Have any of you got a vision for the League of Ireland?

[pineapple stu]

fergalr, that's all well and good, but you clearly won't survive until you disband and reform as a franchise run by the FAI with a generic name like Dublin City or something. Anything you currently see is merely the result of an over-active imagination. Or an improbability drive or something.

[Mad Moose]

Its pretty much been said already but I would reiterate my own vision of how the league needs to move on. Some of it is straightforward, some of it not. Some of it should be straightforward and never will be.

From my early days my first recollection of the League of Ireland was a very tiny saturday slot on RTE 2 when they showed action from the league. In fact the ageless Mark Rutherford is my first memory back in 1988 or so. I think Rutherfords time with St Pats should tie up with that year. Hopefully. I was 8 or 9 at the time. In any case where I came from in Mayo in growing up I didn't have exposure to the league and we didn't get to go places growing up so my only football growing up was cross channel football. It wasn't until I moved to Dublin in 97 that I went to games as I just loved the game.

I guess any exposure to the game was TV driven and also things like magazines and sticker albums. I would read and study them for hours. So in a sense in trying to raise the profile of the game we need to start at the youngest age possible. We need to introduce kids to the game here and there are a number of means possible on this. Billboards and stuff wouldn't have the impact. Players going to schools on the other hand would. Kids would see these guys as heros, actual real life players they can associate with. In order to get kids interested thats the starting point. The league and its players need to be profiled, put out there as been part of the community. If you organise regular, say annual, school visits where the kids meet the players, maybe do some coaching or show a video I think it would make an impact. Again this is negated heavily by a league predominately returning part time but I guess this should be as much an FAI driven approach as it is individual clubs driven. The FAI could fund this project.

On the other hand magazines and sticker albums are a great means to get kids interested and its always worked across the water. I was chatting to a mate at football the last night here who coming from Longford was exposed only to cross channel football and he could give you every stat on football at the time based on the coverage. Its a tired argument saying we need such coverage of the league here.We all know it and the fact is it won't happen because our national broadcaster doesn't care enough about the game. The above mentioned ideas are the means to raise the league but kids see football on TV and will always be swayed by the heroic profiling of football outside this country. Without such profiling and coverage of our league we are unlikely to see any great progress.

The problem in the league currently is that most clubs are firefighting. Needing short term solutions to meet short term needs and that inhibits any ability to be progressive and to build for the long term. I've seen it at Finn Harps over the years. No more so than this season in actual fact. The club has almost run out of public in Donegal to hand the begging bowl to and that pool of available support is diminishing so rapidly at the moment it is frightening. Whether the club has a future very much remains to be seen. Despite massive strides and the hard work of some people at the club I'm not sure the club has ever been in a worse position despite visions and plans down the years. Reaching out to the public and giving something back is pipe dream stuff at Harps these days. In the shortest possible terms the emerging young talent need to see League of Ireland football as something to aspire to achieving and that comes down to encouragement and support in doing so. Finn Harps for example now boast a side made up entirely of local talent. However there is no means to hold onto the players because without funding the players cannot be contracted and developed and in moving on the club benefits from a transfer fee.

Anyhow somewhere in there you'll find my vision for the league.

[Mr A]

Any vision that will bring real progress to the League of Ireland must involve all football in the country, not just the league. Currently the situation is a mess- the different levels don't join up and you end up with mental situations like FHFC's youth players being unable to play for the seniors or reserves. The senior game has tended to exist in isolation and has traditionally been in conflict with pretty much other sector of the game. This simply has to change.

The Genisis report contained an awful lot of crap but the best suggestion was ignored- that of dual registration whereby players can stay with their local club but also represent a senior team. This may be difficult to do under FIFA guidelines but surely some accommodation could be reached.

There is also what will be one of the biggest issues in the league in coming seasons if it is not addressed. Currently if you want to sign a player from non-senior football his club can demand around €5k for his development. That's just not realistic for most clubs- but equally the LOI must respect the lower leagues a lot more and work together for the good of football.

A more joined up football landscape would see a far better chance that the best young players would represent LOI players before crossing the water, both improving the quality here and increasing revenue to the league.

[jebus]

What Stu said!

There will always be a lot of hard-core supporters who will follow their team no matter what, but the European Super League would be looking at making money from glory-hunting markets, like South-East Asia, Africa, and Ireland! Finishing mid-table isn't going to break those markets, but winning your domestic league or cup regularly is.

I'm more on about TV and sponsership money going away from the domestic leagues as the clubs that money men want to invest in leave for the Super Leagues, but I also post on English forums and loads of them have said the kids in their area now support Liverpool, United etc. rather than their own local team, some of their own kids even.

Also if you're a Rotherham fan the dream is obviously to get to the Premier League to play the likes of Arsenal, United, Liverpool and Chelsea, not to get to the Premier League for glamour ties against Wigan and Hull, so a lot of that allure will be gone. Plus when the most your club can ever achieve is to win the stripped down domestic leagues I think a lot of the motivation will be gone in supporters, who doesn't dream of better days for their club like?

