Irish League

**oriel** · 03/11/2006, 4:13 PM

Just reading all of this now.

JC-GUFC, i think you`re being a little harsh on the IL. I moved to Newry 3 years ago and have seen some very decent sides visit, mainly Glentoran and and Linfield, both took around 500 fans and their teams passed the ball around fantastic and played very attractive football, i really enjoyed watching them.

NY Hoop, thats a great point you made re social clubs, a few years ago I was at a pre season game between Crusaders and Dundalk on a sat afternoon, this is a fact, there were more people in the social club boozing than at the game, i had a few drinks before the match and I was amazed at the buzz of the club, people coming and going all the time, it was located right at the end of a residential street, cant talk for other IL clubs, but I hear a similar daily trade exisits in other Belfast clubs. My club Dundalk on the other hand have a great social club, but it only operates effectively Thurs - Sun nights with no day trade, I`d say most other eL clubs are the same, (those with social clubs that is)

Finally if the IL changed to summer football and the top 3 clubs went full time, I`d say there would be fxxx all in the difference in standard.

What I would agree though is our bottom half of the premier and top maybe 3 clubs in the first div would appear to be a lot lot stronger that a lot of IPL teams apart from the usual suspects of Glentoran, Linfield, Portadown and maybe Clifftonville this year, Dungannon.

Until we (the eircom league) can attract average crowds in excess of 3,000 per game and consistently get past 2 rounds each year in Europe we are in no position to judge another league especially the one closest to us.