Living on past glories is dangerous. At you sure your not a Shamrock Rovers supporter?Quote:
Originally Posted by royalblue
;)
Printable View
Living on past glories is dangerous. At you sure your not a Shamrock Rovers supporter?Quote:
Originally Posted by royalblue
;)
And you are not living on the past? anything other than today is past mate. Mate the heritage of Shels and Cork is just wafer thin. :)
Lets face it cork and shels and others have had a few good years, try doing it for decades!!!
anything other than today is past mateQuote:
Originally Posted by royalblue
Try doing it now!
Lets see something from Linfield now, don't mind giving us the history lesson.
History belongs in books!
Not hard considering the furthest ye have to travel is about 80 miles FFS :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by royalblue
Yeah .... 80 miles, sure thats only an hour .... we travel more than three hours nearly every second weekend.Quote:
Originally Posted by dancinpants
Remember .... its a totally different kettle of fish playing with the big boys !!
History is a thing of the past!!:p
RB please come back here in April and lets see how your attitude is then!!:rolleyes:
Ever heard of a Belfast man by the name of 'George Best' ? Played for Cork Hibernians...Quote:
Originally Posted by royalblue
Ever heard of an Englishman by the name of 'Dixie Dean' ? Played for Sligo Rovers....
Ever heard of a Yorkshire man by the name of 'Alan Sunderland' ? Played for Derry City....
Or a Cork man by the name of Roy Keane ? Played for Cobh Ramblers...
Or a Dubliner by the name of Paul McGrath ? Played for St Patrick's Athletic..
I could go on. Linfield isn't alone in having had famous players on its books in the distant past you know....
About that - whats the second occasion? I have details of your 1966-67 run but not the other. Please post details.Quote:
Originally Posted by royalblue
The one I have here, a team just needed to get past two rounds to reach the quarter final. Your opponents? Well there weren't any "greats" by any stretch of the imagination.
Aris Bonnevoie (Luxembourg)
Valerengans IF (Norway)
CSKA CZ (Bulgaria).
But maybe ye played the "great" teams on the other trip to the quarter finals.
European cup winner Tony Dunne for Shelbourne too :)Quote:
Originally Posted by dcfcsteve
For clubs in both our leagues the champions league is much harder to do well in nowadays,only 2 rounds and you were through to the quarter finals at the time ye qualified sure!
Nowadays you have to go through 3 qualifying rounds before you get through to the bloody thing,in total for a small club to win it now they would have to play 19 games!!Thats more than half the games in a full season!!
Apart from a couple of decades between the two World Wars when Celtic basically p1ssed all over youse. And I don't mean the Glasgow lot! ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by royalblue
The only really valid way to settle this whole debate would be if they revived the inter-league matches that they used to have years ago - in fact, an eL Select v IL Select, played over home and away legs, would probably be a great draw. FAI, IFA and Setanta, please take note.
I don't subscribe to RB's view. I believe there is more strength in depth in the EL. I cant see to many up here arguing that fact. What I would say though is there is not a great deal of difference between your top 3 and our top 3. We are on a fairly big downward spiral up here, have been for over a decade due to under investment and lack of media coverage but we still held our own in last years Setanta.
My (albeit poorly informed) opinion would be that the EL has been on the up over the last decade and for me that makes our achievement last year all the sweeter, I was expecting to get turned over in the Final big style.
Regardless of which league is stronger at the minute, things change. This is a graph of the European Club rankings or our respective countries and its fairly even with highs & lows for both countries.
http://kassiesa.com/uefagraphs/crank...960&year2=2005
Didn't Ronnie Whelan turn out for Home Farm?Quote:
Originally Posted by Slash/ED
Ah yes - that was in the era when we (Vålerenga) were still very much an amateur club.Quote:
Originally Posted by dancinpants
Heck we even lost to Athlone Town a few years later :D
jesus roylablue get a life and stop looking at this through your foggy glasses.
Yes linfield are prob the form side in ireland atm but the standard up the north is terrible where 6 nil wins are common ffs. Its a long ball game up north while down south teams actually like to pass the ball.Now tell me who has the more ability.
Cork and shelbourne have progressed further in europe in the last 3 years than any club up north in the last ten years.
Oh and did i mention kevin doyle who went for a paltry 100 k and now hes worth at least 10 times that and his stock is rising playing for reading who will get promoted to the premiership this season.
I have read all your posts and all you bleet on about is technical ability, what a load of crap, wes houlahan has more ability in his right foot than any player you mention. If linfield are so great why dont they go fulltime. I see that the last great hope up north andy smith is still languishing in the preston reserves. He used to score buckets full for glentoran like peter thompson.
