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View Full Version : Does the League of Ireland have the highest turnover rate of teams involved?



Tenderloins
29/01/2007, 4:04 PM
Another trhread relating to logos of ex league teams promted me to ask the question.
Does the League of Ireland have the highest turnover rate of teams?
In my own time St James Gate, St Francis, Dublin City, Thurles Town, Home Farm, EMFA Kilkenny, Limerick United, Newcastle West FC,Home Farm-Fingal FC , Home Farm Everton etc have all been members of the League.
Some have changed names such as Kilkenny but for a league with so few teams involved the turnover seems very big.

dcfcsteve
29/01/2007, 4:16 PM
Another trhread relating to logos of ex league teams promted me to ask the question.
Does the League of Ireland have the highest turnover rate of teams?
In my own time St James Gate, St Francis, Dublin City, Thurles Town, Home Farm, EMFA Kilkenny, Limerick United, Newcastle West FC,Home Farm-Fingal FC , Home Farm Everton etc have all been members of the League.
Some have changed names such as Kilkenny but for a league with so few teams involved the turnover seems very big.

Since the foundation of the league in 1922, there has never once been a period of longer than 5 years in which there were no changes at all to the composition of the league i.e. no team joining, leaving or changing name. I kid you not.

Had Dublin City limped through to the end of the 2006 season, we would have matched that record for stability in Irish domestic football :eek:

Surely for a league that has existed continuously for 85 years, and has never been linked into a pyramid structure, that is some sort of record.

N.B. Not all changes are bad though. There have been a number of occassions on which change has purely been the result of an increase in the number of teams competing in the league e.g. 1984 and 1985.

Poor Student
29/01/2007, 6:09 PM
Well the Slovenian league is only in its 16th season but in the last 4 years alone I've seen Olimpija Ljubljana (the biggest club), NK Ljubljana, NK Mura, Dravograd, Smartno, Korotan and Rudar Velenje die. All clubs who died while in the top flight.

But if you look at other countries like England and Scotland, so few clubs ever actually go to the wall or voluntarily step out of senior football.