest of this article be given any credence other than that of a failed administrator attempting to rewrite history.

Playing along with the other issues raised, while it was annoying to see the huge level of publicity given to a friendly over Bohs Champs Lge match I doubt very much if it had anything other than a marginal impact on Bohs crowd. Similarly the idea that the Real game galvinised the Irish soccer public and had Bohs "worked it" they would have come flocking is nonsence, even shams did not retain the "fans" that showed up never mind anyone else.

for the record had Bohs lodged a complaint I think it would have been a silly (wrong) decision. Fortunately they didnt.:D