Are there too many clubs in this country?

[Riddickcule]

I have this book which is basically called "The Football Book"

It's bloody massive and contains endless facts, laws, tactics, leagues etc.

It also goes through every country and it says the amount of registered clubs, which includes Semi-Professional and Amateur.

For Ireland it says 5,500. Now i did a bit of calculations as I have no life. I divided the amount of clubs by the population which is around 4.4 million.

Which brings it to about 1 football club to every 800 people. Surely thats too many clubs right there.

Now, i'll make some comparisons with some other countries, obviously I wont do every country, i'll do a few european countries, and from what evidence this book gives:

England : Pop. 60 mill. Clubs: 42,500...1 club to 1,412 people.

Scotland: Pop. 5 mill. Clubs: 6,500...1 club to 769 people.

Wales: Pop. 3 mill. Clubs: 1,900...1 club to 1,579 people

Norn Ireland: Pop. 1.8 mill Clubs: 820...1 club to 2,195 people

Denmark: Pop. 5.5 mill Clubs: 1,500...1 club to 3,667 people

Norway: Pop. 4.6 mill Clubs: 1,800...1 club to 2,555 people


Now I could've sampled any country, I just chose our neighbours and other countries similiar in population to ours. With the exception of Scotland, clearly this proves we have too many clubs.

I know this wouldn't be easy to do, but I think we need to crop down the amount of clubs we have. For eg. in a town of 20,000 we could have around 3 or 4 clubs. Tbh thats ridiculous. A lot of towns are like that so surely we should merge some clubs and in turn that would create better competition locally and nationally.

In my town, we have 2 clubs. Our towns pop. is about 15,000. However the catch here is that one is a schoolboy club only and the other is purely an LSL team.

Why not merge the two, put finances together, put together a decent senior team that could even compete in the LOI.

Anyway, would you agree with me on the purpose of my post? Was looking at this book over a cup of tea and noticed this, I think we need less clubs, concentrate the talent more and we can produce better players. etc.

[Cuyahoga]

Its an interesting subject and something I have often thought of myself. One reason there is so many clubs is the Irish
disease of the SPLIT. Players/members have a row and they go and form their own club which is easy to do,rent a pitch from
the local council and enter a team in a league.Some of those 5,500 clubs I would think are very small and many only field one team.
Your idea of merging with other clubs makes sense but most clubs dont like losing what they have and their positions in that club. In my town of 17,000 there are four football teams,one of which was fomed out of a group of lads in a pub,which is one senior team and nothing else.Perhaps the F.A.I should insist on any new clubs forming having kids teams aswell.

[Riddickcule]

Its an interesting subject and something I have often thought of myself. One reason there is so many clubs is the Irish
disease of the SPLIT. Players/members have a row and they go and form their own club which is easy to do,rent a pitch from
the local council and enter a team in a league.Some of those 5,500 clubs I would think are very small and many only field one team.
Your idea of merging with other clubs makes sense but most clubs dont like losing what they have and their positions in that club. In my town of 17,000 there are four football teams,one of which was fomed out of a group of lads in a pub,which is one senior team and nothing else.Perhaps the F.A.I should insist on any new clubs forming having kids teams aswell.

Yeah there doesn't seem to be any criteria or anything to form a club, its too easy to do. I suppose it might not be fair to restrict people setting up clubs as people should have the right to. But surely the FAI should act on this like our towns should have just 1 club. A top senior team followed by reserve seniors, kids etc.

In my county league there seems to be new clubs coming in every year, its ridiculous theres something like 4 divisions and the county itself isn't that big (wicklow)

[marinobohs]

I have this book which is basically called "The Football Book"

It's bloody massive and contains endless facts, laws, tactics, leagues etc.

It also goes through every country and it says the amount of registered clubs, which includes Semi-Professional and Amateur.

For Ireland it says 5,500. Now i did a bit of calculations as I have no life. I divided the amount of clubs by the population which is around 4.4 million.

Which brings it to about 1 football club to every 800 people. Surely thats too many clubs right there.

Now, i'll make some comparisons with some other countries, obviously I wont do every country, i'll do a few european countries, and from what evidence this book gives:

England : Pop. 60 mill. Clubs: 42,500...1 club to 1,412 people.

Scotland: Pop. 5 mill. Clubs: 6,500...1 club to 769 people.

