One island. One league?

An All-Ireland league will happen eventually, so why not now? It could give the game on this island the shot in the arm it needs to survive and prosper.

By Shane Breslin

Many decades have passed since football’s governing bodies in Belfast and Dublin took charge of their own little kingdoms, but surely the time has come to draw a line under the schism and walk forward hand in hand. Football on this island is far too peripheral to justify two notionally professional leagues. For the game to survive and prosper, it’s necessary to club together. One island, one league. It will happen eventually. So why can’t it happen now?

The reason the idea is stillborn, for the time being at least, is much less to do with longstanding security fears than the ongoing contretemps between the associations north and south. The basis of the ill-feeling lies in the defections of several prominent Northern-born players to the Republic in recent years, amid tacit suggestions that the Dublin-based body has actively sought to mine the North’s Catholic minorities for potential future stars.

Darron Gibson, the Derry-born Manchester United midfielder who rebuffed entreaties to throw in his lot with the North to become a regular for the Republic, was the first high-profile case but there have been several others. Shane Duffy, the Everton defender, switched his allegiance last year having previously represented Northern Ireland at underage level, while the hugely promising former West Ham trainee Daniel Kearns, who has been a big hit at Dundalk since moving to Oriel Park recently, enjoyed a favourable verdict from the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne in July before taking his place in the Republic’s under-21 squad.

On the face of it, then, with squabbling governing bodies each keen to look after their own patch, an All-Ireland league looks as unlikely as it’s ever been. Yet it’s hard to escape the feeling that it must happen.

It would be a major decision for Uefa to rubberstamp the merging of two leagues from neighbouring “countries”, but the situation on this island is already regarded as without parallel around the world. Fifa have effectively acknowledged Ireland’s special status already by opening the doors of the six counties to the FAI with the declaration that anyone with an Irish passport could declare for the Republic if they so wished. Should it be proven that the appetite for an All-Ireland league exists, the European and world governing bodies would be expected to view the concept favourably.

With a typically short-term view, however, the associations and clubs on either side of the border are happier to look after their own little fiefdoms by maintaining the status quo, instead of benefiting from the explosion of interest and revenue that would accompany the switch to an All-Ireland competition.

When it was inaugurated amid great fanfare in 2005, the Setanta Sports Cup was seen by many as a forerunner for an All-Ireland league. If the competition has largely failed to capture the imagination of the public at large, that owes more to convoluted structures and cack-handed organisation than a lack of interest in cross-border soccer. Indeed, despite unamenable fixture scheduling – Monday nights, for instance, or asking Glentoran fans to make a 450-mile round trip to Turners Cross for the 2008 final against Cork City – Irish League clubs have regularly brought the type of travelling support which contributes greatly both to the on-the-night game atmosphere and the coffers of the host clubs.

Of course, given the hinterland of the fan-bases north of the border, there is always the possibility of trouble when, say, Glentoran and Linfield travel south., There have been occasions over the past when the Gardai have seen reason to wade in, but these instances can sometimes be overblown by a media insatiable in its thirst for sensation. Photos of a bloodied Linfield supporter were splashed all over a national tabloid in the days after a Setanta Cup game against St Patrick’s Athletic in 2008, while a number of Glens fans were arrested during a contest against Bohemians earlier this year (pictured top), but in the main the games have passed off peacefully enough, and that includes several meetings between Derry City and their age-old Belfast rivals which would have been unthinkable during the height of the Troubles.

In any case, some clear forward planning would go a long way towards ensuring that any conflict is restricted to the field of play. Aubrey Ralph, the Glentoran chairman, claimed after that Dalymount encounter in March that no security briefing that taken place between the Gardai and representatives of the clubs involved. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail and all that. It would be a mistake to allow such issues to cloud the long-term vision.

It’s abundantly clear that something must be done to ensure the sustained viability of the game on this island. The FAI-governed Airtricity League is ranked 31st in Europe, down two places on last year and due another fall after disappointing results this season, while the Carling Premiership north of the border is a lowly 49th. Worse, soccer’s status as a third-rate spectator sport on these shores has been rubberstamped by the irresistible march of Gaelic games and the journey of rugby from the elite to the masses.

Last Sunday, tens of thousands of men, women and children crossed the border to support the Down footballers against Cork at Croke Park. In rugby, Ulster’s revival this season is sure to be reflected in packed houses at Ravenhill in the coming weeks and the Leinster-Munster Magners League encounter on Saturday week may well attract a larger crowd to the new Aviva Stadium than either of the soccer internationals which have taken place there to date. Such wide-scale adoration is something that soccer can only dream of.

One thing is certain: if it aspires ever to be anything more than a poor relation to its rival sports, football must bring an end to its ill-serving commitment to partition.

We’re all big boys now. Together really is better.

**

On the field this week, the best four sides in the Airtricity League all underlined their supremacy with one-sided victories in the quarter-finals of the FAI Ford Cup. Bohemians, Shamrock Rovers, Sligo Rovers and St Patrick’s Athletic put a total of 15 goals past Bray Wanderers, Galway United, Monaghan United and the nouveaux riches of Sporting Fingal respectively, with just one – Shaun Williams’s screamer for Fingal – in reply.

The draw for the Cup semis means that Sligo, who can lift the EA Sports Cup when they welcome Monaghan to the Showgrounds for the second time in a week on Saturday evening, and Pats face away games against Bohs and Rovers respectively in the semi-finals, meaning that an FAI Cup final showdown between the oldest rivals in the land is on the cards for the first time, astonishingly, since 1945.

As if that prospect isn’t dramatic enough, the pair will also fight out the league title race over the next six weeks. Just three points separate the sides after Bohs’ 1-1 draw in Sligo on Tuesday night, but with that game having been rescheduled due to Sligo’s Cup commitments this weekend, Rovers can extend their buffer to six when Galway show up at Tallaght again on Friday. The Tribesmen were lambs to the slaughter last weekend, the Hoops showing no mercy as they bounced back from their humiliating night out in Dundalk, and anything less than another win for Michael O’Neill’s men would be a major surprise. Still, stranger things have happened.

Last week’s results:

Airtricity League Premier Division

Sligo Rovers 1-1 Bohemians

FAI Ford Cup quarter-finals

Bohemians 3-0 Bray Wanderers
Shamrock Rovers 6-0 Galway United
St Patrick’s Athletic 3-1 Sporting Fingal
Sligo Rovers 3-0 Monaghan United

This weekend’s fixtures:

EA Sports Cup Final (Saturday 25 September)

Sligo Rovers v Monaghan United, 5.30pm, The Showgrounds – Live on Setanta Ireland

Airtricity League Premier Division (all Friday 24 September)

Bray Wanderers v UCD, Carlisle Grounds, 7.45pm
Drogheda United v Sporting Fingal, Hunky Dorys Park, 7.45pm
St Patrick’s Athletic v Dundalk, Richmond Park, 7.45pm
Shamrock Rovers v Galway United, Tallaght Stadium, 8pm

 

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