the future

**Bungle** · 27/05/2007, 11:23 PM

I've been thinking about Ciaran Matyn's comments about the standard of the Norwegian league, as compared to the Eircom league and it got me thinking what league of Ireland regulars objectively think is the standard and will the league continue to improve as it has been, or is it destined to return to the dark old days?

From my own perspective, I can see positive progress being made by a number of clubs such as Cork City and St Pats. The league is now at a standard where it produces a number of players in our underage teams. The exports appear to be adapting well to life at a fairly high level. There have been always Kevin Doyles in football but the likes of Shane Long is doing well. Bennett is considered a good shout to be a Reading regular next season, while I know from speaking to Ipswich fans that they think highly of O'Callaghan. Ward has done well at Wolves also. In my lifetime, I cannot recall us exporting so many players from the league at any one time that could play at premiership/championship level....there has been the odd Paul Mcgrath here and there.

What is the future? Dublin is a large European city and could easily support two very big teams like Glasgow can. If some of our sport loving billionaires were even to pump in minimal amounts into clubs such as Bohs or Rovers then maybe we might have teams playing in the Champions League. Cork is a city also that could support a team that should be as big, if not bigger than Rosenborg. I think we'll always see an exodus of players to England, like Norway, Sweden and Scotland do.

Basically, living away from home I don't really know the domestic scene all that well, so I'd be grateful to hear the views of people to find out their opinion.

**ifk101** · 28/05/2007, 7:01 AM

Ciaran Martyn's comments are to a large degree stop on. There is a large gap in terms of professionalism between us and the Norwegian league - but that's only to be expected. The LOI has only started to dip its toes into full-time professionalism.

In terms of technical footballing ability, I don't think the Norwegians are ahead of us. Norway doesn't "produce" better footballers than what we do - in fact I'd venture to say that we have a better pool of players than the Norwegians. The difference is that we lose a lot of kids to British clubs and players to the British lower leagues. They have the money to stop this happening with their domestic league - we don't. Take Ciaran Martyn's transfer for example. Fredrikstad paid Derry something like e170,000 for a four month loan period. That's serious money - not just for a LOI club but even for a Championship or Scottish Premier League club. And it should be pointed out that Fredrikstad aren't one of the top teams in Norway and yet they have the financial capabilities to pay out money like this.

Norway has the same population as we do - approx. 4 - 4.5 million so realistically we could say a league with the same level of support and infrastructure as the Norwegian league is a possibility. However to reach that level will take time and money, lots of it.