Wales: Pop. 3 mill. Clubs: 1,900...1 club to 1,579 people

Norn Ireland: Pop. 1.8 mill Clubs: 820...1 club to 2,195 people

Denmark: Pop. 5.5 mill Clubs: 1,500...1 club to 3,667 people

Norway: Pop. 4.6 mill Clubs: 1,800...1 club to 2,555 people


Now I could've sampled any country, I just chose our neighbours and other countries similiar in population to ours. With the exception of Scotland, clearly this proves we have too many clubs.

I know this wouldn't be easy to do, but I think we need to crop down the amount of clubs we have. For eg. in a town of 20,000 we could have around 3 or 4 clubs. Tbh thats ridiculous. A lot of towns are like that so surely we should merge some clubs and in turn that would create better competition locally and nationally.

In my town, we have 2 clubs. Our towns pop. is about 15,000. However the catch here is that one is a schoolboy club only and the other is purely an LSL team.

Why not merge the two, put finances together, put together a decent senior team that could even compete in the LOI.

Anyway, would you agree with me on the purpose of my post? Was looking at this book over a cup of tea and noticed this, I think we need less clubs, concentrate the talent more and we can produce better players. etc.

interesting line of thought, a problem in my own view would be the "disconnect" between clubs at junior level and Senior (primarily mean LOI here). Always amazed me that so many people who participate so vigourously in teams would not be found dead at a LOI game. Appreciate the two (playing and watching) are not necessarily linked but I would think people involved in the game would have an overall interest.
I do not doubt that the proliferation of clubs affects gates at LOI as many people are playing on Sat/Sun and therefore dont go to games. This should have improved as clubs moved games to Friday night but does not apear to have (to any great extent). If we have such an interest in participating in football surely we should be able to translate that into more healthy crowds ?

[Riddickcule]

Well some LOI clubs are trying to address that by creating links with the local schoolboy clubs, there was evidence of it a couple of years ago with my local team. Sometimes they would use our facility for training etc. and for a while we had free tickets for the kids and that was very succesful, only lasted one season though. I suppose they thought it would encourage the kids to keep going to games, doesn't look like it worked. Poor kids are being brainwashed just like their event junkie fathers.

[Jofspring]

As pointed out the problems can be between committees not wanting to join and people losing there positions within clubs. In Limerick there is 8 divisions in the city alone, not including the county league. Some clubs can barely field teams half the time and some have too many players. There are some very good schoolboy teams with no Minor/Junior to step up to and vice versa there are some very good Junior sides around with no underage setup. Some clubs have good teams and crap pitches and facilities and some have crap teams with top notch facilities. It would make sense to amalgamate a lot of teams in Limerick and other counties around the country which would probably develope a lot better teams and quality of players and the coaching these players get. It would mean a lot of clubs would be more community based too which can only be good. Off the top of my head on my side of town alone i can count about 6 or 7 clubs which is way too many for one side of one city in Ireland. There is too many people running clubs in this country that really haven't got a clue and they only have interest in themselves and their club, be it a big or a small club. Most people cannot see the bigger picture.

[peadar1987]

I think we need a more vertically integrated structure for football in this country. Large clubs with a good few teams of verying levels for youth to progress through, able to afford good facilities, and easy for LOI clubs to link with make more sense than lots of fragmented clubs with poor facilities, and no clear path of progression for those with ambition.

[Mr A]

Interesting debate. Riddickcule are there numbers for total playing population? I'm wondering what the ratio of players to clubs compares rather than population to clubs.

[culloty82]

The balance between geographic spread and club numbers seems to be right at senior level, so intermediate and junior level appears to be where the problem lies. I can only comment on Kerry, but the KDL has 43 first-teams and 14 B teams in 6 divisions, when the numbers could easily be pruned to form three competitive leagues. Eight clubs is clearly too many for a club the size of Tralee, while many rural parishes that only be described as villages often have two sides, but like politics, no-one is going to be the first to suggest a merger.

[A face]

List of population centres in Ireland

[Riddickcule]

Interesting debate. Riddickcule are there numbers for total playing population? I'm wondering what the ratio of players to clubs compares rather than population to clubs.

No, but I think they do something like that on wikipedia, might not be reliable though.

