Interesting one from Dan McDonnell today - full-time pros are entitled now to at least €430/week, and part-time players must get at least €130/week from the beginning of pre-season.
Amateur players then are expenses only (though not sure what expenses would count?)
All sounds great and all, but as Dan then says -
So - what sort of impact is this going to have on clubs? In the end of the day, clubs can't magic money up. And what constitutes full-time and part-time anyway?That would more than double the pay for some lower paid squad members at certain clubs.
[T]here are concerns further down the food chain about whether this change represents too much too soon and may lead to clubs running smaller squads to keep costs down, thus meaning there are fewer contracts to go around.
Definitely puts the squeeze on the middle class of clubs,the big clubs are already paying most of their players that anyway I’d say and the lower first division sides are basically amateur,as said above clubs can’t magic money out of nowhere from one season to the next but players deserve a fair wage aswell,in theory and on paper it is right and proper but I’m sure there are some club accountants with a headache this evening….
Irish by birth ,Harps by the grace of god.
In terms of amateur clubs, I presume it'd follow the GAA model where any travel expenses are reimbursed, along with meal vouchers, so that would cover Treaty and other lower First Division teams. Certainly seems as though this will have most impact in the Premier, with smaller clubs becoming increasingly reliant on youth players.
Meal vouchers? But the team meals pre- and post-match are presumably covered anyway?
Travel - but what travel? To/from training would be a stretch surely? The team bus will cover most away games.
This isn't like an employee working for some multi national company.
This will come from the pockets of owners, sponsors and customers. None of whom earn a profit.
how will this effect ucd? did someone say on here before that the newer signings such as lonergan werent going to college there like players were under previous managers?
Are there other changes coming?
This would seem to tie into quite a lot of other things.
Like the salary cap. To have a squad of 20 full time pros, there now a minimum turnover of around 800K
Possibly less than other clubs as we're not trying to be full-time, so would have the €130/week cap for anyone being paid.Originally Posted by Jd2793
But in the end of the day there's only so much money to go around, so if we can't afford €130/week for a player, I presume we'll just have to sign an amateur instead. Same as other teams.
But it does mean that a squad player on, say, €250/week can't train on full-time terms and that's going to impact the middle Premier teams most I'd have thought. If you now can only afford 10 full-time players, you can't really organise full-time training I'd have thought. That'd probably benefit clubs like UCD to be honest.
Last edited by pineapple stu; 08/11/2022 at 9:24 AM.
Some clubs will probably already look into a way around it. What exactly constitutes full time training? Morning sessions? The amount of sessions? Maybe this becomes an exercise on how you can have your players on part time contracts and be as close to full time as possible while staying below the magic limit, whatever that is.
https://www.independent.ie/sport/soc...-42129609.html
Pretty strong stuff from Stephen McGuinness here......
Irish by birth ,Harps by the grace of god.
Thx for sharing the article - interesting read and the unions end game (min number of pros per club and no amateur teams etc) may result in a stronger league but I would suspect many teams will leave the league during the transition.
Given the mood music coming out of Drogs at the moment I would not be surprised if we are one of the first to the door. At this stage there is no way we could have min 14 pro players. I’m sure paying from
Preseason (which I do understand the reason) will be a significant cost to clubs given no gate income in the period.
Maybe it will end with a stronger one division with the current pro sides added with Galway Cork and Waterford. I can’t see most of the rest being able to fund the proposed set up (rest of first div UCD and Drogs).
Interesting times ahead.
Drogheda United in this together
I don't think having to go semi-pro will be the end of Drogheda surely?
It may mean a weaker league because teams will be training less and some players may go LSL rather than be amateur in LoI, but that's far from a case where clubs will fold.
Just going off this bit “ He wants each Premier Division club to have a minimum of 16 full-time professionals on their books as a condition of entry and similar rules to apply for part-time professionals in the First Division, where he is opposed to the concept of amateur teams competing.”
On the above we would be a first div team unless something drastic changes in our circumstances arise and what club would be satisfied being a perm member of the 1st division. - there also could be no relegation at times as teams can’t afford to come up despite winning promotion.
A long way to go on this but to be fair to the union, they have clearly set out their stall.
Drogheda United in this together
Ah, ok. That's just ******.
Whatever about arguing that players shouldn't be offered €200/week and be expected to train 15 hours a week plus travel to a match, a union leader can't expect to just magic up more full-time positions. The market does that.
