Was going to post this in the thread below but as its become mostly series of petty arguments with Cork people I'll start a new one if people don't mind.
It's time people got real about what the FAI License is meant to be doing. It is being very simplistic to call licensing a fudge. What is the point of introducing a system to improve standards at all clubs, applying an impossibly high standard from square one (with no financial assistance as already mentioned) and then using it to put clubs out of football. Last season this would mainly have consisted of putting out clubs who, through lack of finance in many cases, had sub standard facilities. Licensing was not introduced to kill off clubs, so I don't know why so many people seem to have a blood lust, longing to see somebody put to the wall.
The purpose of licensing is to raise everyone to a standard, but when almost everybody is light years off the standards adopted the only option is to work with people to get there, while in no way stepping back from the necessity to achieve these standards. This is why the ground development programme thingy is now accepted on the infrastructure front. Clubs have to get off their arses and have REAL, costed and time framed plans for improvement to get to carry on in the league. The likes of Derry who are already mostly there can now see the benefits on the field as others have to invest a portion of their income in infrastructure.
As it says in the bootroom article, with this in mind for infrastructure the licensing body will now focus on clubs financial stability. Which again is spot on in my view. Irresponsible spending, financial flying by the seat of the pants, resulting in clubs with huge debts, unpaid wages or catastrophies waiting to happen if they don't get a good draw in Europe are far more threatening to the future of the LOI than dodgy stadiums.
The FAI has admitted that mistakes were made in their implementation of licensing so far, by this i take it they mean in trying to run before we could crawl. Licensing is a process, not an event, and will yet prove to be the best thing that ever happened to this league. Look forward ten years (rather than ten minutes) and hopefully we'll have all 22 current clubs still competing, all financially transparent with none having gone bankrupt, and all having improved their grounds to an acceptable standard. This would not happen without licensing or if it were misused to strangle clubs who are in developmental stages as some people seem to wish.
Licensing was never going to sort everything out in 2 years, it won't in 5 years, so lets give this process a chance and not demand bloodletting!!
As for clubs taking it seriously, I know that the FAI take it very seriously, and any club who doesn't will end up getting burned.
On a personal note Finn Harps returns to the licensing body were made before the Dec 17th deadline, I'd be surprised if any clubs were not.