[Riddickcule]

Yeah I went and fetched it, it's the world though they don't have just europe.



Again I'll say might not be too reliable as its wikipedia, but there you go.

[Riddickcule]

I would have thought we'd be higher on that chart as it is believed football is the largest participating sport in Ireland. Surely we should be up there with the top boys. We're kind of similar to England in that they have cricket as we have GAA, and they have ruggers aswell.

And Englands higher then Scotland which suprises me because all they've got is football and rugby. Nothing else really.

Biggest suprise there to me is USA

[marinobohs]

Well some LOI clubs are trying to address that by creating links with the local schoolboy clubs, there was evidence of it a couple of years ago with my local team. Sometimes they would use our facility for training etc. and for a while we had free tickets for the kids and that was very succesful, only lasted one season though. I suppose they thought it would encourage the kids to keep going to games, doesn't look like it worked. Poor kids are being brainwashed just like their event junkie fathers.

While the links with (creation of) schoolboy teams is helpfull for LOI clubs it does not always reap the rewards expected. Home Farm were one of the best schoolboy set ups in the country yet had shockingly low crowds - if even 10% of the schoolboy section supported the LOI team they would have had a much broader support base. In the end the two sections ended up in somewhat of a confrontation over resources.
While I am still in favour of the link with schoolboy set ups (for variety of reasons) it would be interesting to ascertain peoples views on whether it has/has not impacted on support base(s)

[Macy]

Our problem isn't the number of clubs, it's the structure (and power levels) in the FAI. If the focus was on building a pyramid down from the League of Ireland feeding out then the number of lower clubs wouldn't matter. At the moment the League of Ireland has no greater weighting than any other sections of the game, hence resources are spread too thin.

[Riddickcule]

Another issue is that the DDSL top clubs which provide the conveyor belt of our players to Britain(cherry orchard, home farm, belvedere etc.), are not linked to LOI clubs at all.

This is the top level for teenagers here, when it should be a youth league comprised of LOI clubs. Like in most countries.

Of course there is no one solution to this problem, but it would be a start if the FAI recognised this and put their foot down on the Junior, Provincial and Amateur leagues.

[redobit]

List of population centres in Ireland

Interesting to see that the Towns of Naas, Carlow, Kilkenny, Tralee, Ennis and Navan all have higher populations than Sligo - yet none have a team competing in the top 2 divisions.
Its a pity really as it would give a better geographical spread to the league, especially the premier, if these towns could compete at higher levels.

[osarusan]

I'd agree with previous posters who say that the problem isn't so much the number of clubs as it is the relations between different levels of clubs, especially with LOI level. There are a lot of people who work at lower levels of football and clubs who contribute to the development of players, but much of this just bypasses the LOI.

When Limerick FC sign up a player from one of the underage or junior clubs, the reaction is usually that we've stolen their player and what thanks do they get for all that training, we don't bother developing palyers, just take the players we want and what are the junior clubs going to do without their star....etc.
I'm not very knowledgeable about other leagues, but it's hard for me to imagine that a club's reaction to one of their players being offered a chance to play at the highest level of football in the country (and which the club cannot itself cannot offer) would be so vitriolic in other countries.

[John83]

The lack of a pyramid is not helpful at all. Damned hard for the FAI to change it though - too many entrenched interests have a say there.

Interesting to see that the Towns of Naas, Carlow, Kilkenny, Tralee, Ennis and Navan all have higher populations than Sligo - yet none have a team competing in the top 2 divisions.
Its a pity really as it would give a better geographical spread to the league, especially the premier, if these towns could compete at higher levels.

Kilkenny had a team, bu couldn't compete with hurling. I suspect Tralee would similarly struggle to compete with gaelic football. As for Naas, they didn't exactly flock to support Kildare County. The likes of Naas, Kilkenny and Carlow would wind up picking up scraps from the Dublin clubs - I know it was a problem at Kilkenny and even Longford fans have complained of it - and that doesn't help build local support. Of course, any of those towns might host an LoI team in the future, but it's not as simple as 'hey, a population centre - someone put together a club'.

[WexCar]

From the FIFA website http://www.fifa.com/associations/ass...untryInfo.html

We have

All Players           421,644 
Registered players    252,844 
Unregistered Players  168,800 
Clubs                 5,828 
Officials             7,330

So thats 73 players per club