Anyone who thinks that franchises like Louth United, Shamrock Athletic, Northside United etc will be embraced and be successful knows nothing about football.Originally Posted by NeverFeltBetter
I see Limerick has no place in the future. Guess I'll just go and support Kerry then. Oh wait, no I won't.
I kid, but such things are an issue. Franchising will inevitably exclude parts of the existing fanbase.
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
Reads like a Best of the Best stupid ideas of the past decade.
Make the First Division entirely amateur. Just cos.
LoI fans' inflated sense of self-importance is what's keeping the rest away.
Central contracts, all-Ireland league, Nick Leeson.
The sooner the Indo in general dies and goes away, the better for the country to be honest.
I don't think anyone likes the idea of franchising and the enforced relegation of clubs because they dont fit certain criteria is anathema to most people. But I think Sadlier is probably right to draw attention to entrenched vested interests resisting change. It's a problem throughout the whole, eh, pyramid(!).
He does appear to be flying a kite for someone but at the same time all he is saying is that this or that could work.
I think sensible proposals to make the League more meaningful to the public, and hence commercially more successful, should be listened to and debated. If anything smacks as an opportunity for personal gain for a few spivs, then this should be a warning sign.
I think Strongbow makes some decent points above, and I understand the FAI has broached the idea of passports etc with the Dept. of Foreign Affairs in the past.
Would alienating some existing fans be a price worth paying to attract a much larger number of new fans? It's a very hypothetical question (who says anything would make domestic football much more popular?) and requires a value judgment. It's clear what side of that judgment most here would come down on. I'm probably less convinced, but it's not slam dunk either way.
Last edited by Stuttgart88; 19/08/2013 at 9:11 PM.
If you put the scenario to me, that Limerick would have to merge with some other nearby entity to create a new "franchise" club, or were forced out of the LOI to make room for a new franchise club (as would happen to some clubs under Sadlier's "proposals"), and then told me to go and support this new entity - The South West Golden Gophers or something - I wouldn't be interested. I would be openly hostile to such a suggestion and would consider my club dead and buried, not to be replaced by some artificial concoction.
It's one of the reasons I'm so dismissive of the plans to merge the three clubs in Galway. I can't see how the supporters will suddenly flock to the new entity, unless its just Galway United with the other two as insignificant feeder clubs.
As for new fans - we can't get them to come out in large numbers right now. How will a brand new thing with no history, culture or connection to the area do it?
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
Are you a University of Minnesota guy too by chance?
The ball is round and has many surprises.
Strongbow strikes the right note about the confused nature when viewing Ireland from within Ireland - "People in Ireland have absolutely no interest in watching sport that is not hyped to the hilt." and then in the next paragraph state "Westmeath GAA can attract far bigger crowds than both midland LOI clubs combined, and that would be for lousy GAA league fixtures." Does that make sense? Yes and Yes, it does.
Richie may like to trawl forums and pick up ideas, but unfortunately, like the Indo in general, the agenda behind the article misses the point through being poorly researched and poorly thought out.
1. Franchising - tried and failed (partially blame the LOI fraternity, FAI, Schoolboy/Junior clubs, economics)
2. A rejigged league means nothing without reform from top to bottom and vice versa.
Apart from those two, the most glaring error, which renders everything he wrote purely Indospeak, is the failure to address the schoolboy question. Why centralise contracts for LOI players and not schoolboys? It can be done, it's legal, but it means Richie's "patrons" won't be getting bunts from UK clubs. So the article is pointless.
Why does GAA have a hold and LOI not? Why does a Junior club in Meath get 500 people out on Tuesday evening when Wexford get less than 200? Stop with the crud about LOI fans sneering (yes it's true, but it goes both ways), about poor facilities, about lack of quality, about media. Ask why when so many people (kids to vets like me) play football each weekend yet LOI clubs couldn't bate them in the gate? It's not rocket science, but it takes more than talking with fellow failed club md's and with make up friends who didn't let you join in their party games.
I think Spud hits the right note about "patrons getting bunts". I'm all for intelligent ideas about joining up Irish football and improving the domestic elite set-up but anything that plays into the pockets of individual interests has to be met with the deepest suspicion.
The thing that eats me though is that if you were to start from scratch (an advantage MLS & Irish rugby union effectively had) you almost certainly wouldn't configure Irish football the way it currently is. What's the old Irish joke? How do I get to X? I don't know but I wouldn't start from here. At the very least this bring change onto the agenda.
It's not just a problem Irish football is grappling with: English football probably has too many professional clubs, many European countries' leagues are struggling in the globalised TV mega money era, and so on. The traditional way of doing things is under pressure from the modern economic climate (big wages for mediocre talent etc.).
It's interesting that the IRFU faces the risk (big or small I don't know) of England and France creating a structure that isolates or diminishes the Celtic franchises. The current construct may or may not hold. Any radically new football structure could easily unwind if not successful, maybe causing more harm than the good they were intended to introduce.
It strikes me that the conflict between the leading schoolboy clubs and the elite senior clubs is probably what needs to be addressed first and foremost. The FAI needs to join up the game and if Eminence Grice thinks it's funny that a "pyramid" analogy is used, I can live with that!
You misunderstand, Stutts: I was pointing out that Sadlier's solution didn't include what a lot of us here think is a sensible approach - a pyramid!!!
I'm all for an integrated system rather than the disfunctional parallel system we have. The money-grubbing hocking of young lads to England by some non-league clubs is nothing more than being the middleman in indentured servitude. Could youngsters be better looked after here, playing with a league club till they're 21, going to college, maturing? I'd like to think so.