Is this power trip coming from when the north beat a poor england side then. I think so. If you want to see abilty come down to Utd park, the brandywell, tolka park and finally down south in cork, the current EL champions. Linfield may be a decent side but i know who i would be backing if they played cork or even shelbourne.
Once the setanta cup is played you will find out who is the better team.
Linfield is IMO the only club here in the North that would be a top club in the EL as well.
The difference in level is not that big, on the contrary, but there is still a difference. I don't think Glens and Portadown would be competing in the top of the EL. If there'd be an all-Ireland league I think Linfield would be the only northern team having a decent chance to win the league (with Shels, Derry, Cork as competitors)
Same for the Setanta Cup: the cup will be won either by one of the EL sides or Linfield. Linfield are the one IL team that have a fair chance.
But the level difference may be there, it's not huge. I have seen some pretty good games here in the North as well, it's not all bad what you see here ;)
The one thing by the way in which Northern Ireland overpowers the south, is the standard of the stadiums. And then I'm not just refering to Windsor and The Oval.
All the other grounds are terrible & certain no better than top 5-6 eL grounds. I;ve only been to Portadown & that was shocking as floodlights didn't light the middle of the pitch. :eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerrit
Can't believe a Shels fan didn't take you up on this.Quote:
Originally Posted by royalblue
Shels won the IFA cup in 1906, 1920 & 1921 and have the LOI over 10 times since 1925/26. Not a bad hertiage at all by any yardstick.
Also while Cork City are just over 20 years old Cork clubs first won the FAI cup in 1926 and the league 1940/41.
Just because you happen to follow a successful club means you can label all other clubs as having little or no heritage.
As for my statements on grounds: Portadown and Cliftonville for example have no top-of-the-bill ground but also not bad, definitely better than for example Drogheda, UCD (although Belfield has other charms) and whatever it is in Tallaght that's supposed to be a stadium :D
Glenavon is new in the IL (okay, played IL before for a long time as well) and has a very charming ground.
And yes, Windsor Park is the best ground of both EL and IL put together.
But as I said, the grounds are the one thing in which IMO the North is better. Football level-wise it's definitely the EL that's on higher standard.
I agree Gerrit, the stadia down south could do with some serious work and investment. The north have got some good grounds and its not all great news down south. But the league down south is far better TBF. All we needs is more people at the games
Stadia tend to be slightly more crowded here in the North, but that's probably because GAA is less present. Sectarianism chased people away and unfortunately the peace process did not bring many of them back to the stadia...
In general I find grounds here slightly better, but enough nice grounds in the EL as well (I think of Cork and Shels mainly, but also Longford and Bohs could have nice arena's -- to the latter two I have one word: ROOF :D)
The level of play: not too much difference, though it is definitely better in the South. Linfield would be the only team up here that would compete for the champions trophy in an all-Ireland league, Glens and Portadown at this moment would not be strong enough.
Do the Northern clubs get investments from the British Governments for the improvements of their stadia??
Please explain:confused: :confused: :confused:Quote:
Originally posted by Gerrit
UCD (although Belfield has other charms)
Well, Belfield has something unreal. It;s away from the populated world, in a hidden corner of a desolate campus without any regular housing or pubs nearby, and from the stand all you see in the background is a few student homes and auditoriums. It's a unique decor, and it's cosy. It's a bizarre ground, but in some way I like it. And UCD are my fav EL team bar Shels, UCD fans are great chaps.
Now back on-topic :D
AFAIK some teams may get certain funds from the UK or Northern Irish government. Not too sure which ones do. Windsor may be expanded on costs of partly IFA and government, and Linfield of course would benefit from it as well.
There is grants availiable but these are being held back, £8 million was meant to be invested into stadia in the north but investigations started into clubs finances which held it up.
Not sure if this is the case, any IL or football whores wanna correct me :)
[QUOTE=Gerrit]Stadia tend to be slightly more crowded here in the North, but that's probably because GAA is less present.
Ouite a strange statement gaa is huge in the north.Hence armagh and tyrone winning all Irelands recently.More people still watch gaa in the north than regulerly watch IL soccer.I am refering to county matched that pull in huge crowds.
Well, yes, but that's only the Nationalist part of the country. I still have not seen any loyalist pub broadcasting GAA games... Problem is that many soccer fans here prefer Rangers, Celtic or England of course.
But on-topic: Linfield is the best side in both parts of the isle. Period. Weaker opponents yes, but even then it's amazing to score an average of 4-5 goals per game and to dominate with such an ease. They're too good for the IL and would probably have more progression possibilities in the EL (but no Linfield fan will want that ;)). Still, they are my bet for winning the Setanta again, and seeing what I see now (and I can compare with EL) it'd be well deserved.