Originally Posted by
EalingGreen
Aye, but isn't it the wrong nail?
That is, the admission of another club to the FD should be designed to strnegthen the Senior set-up, not the Youth set-up elsewhere (welcome though the latter side-effect may be)?
And going beyond that, there is something I really don't get about Kerry FC, though I'm very happy to be corrected.
I assume the team will be made up of late teenaged/early 20's players who have outgrown the U-19's category, plus maybe a few older Kerry players playing for other sides who might be persuaded to come back to the County. And for the beginning, at least, these will be amateurs.
In the end, such a team will either be up to standard, playing-wise, or they won't. If it's the latter, then the experiment will fail, which in itself will do nothing for your "nail" (recruitment to other youth leagues).
But even assuming it's the former, then how long before the other pro and semi-pro clubs come sniffing around, to lure away the best players/managers/coaches with the offer of a paying contract?
The rationale for the team is that it offers a "pathway" to players once they've outgrown the Youth league. But such players must by definition be ambitious to make the best of themselves, meaning that some at least will be open to playing at a higher standard for a bigger club, with the chance of a few Euro an added bonus.
While the bigger clubs would know that as amateurs, these players couldn't command a transfer fee, and (presumably) wouldn't be hard to pay, thereby making them very attractive as a cheap punt.
Which in turn would put pressure on Kerry FC to start paying their players, if only on a "generous expenses" basis. In which case, could the money be found before the club has become properly established (crowds, sponsors, advertisiers etc) to sustain that? Or are there wealthy benefactors in the background?
I may be way off beam here, but it seems to me that with previous failures in both introdiucing entirely new professional clubs to Senior football, or elevating (essentially) Intermediate clubs, the FAI is scratching around for a new way to solve an immediate problem (i.e. need for a 10th FD team), in the guise of addressing another problem (i.e. constructing a pyramid).
