League to revert back to 12 teams in 2005

I think its a good idea.

if the FAI are trying to get first div teams to improve their grounds to get a licences its not much encouragement when their chances of actually playing in the Premier are practically nil.

Take Kilkenny, who have concentrated on their grounds development for a few years. With a 10 team Premier they have no hope of getting in.

At least with a 12 team Premier they could aim to start putting together a squad that could win promotion in a year or two.

to liven up the first div they should look for applications for 2 new teams, licences permitting of course.

3 games is crap. we will always have an advantage/disadvantage arguement to the fixtures

how will licencing affect this?

personally i think it's a poor stop while heading in the right direction. playing teams three times is daft, the points against it have been made already, but it's obviously unfair.

Everyone seems to think that next year,the league will be mostly Dublin Teams.I amnt so sure. I fancy Dublin City to be relegated, while Harps will definitely go up. Kildare County are also putting together a good squad and should have realistic aims of going up,with either Bray or UCD joining them.That would be a Dublin team going down with 2 from the country goin up! We'll soon see i suppose:cool:

The first could get turned on its head with three cert places to go up. It could be a right pitch battle towards the end.

A unbelievably stupid & short sighted decision by the clubs - can't blame the FAI as the clubs vote on this!!!

- eL clubs couldn't even stay with their 2-3 year experiment i.e. tried for 1 season & ditched as usual.
- making a decision on league size cos too many from 1 region is stupid. If non-pale teams good enough they will be promoted.
- 3 rounds of fixtures again :( :(
- If we barely get 1 team a Premier licence this year we now have to licence 11 as opposed to 9 with Premier licence next year!
- There is not enough quality for 12 teams! Every year that I can remember whe 12 teams was a team (e.g. Monaghan, Kilkenny, Cobh etc...) who was odds on for rlegation before mid-season!
- The league can barely support 22 teams so any talk of an extra couple of clubs is idiotic!

IMO the 10 team league while a bit repetitive really seemed to up the standard of traditional yoyo (no offence) clubs such as Drogs & Waterford such that they not considered automatic relegation battlers anymore. I think the 10 team Premier ensured that a better qualkity team emerged from the 1st division & therefore good chance at staying in the Premier that year. As an onlooker the 1st division seemed to be much more competitive in recent years too...?

Agree with all of that ... when we went to ten team league it was greed that 3 year trial was on the cards. It is knida of a joke that it didn't happen !!

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Originally posted by A face
Agree with all of that ... when we went to ten team league it was greed that 3 year trial was on the cards. It is knida of a joke that it didn't happen !!

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Next season is the third season isn't it?!

Whats is really stupid is that it was supposed to be a three season experiment but in my opinion they have only given it one years grace. The first season was a transition year because of the changeover to summer football. They decided then at the end of the second season (and the first proper length season) to change back before the experiment is finished.

Surely with an experiment you dont annouce the results until the experiment is finished?


They shouldnt have decided to change back until the end of this season!

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Originally posted by eoinh

They shouldnt have decided to change back until the end of this season!

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You can't do that. Teams have to know how many promotion / relegation places there are before the league starts. If that was decided after the league finished each team would only vote for a system that benefited their own league position. e.g. the top three teams in division one would vote for automatic promotion for themselves, the next few would vote for playoffs.

my main problem with the 12 team league is that teams play each other 3 teams. its stupid. Its unfair and it looks totally ridiculous

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Originally posted by Éanna
my main problem with the 12 team league is that teams play each other 3 teams. its stupid. Its unfair and it looks totally ridiculous

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The only way around that would be to split the Premier division after 22 games into & then have another 10 games in each section to even out the matches. I#m no famn of the split league crap either though.

Whether you agree with 10 or 12 team Premier i think the fact they eL couldn't stick with their original trial period decision for the time they specified is the biggest criticism.

There is so much that needs to be fixed in the eL besides the size of the division - does anyone believe people make their decision to go to a game on the size of the division :(

like Eanna say its the difference between home and away games that you can play against individual teams thats silly.

Just wanted to resurrect this thread.

Are peoples opinions the same now as what they were in march?

I still think that a 12 team league with 3 series of games is utterly retarded. It should either be left at a 10 team, or expanded to a 16 team league where there are 2 series. The first Division can be topped up by the likes of Kerry District/Mayo District/Mullingar/Thurles Town.

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Originally Posted by GWA

I still think that a 12 team league with 3 series of games is utterly retarded. It should either be left at a 10 team, or expanded to a 16 team league where there are 2 series. The first Division can be topped up by the likes of Kerry District/Mayo District/Mullingar/Thurles Town.

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I agree. It's absolutley stupid.

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Originally Posted by GWA

Just wanted to resurrect this thread.

Are peoples opinions the same now as what they were in march?

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No, playing teams every two months is getting tiresome.

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Originally Posted by GWA

Just wanted to resurrect this thread.

Are peoples opinions the same now as what they were in march?

I still think that a 12 team league with 3 series of games is utterly retarded. It should either be left at a 10 team, or expanded to a 16 team league where there are 2 series. The first Division can be topped up by the likes of Kerry District/Mayo District/Mullingar/Thurles Town.

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I agree totally as well!

As regards to the three games a season with two home, one away contraversy you only need to look at UCD's fixture list this season to see how unkind this can be to you. If you look at the other 5 teams in the top half of the table with us Finn Harps, Bray, Kildare, Galway and Dundalk apart from Galway we play the other four teams twice away and once at home. It puts us at a fair disadvantage I'm afraid and if something similar happened to us in the Premier next year (provided we don't mess up this year) it could be detrimental to us.

i would be of the impression that there are currently too many senior clubs at 22 - economically that number are not really viable...

we would be better off with a 16 team single division ... fewer clubs should ultimately raise standards. also the fixtures quandry mentionned above re 3 rounds of 11 games would not be an issue.

the resources that are possible for eircom league football would be distributed across a smaller number of clubs, and ultimately this is what is required to achieve consistently good performances in europe each year.

the fai and the clubs should focus on creating a higher quality product .... perhaps when they make a success of this they could later look at increasing numbers perhaps to 18 ...

i would retain a play-off structure though rather than re-election - i.e. playoffs between the winners of the muster, leinster, ulster and connacht senior leagues, along with the bottom placed club - although the minimum A licence requirements would be necessary to enter the playoffs.

The problem with one league is that halfway through the season half or more of the clubs end up with absolutley nothing to play for so interest and crowds dropped.

As you said, a play off system would need to be introduced, some kind of relegation system anyway, otherwise it just would not work. If there was some kind of relegation involved it could work.