Hello, hello? What's going on? What's all this shouting, we'll have no trouble here!
- E Tattsyrup.
A pyramid just won't work without more investment than is possible. How could Pike Rovers compete financially in the First Division if they got that far?
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
The first division would have to change. Probably have it regionalised, and relax stadium criteria. If a club can't prove it can handle the division above financially, they don't get promoted. Simple as!
Pike probably have as much money as most of the teams in the division currently.
If they're as big a club as people claim, then they should be ambitious enough to want to make the step up.
The bigger junior and intermediate clubs should really be looking at applying. The FAI should also be offering places to the bigger clubs, relaxing certain criteria for a few years, relaxing fees, stadium criteria, amongst other things.
The more clubs the better. Ideally, both divisions would have 12 or 14 teams, but its not going to happen.
If they couldn't compete they'd be relegated and, in an ideal world, find their level over time.
Why though? Why should Pike's ambition (or that of any other junior club) be determined by fans of senior clubs desperate for more peers? People have castigated Mervue and Salthill for having the gall to try and eat at the top table as it is. Pike, though a great junior club and helpful to Limerick when they were at their lowest, aren't bringing anything to the table that the Galway pair aren't.
You can't force clubs to make the step up and from their point of view there's little incentive to. I would LOVE to see more clubs in the LoI and agree with much of what you've said regarding criteria, fees and the likes but as it stands it is not fair in any way to blame any club for wanting nothing to do with the whole sordid mess.
The ball is round and has many surprises.
Sorry, I presumed it was a sarcastic reference to consultant-speak or jargon such as pyramids!
The argument for including the more successful Junior clubs at the elite end of Irish senior football is a short term strategy designed to make up the numbers in my book.
Sure it looks good to have some new names and a bigger geographical spread, but whether we like it or not we need to start afresh in some areas.
How many people will watch Pike Rovers, or Tullamore Town, Mullingar Athletic, Tralee Dynamos in reality?
Will people from Killarney or Dingle travel to watch Tralee play? Bearing in mind they are probably considered to be rivals in the locality.
Kildare County is used as an example of how franchising is done wrong. If the entire football set up was overhauled in Ireland where every Junior club in the surrounding area had fully qualified coaches and all of these junior/underage teams were affiliated with Kildare County and acted as their main feeder then you may see far bigger crowds. Its akin to GAA where the best club players represent the county. Of course, this will be to the ultimate distaste of some.
Everyone is pulling in different directions in Irish football. Old traditions (dare I say it, its traditions of a minority going by the attendance figures post 1970s) die hard.
I completely agree with a previous poster that a handle needs to be taken on schoolboy clubs who are shipping kids to England purely to earn €€€€ and raise their own profile.
Until the LOI starts taking measures to ensure we start seeing the best this country has to offer under the age of 23 in terms of players, then we will go nowhere. The Irish public have absolutely zero interest in watching 2nd rate players, be it journeymen/guys who didn't cut it in the UK. Thats the mindset, "Why should I bother watching this, sure there are better Irish players in the Wolves reserve team".
Top quality coaching (which is only available by trebling the amount of Pro Licence holders in every locality) needs to be available to players staying in Ireland. With the promise of first team football, and even European results will improve along with eventual transfer fees for players who have matured playing a higher level of football at a younger age.
Finn Harps were a junior team once.
If a club puts in the effort required, then there should be no problems making the step up.
If Mullingar Athletic really put in an effort, joined the league, advertised properly, and got the local public interested then there's no reason as to why it wouldn't work.
The same goes for every junior/intermediate club.
https://kesslereffect.bandcamp.com/album/kepler - New music. It's not that bad.
Kildare County, Dublin City and Sporting Land Speculators.
Because they were all successful Junior clubs with a base to work off already?
Jesus, it's very simple, those franchises were a waste of space, and will continue to be.
A junior club already has it's roots set, and builds from that.
https://kesslereffect.bandcamp.com/album/kepler - New music. It's not that bad.
I'm not sure how true this is. How many Irish Internationals have come through the league in recent seasons ? Did Seamus Coleman add anything to Sligos gate, despite being an obviously talented young player ? Did Kevin Doyle add to Cork, or Pats gates, Keith Fahey at Pats David Forde or James McClean at Derry ? (And remember the reception McClean got when he came on for his debut, from people who mostly wouldn't have had a clue who he was six months beforehand.) Chris Forrestor at Pats is being tipped for great thing at the moment, I haven't been crushed in the stampede to Richmond to see him play.
The reality is that we could have the next Lionel Messi at Pats, or Derry, or Sligo at the moment and people still wouldn't be interested until he gone across the water and legitimised himself. It's sad, but it's the way it is. That's why I've always thought the quality argument is a load of rubbish. Celtic were beaten in Europe tonight (and I know it's only the first leg) by a team who Pats put out two seasons ago. If Kargandy finish the job are all the Celtic fans in Ireland suddenly going to think "Jaysis, Pats must be good after all, think I'll start going to watch them" I think not.
For me the way to attract punters is to inspire a sense of identity with, and ownership of, the team. As to how to do that, well, I never said I have all the answers
Last edited by TonyD; 20/08/2013 at 8:07 PM.
Out for a spell, got neglected, lay on the bench unselected.
Sorry, Nige, that was in reply to the post above yours.
Posting Permissions
Quote
Bookmarks