Imagine you are Bohs, Bray, Shelbourne, Drogheda, Wexford or any other of the irish teams fighting every year more for survival than anything else, which is the case of everyone but maybe 4 teams in the top of the table. Imagine we finally got a single tier and, at least in the case of the 4 first teams, you had no relegation to fear.
In that scenario, you would still need to cut costs wherever you can. Since competing with both Rovers, Dundalk and St Pats for the european spots is not realistic, you could mount the cheapest squad possible, maybe with 25 amateurs, as there is no change if you finish 5th or 18th.
Can anyone seriously imagine any improvement in attendances, income, quality of football, in that scenario? And this before even a ball was kicked, nevermind, say, after the 10th round where the top 4-5 would be already decided. It's said that Finn Harps, Cobh and Wexford would benefit of an one-off game against with Shamrock Rovers with an attendance of thousands, but how many would really turn up to watch a match that would be basically a friendly? How many would come back after their home team of amateurs was mauled by one of the 4 semi-professional teams left in the country? How long before even these 4 teams deteriorate in a league with no competition and descend further from the level of nowadays where the irish champions couldn't beat a team from damn Lithuania, a poor country with the population of Dublin where everybody watches basketball or ice hockey and no one gives a damn about football?
We hear a lot that there is no solution, but how come even the country mentioned above can maintain a healthy pyramid without a club folding every 10 minutes? To me, and after two years there with a big interest in the irish football, both sides of the border, and watching 7 matches from different clubs every month, I can say that no other league in the world is abandoned by the national federation to the extent this one is. If you look into World Cup squads, only impoverished countries from black Africa reach the point of sending 23 players that don't play in the local championship of which a big number not even played professional football there. Ireland had the unique situation in the First World (and in the whole world comparable only to the french colonies like Algeria and Morocco) of that the diaspora is so huge that they didn't even to worry about mounting a strong national league to have a decent national team. In that case, the federation in its laziness overlooked the league as much as they could.
Solutions? Well, let's look at similar cases, albeit Ireland is in kind of an extreme position. The excuse of football not being the most popular sport by a mile as it is everywhere else, for me, is not enough. Football here in Sweden, where I live now, is surely behind Ice Hockey, while Handball, Floorball and Bandy (the later two weird things that only exist here). Clubs complain that costs are too high, why are they? It can't be the wages, irish players are already almost paid in peanuts. The only area I can think where costs can be reduced is travelling, as Ireland is sparsely populated and longer travels are needed than in other places with similar population.
What would I do if I was the president of FAI? First halving my wage and all the other useless bureaucrats. Second would be actively promoting the league with the national team matches, giving a free ticket to a LoI match with every Ireland ticket, more advertising, one Bohs X Rovers per year in Aviva, trying everything they didn't bother with for a long time. Actively seeking new teams, rather than the lazy "expressions of interest", actively going after FC Carlow, Tralee, Monaghan, Home Farm, and asking why they don't want to join the league and how this could change. I don't know what the requirements are, but if they are barring clubs from joining they are certainly too high. If for some reason a club can only afford to play in a stadium with 50 seats, but can pay their bills and comply with the safety requirements let them do it. Once we get at least 10 teams in the First Division, a split in "conferences" could be done, like the american sports, where teams would play more often the opponents nearby with playoffs to even out differences between the groups, and the dreaded trip from Ballyboffey to Cobh would only happen once a year. And finally, trying as hard as possible to get an all-Ireland league, the only definitive solution to me. Actually would kill two birds with one stone, as their state doesn't seem to be exactly the best nowadays.
I don't mean to sound preachy and I accept criticism on whatever I said, but since everyone is giving their two cents, here is my suggestions.