[sligofan4ever]

Lets ask CelticTiger what his vision of the League of Ireland is.....

[peadar1987]

I'm more on about TV and sponsership money going away from the domestic leagues as the clubs that money men want to invest in leave for the Super Leagues, but I also post on English forums and loads of them have said the kids in their area now support Liverpool, United etc. rather than their own local team, some of their own kids even.

Also if you're a Rotherham fan the dream is obviously to get to the Premier League to play the likes of Arsenal, United, Liverpool and Chelsea, not to get to the Premier League for glamour ties against Wigan and Hull, so a lot of that allure will be gone. Plus when the most your club can ever achieve is to win the stripped down domestic leagues I think a lot of the motivation will be gone in supporters, who doesn't dream of better days for their club like?

I'm a Stoke City fan, as my dad's from Stoke, and I've been going over to the city, and watching the football team for years.

There have always been those in England who've followed the bigger clubs, especially when they're young, and don't know any different. I don't think that's changed too much. Most people in Stoke support either Stoke City, or Port Vale, and the glory hunters are just a minority.

I will always be a Stoke supporter, regardless of whether we're playing Manchester United or Cambridge United. The season I really started to take an interest in Stoke, they finished 11th in the second tier, just below Grimsby Town.

The attitude in England, by and large, has been that you support your local team, and not just pick a glamour team. "Glory hunters" are viewed with complete contempt. I can't see the creation of a European Super League changing that.

[Straightstory]

I was chatting to a mate at football the last night here who coming from Longford was exposed only to cross channel football

Eh.... ??

[Mad Moose]

Eh.... ??

Not really hard to understand. A guy whom I play football with here (see my location) who originally comes from Longford was telling me of his football experience growing up.It was based on cross channel soccer and the exposure cross channel football got in Ireland, i.e newspapers, TV, sticker albums etc etc. Its not that hard to work out what I meant really.

[irishultra]

From Dunphy a few years back:

Friday night in Dublin and the country’s top soccer league is in action. From Tolka Park to Dalymount, the ‘Stadium of Light’ in Inchicore to Bray, up to seven League of Ireland matches could be played in a catchment area of well over a million people. Total attendance for the night? About 10,000. It is hard to believe that 40 years ago, the Tolkas and the Dalyers were packed to the rafters with 20,000 people at each match. The League of Ireland meant something to people then; it was something to look forward to each week, and the likes of Paddy Coad, Paddy Ambrose and Liam Tuohy were all local legends, revered as the Wayne Rooneys and Steven Gerrards are today. But society and tastes changed, and the League was never able to adjust. In contrast to the GAA, which is always been planning 20 years ahead, League of Ireland clubs were always wondering where next week’s wages would come from.
So why is it that football, the most popular sport in the world, is in terminal decline on this island? Eamon Dunphy, once a childhood fan and now one of the League’s staunchest critics, is typically forthright. “It is the kind of people that are in the League of Ireland. A breed of person that is small town, county councillor, freebie, who contributes nothing and takes as much as they can. They have always held the power in Irish soccer and still do to this day. They don’t like big ideas and they don’t like independent-minded people around because they upset the apple cart and will show up the other clubs… Nothing good is ever allowed to develop here because they won’t allow anyone to do it. They want what is best for the lowest common denominator. And that will always be the case.”
Not that long ago – in 1977 – Eamon Dunphy and John Giles had a plan to lift Irish soccer out of the doldrums and to compete with anything that England and Europe had to offer. Giles had returned to Dublin after a hugely successful career in England with Leeds United and set about making Shamrock Rovers a force again, with Dunphy as one of his coaches.
A full-time set-up with first-class facilities was to be the start of things; and as Rovers improved so too, it was hoped, would the other clubs; a rising tide would lift all boats and soon the League would be keeping its best players and competing at the highest level in Europe.
But after three years, Shamrock Rovers had only won one FAI Cup and were unable to win the League to qualify for the European Cup. Dunphy left and Giles soon followed.
“They wanted to keep it down at their level,” says Dunphy. “They didn’t want us to rise because they knew that they couldn’t rise and they didn’t want a professional club ‘dominating the League’ as they put it. These were small-minded people with their own parochial interests. It took me six months to realise that this was happening. I had given up as a player then and I made the decision to come home. I had massive opportunities in England – huge opportunities – Fleet Street and all sorts of things, but I committed to the League of Ireland because I really thought I could change it and modernise it, blah, blah, blah… Boy was that a mistake!”
“I even gave my FAI Cup winners medal away after we won the FAI Cup in our first season. I gave it to the guy that got me my NUJ card and I didn’t think nothing of it. I have never been back to a League of Ireland ground since.”

http://www.thedubliner.ie/the_dublin.../own_goal.html

We need someone with a VISION.

