Death by squabbling spells end of gross domestic product

SO that's it. All over. Kaput. The great tragi-comedy of Irish sport, the National League, is finished, not just for this season, but forever.


Fittingly, after decades of high farce, low standards, petty squabbling and unpretty soccer, the National League reached a suitably chaotic and unsatisfactory conclusion on Friday when Shelbourne were controversially awarded the title on a technicality.


The decision to dock St Patrick's Athletic an astonishing 15 points for being a bit slipshod with their paperwork means that Shelbourne will collect the trophy after their final game against Bohemians at Dalymount next Sunday.


In so doing, they will have the dubious honour of being the last club ever to be entitled to call themselves National League champions.


Let me explain. Once the current season ends next Sunday, the National League will cease to exist.


No, it's not going to be completely scrapped in the fall-out of the controversy over St Pat's failure to properly register Paul Marney and Ugandan international Charles Mbabazi Livingstone.


Even if the officials do go ahead with their threat to sift through the registration forms of all 323 players who have played in the Premier Division this year and deduct points from every team, the whole thing is unlikely to implode.


And no, the end of the National League has nothing to do with the move to summer soccer this year. You might never hear or read much about it again as it will be competing with the GAA championships and major international sporting events for publicity, but that doesn't automatically mean it won't be there. If a leaf falls in the forest and nobody sees it, did it really fall and all of that ...


No, the reason why no club will ever be able to proclaim themselves as National League champions again is because it will no longer bare any semblance to a national competition.


The decision taken before the start of this season to cut the Premier Division from 12 to ten teams has seen to that.


Whereas the current League is split half and half, with six clubs from the Dublin region and six from the rest of the country, the new slimmed down League will be little more than a Dublin District League.


From Dublin, well have Shels, Pats, Shamrock Rovers, Bohemians, UCD and Bray Wanderers. Bray, while officially in Wicklow, is now a suburb of Dublin, while the same can be said of Drogheda who are top of the First Division and will claim the automatic promotion spot, provided they beat Sligo Rovers next Sunday.


So, that's seven Dublin teams out of ten and it could have been eight had Dublin City FC, the artists formerly known as Home Farm, not fallen apart so spectacularly over the last few weeks.


Already discarded from the top flight are Monaghan and Galway, while Dundalk and Longford Town are battling it out to decide who is automatically relegated and who earns a play-off against the runners-up in Division One, probably Finn Harps.


When the dust settles, the likelihood is that the new Premier Division will comprise of seven teams from the Dublin district and just three from outside the Pale Cork, Derry and either Longford, Dundalk or Finn Harps leaving vast regions of the country without a representative.


Call it what you like, but it won't be a National League. The most frequently used phrase on RTE radio sports bulletins will be 'And tonight's big Dublin derby is ...'


Although at opposite ends of the country, games between Cork and Derry will probably also be conferred with derby status. I can hear the radio sports news already. 'And tonights big non-Dublin derby is at Turners Cross ... '


Defenders of the gross domestic product will point out that the lop-sided nature of the League is based on merit and merely reflects the fact that the Dublin clubs are better.


True, but it also highlights just how badly the FAI have failed in their duty of developing soccer in Ireland. Twenty years ago, Limerick United, Waterford, Athlone Town, Sligo Rovers and Dundalk were all powerful clubs, winning trophies and attracting large crowds, but all have fallen by the wayside to varying degrees.


The popularity of the sport has grown dramatically in Ireland over the intervening years, aided and abetted by the success of the national team, but instead of thriving the National League has floundered.


Why? Because the administrators of Irish soccer are too busy getting embroiled in petty squabbles like last weeks Livingstone one while at the same time basking in the reflected glory of a national senior team which they did little, if anything, to nurture.


Despite what they like to think, Ireland's qualification for the World Cup has nothing to do with the FAI. With the exception of the always exceptional Roy Keane, all the other players were shipped off when still just children to learn their trade in the cut-throat world of the British soccer academies.


This teenage exodus is at the root of the problems which beset Irish soccer. Instead of nurturing young talent at, the FAI has scandalously stood idly by and allowed the brightest and best be poached from under its nose by the big English clubs.


Everyone loses, except the English clubs. With no proper alternative available in Ireland, the kids have to leave school, families and friends if they are to chase their dream of soccer stardom. It is an immense sacrifice, even for the lucky few who make the grade, not to mention those many hundreds who have been cut adrift and left, scarred and disillusioned, to pick up the pieces.


Because of their failure to put in place an academy system to match what's available in England, the National League clubs are losing out on a rich vein of fresh talent and possible lucrative transfer fees.


Instead of being a feeder league for the Premiership, it is a place of refuge, a dead-end league for those who didn't make it in England. The scouts don't call because they've already got everyone they want by the time they are 15 or 16.


Irish soccer is sitting on a goldmine of talent, but instead of investing a little money and harnessing it, the clubs and the FAI are too busy fighting among themselves.


koshaughnessy@independent.ie
Kevin O'Shaughnessy

unison