An All-Ireland FA Cup?

[Steve Bruce]

I think the best way for having an All-Island league type thing would be to.

Have the top 5 teams in ROI and the Top 5 teams in the IL play each other twice.

And to compete in the All-Island League you drop out of the League cup to free up fixture dates.

It also takes the IL to move to summer football or the LOI to move to Winter football.(i would personally favour summer football)

[hoops1]

Brian de Salvo has just suggested merging the FAI and Irish Cups into one big super-competition.

Any takers for this? Sounds like a superb idea!

Forgive my ignorance but who is Brian de Salvo when hes at home?

[Saint MacDara]

I think the best way for having an All-Island league type thing would be to.

Have the top 5 teams in ROI and the Top 5 teams in the IL play each other twice.

Thats pretty much the Setanta Cup with 2 extra teams.
Irish League sides havent faired too well lately (exception Linfield),so 5 IL teams might cause more embarrassment to their league.

[superfrank]

I think it'd only be fair to have equal numbers from both associations if there was to be an All-Ireland league. I know other el fans get ****ed at this suggestion but it's only fair and if in fact the el is stronger than the IL then theoretically the "crap" IL teams would all go down after one season and be replaced by other el teams who would clearly runaway with the first division as el teams are clearly so much better.

[pineapple stu]

Forgive my ignorance but who is Brian de Salvo when hes at home?

Ex Drums player who now does a very good column on RTÉ Radio 1 after the Friday night coverage. Think he supports Bray, but is often seen at Belfield and will claim to follow any team who lay good football.

[DmanDmythDledge]

Think he supports Bray, but is often seen at Belfield and will claim to follow any team who lay good football.

So he comes from the Joe Gamble School of Football Molestation?

[don ramo]

terrrible idea even the settanta cup is a bad idea it gives a good persepective of the differences in the leagues but that it and more money of course, but think of it douglas hall a MSL team are playin there eqivilent in the IL league think how much a crowd would turn out and how much it would cost to travel and all that with MSL wages, and dont even bother sayin regionalisation because that is the worst thing i have ever heard, its a cup all team are chucked in and pulled at random, its not suppose to be rigged so you dont get the team furthest away.

[Lim till i die]

Forgive my ignorance but who is Brian de Salvo when hes at home?

Wasn't he the Boston Strangler??

[Steve Bruce]

Thats pretty much the Setanta Cup with 2 extra teams.
Irish League sides havent faired too well lately (exception Linfield),so 5 IL teams might cause more embarrassment to their league.

The problem really is to do with timing.

For instance, Portadown where really strong in our league around November - January but when the Setanta hit, coupled with Irish cup and Irish League they just didn't have the strength in depth to cope. They also lost there full defensive line up as well. Needless to say, there league performance went down hill big time as did their performance in the Setanta.

I really think next season we will compete a lot better and last season was just a very very bad season for IL football.

ALso the setanta cup has 2 groups not one. If we had 1 group, then the likes of Glentoran would be able to compete better as they will be playing the 3rd - 5th best team in LOI as well. Glentoran haven't been able to compete with the top 2 teams in the LOI, but that is not to say they couldnt compete with the next 3 below them. But that raelly is a seperate debate.