[Bluebeard]

From Dunphy a few years back:



http://www.thedubliner.ie/the_dublin.../own_goal.html

We need someone with a VISION.

Ah, the petty parochials, so limited in thier field of vision that they denied Giles and Dunphy the opportunity of winning everything by beating them at football. How small minded of them, did they not understand that the only way that the league could progress is if someone who had offers on Fleet St. was let win without difficulty.

[peadar1987]

Ah, the petty parochials, so limited in thier field of vision that they denied Giles and Dunphy the opportunity of winning everything by beating them at football. How small minded of them, did they not understand that the only way that the league could progress is if someone who had offers on Fleet St. was let win without difficulty.

I particularly like the way Dunphy refers to "they", without further elaborating on it. Who were "they"?

The board at Shams? Unlikely, seeing as they would have the most to gain by Shams being a European force

The other clubs? How would they be able to affect Giles and Dunphys' ability to manage a club

The league? Maybe if the league were being obstructive of the club, it could have affected things, but you can't just say something like that without giving specific examples and evidence.

I think Dunphy is just moaning again, and can't take the fact that Shams' failure to dominate the league was down to the inadequacies of the management team.

[wedwood]

Well...............

1. My first idea is to stop this 4 match round robbin nonsense. Copy the SPL. Teams play each other too much. I think we should be looking at a League where teams play each other twice.


How can we ensure that in the future when asked kids will say they support Bohemians, Finn Harps, Shamrock Rovers, Pat's rather than Liverpool, Celtic or Manchester United.

When I was a kid, the only football on TV was Match of the Day on BBC and the Big Match on UTV. As a result, generations of us grew up only knowing English football. I picked Liverpool, as it had the most Irish players in the English league at the time (late 1970's) and followed them for nearly 30 years.

Since Robbie Keane left Anfield, there really is no reason to follow Liverpool anymore and I've got rid of Sky in favour of a season ticket to Rovers, which is the best €200 I've spent in a long time.

I'd love to see something similar happen to the LOI, as happened to Irish Rugby, where large crowds are now attending domestic games in both the Celtic League and Heineken Cup.

The increasing TV coverage on RTE and Setanta hopefully will convert more fans to our league.

If we can get an Irish league team into the group stages of one of the European competitions then the League could really take off here.

[irishultra]

Hi welcome to the site

20 more thousand of you and we could get somewhere

[Bluebeard]

Never thought I'd see Bohs fan crying out for there to be more Rovers fans!

Welcome to foot.ie Wedwood

[Enruoblehs]

If we can get an Irish league team into the group stages of one of the European competitions then the League could really take off here.

You surely mean League of Ireland

[ped_ped]

You surely mean League of Ireland

Small 'l' in league, so no. He means a league team from Ireland

[thischarmingman]

When I was a kid, the only football on TV was Match of the Day on BBC and the Big Match on UTV. As a result, generations of us grew up only knowing English football. I picked Liverpool, as it had the most Irish players in the English league at the time (late 1970's) and followed them for nearly 30 years.

Since Robbie Keane left Anfield, there really is no reason to follow Liverpool anymore and I've got rid of Sky in favour of a season ticket to Rovers, which is the best €200 I've spent in a long time.

[rerun]

This.

A little leeway should be allowed for, of course (e.g. you can stray to just under 70% at times, as long as it's not for extended periods and as long as you end the season under 65%), but Bohemians should be penalised if the only way they stay under 65% is by winning the title. Such gambling only puts the club in peril. I'd rather support a mid-table Premier Division club than Title-Contenders that may not be around next season.

Should have to stay under 1/12th of 65% of previous years revenue p/m (and are audited monthly as such), meaning clubs who win the league would not be able to try to dominate just because they won, you'd have to win for a second year in a row to be able to use the profits from winning the league to have a major impact.

People will whine that it effects a clubs performance in Europe. Maybe so, but it would stop clubs gambling on what their income WILL be based on how they get on.

[wedwood]

Never thought I'd see Bohs fan crying out for there to be more Rovers fans!

Welcome to foot.ie Wedwood

I reckon we're all on the one side when it comes to getting more punters into our respective clubs.

The build up to the Rovers/ Bohs game in a couple of weeks is electric, with fans of both clubs arguing that there isn't enough tickets to go around, which is great for the game here.

I think Setanta are showing it live, so the public are going to see something special, regardless of the result, thanks to the hype thats building.

[sheao]

I reckon we're all on the one side when it comes to getting more punters into our respective clubs.

The build up to the Rovers/ Bohs game in a couple of weeks is electric, with fans of both clubs arguing that there isn't enough tickets to go around, which is great for the game here.

I think Setanta are showing it live, so the public are going to see something special, regardless of the result, thanks to the hype thats building.

The fact that the game between Rovers and Bohs could and probably will decide the destination of the title this year will help in this being an all but certain sell out .