FAI Cup - Qualifying Round
Friday, April 19
Maynooth University Town 5 Rockmount 1
St. Mochta's 0 Collinstown 1
Saturday, April 20
Newtown Rangers 3 Avondale United 4 (AET)
Glebe North 2 Midleton 1
U.C.C. 0 Malahide United 2
Sunday, April 21
Glengad United 1 Home Farm 1 (Glengad won 5-4 on pens aet)
TBC: Lucan United v Aisling Annacotty, St. Michael's v Regional United
Byes: Cobh Wanderers, Crumlin United, Killester Donnycarney and Letterkenny Rovers.
When is the next round (First round ?) ?
11 August according to the fixture lists
That's a crazy gap ! But with the seasons being out of synch, I guess it makes sense.Originally Posted by littlebray
12 non-league teams in the last 32 is too many, the quality is not there. Give the euro qualifiers a bye into the last 16 and play the first round with 16 league and 8 non-league teams on the weekend between the European first round games when nearly all the Premier games get re-arranged anyway.
Already messed up the fixture list to “assist” the teams in Europe. Give the non league teams a day out.
A couple of LOI teams will be shocked as usual by amateur sides. The first round of the FAI Cup is great. Bluebell and Sheriff have gotten to the quarters in recent years.
I agree with this. I'd have more non-league sides enter tbh. Anyone who wants to enter should be allowed. Restricting non-league clubs can't help the senior/non-league divide we have
I like the first round of the cup having so many non-league teams. League teams get fast fed up playing the same games over and over again. The chance to potentially visit somewhere new and see a big local crowd for a non-league side in the middle of nowhere is great.
Indeed, under my proposition this mess up in the fixture list wouldn't be needed. The 8 best non-leaguers would still get their day out.
I love the novelty of having non-league teams in the draw, and I'm not stopping non-league teams entering, but we don't need more Blarneys losing 12-2 to Derry. And I'm proposing eight non-league teams in the 16th-finals anyway! It's an opportunity to streamline the competition and prevent non-Euro teams having yet another idle weekend in July/August. FWIW I'd draw all Premier teams away to non-Premier teams in the first two rounds
Definitely.
The LOI and FAI Cup need to be seen as the aspirational tops of the pyramid in Irish football. Somewhere every club would dream of featuring in, and want to do so if they could. If non-league clubs feel shut out of that, or worse still - start to feel pretty indifferent about being in the FAI Cup - then we'll have dented the prestige of the senior club game here.
The 4 Junior Cup semi-finalists and the last 16 of the Intermediate Cup get into the FAI Cup proper. That's well over 500 non-league clubs with a shot at making the FAI Cup- nobody's being excluded.
They are though.
Look at the FA Cup in England - anyone can enter. Ditto Scotland and France and so on. You start off in the qualifying rounds of course, and have to earn a shot at a top team. You could argue that the FAI Junior/Intermediate Cup are effectively a qualifying tournament for the FAI Cup, but I think that format just emphasises the divide. You can of course keep the Junior/Intermediate Cups in the same way that England has the FA Vase and FA Trophy - but any club should be allowed start off in Round 1 of the FAI Cup.
Let the FAI Cup start off in round 1 with however many clubs you can get. LoI clubs come in in the round of 32 (or maybe even the round of 64). If Derry win 12-2 - so what? Shows the LoI to be a decent league compared to the MSL, etc.
I don't understand the problem with the Junior/Intermediate Cups being the de facto qualifying competitions for the FAI Cup. The only difference is that when it gets to the business end the best non-league clubs also playoff for a trophy at the Aviva, as well as getting a crack at the big boys. Yeh you have 600+ teams in the FA Cup, but only 32 of them get a go with the 3rd/4th tier sides and have to win another 2 rounds to get at the top flight.
That's not true I'm afraid - as I know from my old team there. You have to be at Level 10 in the pyramid, or above (?). Otherwise it would be madness, with lots of teams just entering for the hell of it, and an outrageous number of preliminaries. Not to mention the variable quality it would result in.
Fair point - but at least level 10 is a lot of teams. You're talking regionalised divisions there and everything - it probably goes down as far as the end of what's considered "senior" in England?
For the record, I'm not suggesting that teams in the UCD Superleague can enter the FAI Cup. If you have a fence around your pitch and changing rooms, I think that should be about enough.
I think the divide in the game here is a big issue, which this would go some small way to addressing. I think entering a competition knowing you could qualify for the FAI Cup - is it even a big deal for junior/intermediate sides? - is different to actually being in the same competition as Dundalk, Cork, etc. Whatever brings the football family (shudder!) closer together is worth considering I think. The way the leagues are set up here is ridiculous.
I agree with you here but I don't see the point in scaling back the Cup to save the top teams one game when most of them will be playing fringe players anyway? Like Dundalk aren't exactly going to be playing Hoban and Duffy from the start against Sheriff.
tbh I'm not comfortable with giving the euro teams a bye into the last 16, but streamlining it like this means the rest of the league is spared an idle weekend in July while Rovers and Cork and the like are galivanting around Europe. As a concession to the non-leaguers put them in a pot that guarateed they're kept apart, or keep the Premier teams in a pot that keep them apart and ensures they are drawn away. Then ensure the Euro teams are drawn away in the last 16.
It is enough- any of 500 clubs can qualify for the FAI Cup through the Jnr/Int Cup.
Is the divide vis-a-vis the FAI Cup a big issue for the football family? Are the junior clubs clamouring for a dedicated FAI Cup qualifying path in parallel to the Junior Cup?
I think it's one of the biggest issues we have to be honest.
Look at the basket case of the First Division; fading away because no-one's interested in joining. Dreck at the bottom of it usually because of no relegation. Dodgy "investors" coming in because the FAI can't afford to lose another club.
It's a big issue. We need a proper pyramid like every other country. We need a more unified game. We need promotion to the LoI, and for non-league clubs to develop beyond being big fish in a small pond.
A proper FAI Cup won't achieve all that, but it is part of what's needed.
So why not go for it?
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