This may be a nice idea, but if the money isn't there, it's just aspirational. In the same way, it would be silly to make it a condition of entry to the Premier Division that every team had to have, say, a ground with at least 5000 covered seats. The money just isn't there to make it happen.He wants each Premier Division club to have a minimum of 16 full-time professionals on their books as a condition of entry and similar rules to apply for part-time professionals in the First Division, where he is opposed to the concept of amateur teams competing.
It's not like there are millionaire owners exploiting players at every club. In most cases the clubs just don't have the money. If they had the money, they'd already be paying it in wages.
McGuinness knows this as well as anybody.
He may be right in the general philosophy, in terms of player welfare, but in practice it's hard to see how any potential new clubs could begin life as part-time outfits - yes, outlining how they would work towards that goal should be a licensing condition, but even then it would take 2-3 years to be achieved.
This isn't a runner in the medium to long term without SOME kind of at least medium investment in the League through a TV deal. Even Lithuania have one. Airtricity put a few hundred grand in as sponsorship but it feel like a bare minimum, tokenistic amount of money. The money from transfer fees is still very low as a source of income into the League as a whole also. An external ringfenced pool of money needs to exist so that clubs don't fold trying to aspire to the prospective plan.
Some really basic maths to understand what this might mean.
If a team was to pay 16 players minimum wage of 430 per week, for 42 weeks that would come to 288,960 a year before any additional pay related costs (employee PRSI etc). A part time team paying 16 players 130 per week for 42 weeks comes to 104,832 per year.
I can't find the exact rules for the Salary Cost Protocol, but I think its 60% of turnover right?
That means a professional team must have minimum turnover of €481,600 per year and a part time team €145,600. Assuming a 36 game season in both divisions with 18 home games that means professional teams need to make €26,756 per game and part time teams need to make €8,089 per game. At an average of €10 per ticket that comes to an average attendance of 2,676 in the Premier, or 809 in the first. Obviously sponsors, merchandise etc will offset this, but this is all assuming the minimum wage for every player in a team.
I agree that this is generally a good thing, and if teams can't get this kind of support then they probably shouldn't be pro, or even part time, but before these sort of changes are made we should understand what the effects will be and whether that is something we want.
I don't know what the turnover is like across the league, but I would assume Shamrock Rovers, Derry City, Dundalk, St. Patricks Athletic, Sligo Rovers, Bohemian FC, Shelbourne, Cork City, Galway United and Waterford can probably make this work at a mostly professional level, though several of those teams would be asking their owners, sponsors and fans to dig deep to keep the show on the road.
Drogheda United, UCD, Finn Harps, Longford Town, and maybe Treaty United could find a way to meet the amateur requirements, though if promotion to the Premier Division is cut off to them that probably has a detrimental effect on attendances that mean it may not be possible.
You would basically be saying Athlone, Cobh, Bray and Wexford are either entirely amateur or out of the league. Maybe they should already be, and maybe Bray could get up into the Amateur group if this year was a one off.
This probably ends up being a negative for players. More players get up to that 130/430 per week level, but some teams won't be able to pay anything above that to more than a couple of players. Any marginal players end up out of the league at 20 because teams cant afford to wait for their development.
Probably more talent is accumulated at the top of the table with the European teams, who can afford to have larger squads, leading to a larger gap year over year.
Maths is good and all, but the new wage rules also sees players paid until the end of November, and from the first week of pre-season, so you're probably looking at closer to a 46 or 48 week wage bill.
A lot of what the PFAI have come out with is right and proper, from a players perspective, but as said above, until there's more money pumped into the league, I don't see how this is going to end in anything but tears for several clubs.
You'd have to say that prize money needs close to doubled, and a proper TV deal sought out, as well a ringfenced goverment money to be directed towards the league each season for this to stand any sort of a chance of working.
https://kesslereffect.bandcamp.com/album/kepler - New music. It's not that bad.
I think for the likes of Bohs and Shels this will be a problem as they have been low paying clubs who have a lot of players who sign for them as they have no other viable better paying options.
Shels are open about paying part time wages for a full time training envioronment.
If Shels want to continue full time next season they will have to pay full time wages, ditto Bohs are moving to full time apparnatly and wont be able to take the Shels 2022 approach now.
Bohs have the cash and Shels look like they are getting some new investment so they will be able to deal with the situation.
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