Roddy Collins controversial move across the city from Dublin City to Shamrock Rovers struck a nerve amongst even the most hardened eircom League observers. There are several issues raised by Collins move, loyalty, freedom of movement and risk. Employing Roddy is a high risk strategy on the Hoops part. At Bohemians the risk paid off.
The recent introduction of transfer windows has ensured free movement of players is restricted. Is it time to apply the same rules to the mangers? Allowing the manager of the bottom team to move to the second from bottom team with just four games remaining, while the players cannot move after the 31st of August (a full three months before the end of the season), smacks of hypocrisy. A fairer system may be to restrict the movement of both players and manager six weeks prior to the end of season for competitive reasons.
Dublin City has now discovered that unfortunately loyalty and football do not fit comfortable in the same sentence in the modern game. Hopefully Roddy has matured as a manager and has learned from this experience at the basement of the English and irish game. His initial entrance to both Carlisle and Dublin City saw an cull of playing staff which in turn created an atmosphere of instability. If you look at all successful clubs you will see a stable and solid working environment. The one issue footballers are not comfortable with is insecurity in what is a notorious insecure industry.
So Roddy now has a club that can “match his ambition” and hopefully it will see the rejuvenation of The Hoops. We in the PFAI look forward to continuing our long and healthy relationship with Roddy and Shamrock Rovers.
