The Eircom league

CHRISTYG

Is it this year that the Eircom league starts in July? How will it operate, and how will the FAI Cup fit in? Will it be after the League ends?

P.S. How long is it since a League of Ireland player played for the Republlic?

Bateman

Season starts on July 5th. The introduction of the 10team Premier Division has been controversial, but it avoids 2 crap teams being effectively relegated by Christmas.

Premier Division: 05/07
Bohemians v UCD
Bray Wanderers v Longford Town
Cork City v Shelbourne
Drogheda United v Derry City
Shamrock Rovers v St Patrick's Athletic.

Most attractive game on the first day is probably Rovers-Pats.

The FAI Cup will also be played, the final being sometime in December. It will be the second cup of this calendar year.
The European draws will be made on the 21st of June. Shelbourne in the Champions League (1st Qualifying round) , Rovers and Dundalk in the UEFA Cup. St Pats play Croation team in the Intertoto Cup,
RIJECKA (CROATIA) V PATS JUNE 22/23
PATS V RIJECKA JUNE 29/30
Should Pats get past them (tough), it will then be Gent of Belgium, and (very unlikely) then Sevilla of Spain. Ranked 19th in Europe, Bohs were unlucky to lose 2-1 there a couple of weeks back.

Bateman

Pat Byrne (whil playing for Rovers) was the last LOI player to play for Ireland, back in the mid- eighties, but in more recent injury crises, Charlton called up Stephen Geoghegan (squad), and McCarthy called up Glen Crowe (squad), who out rings around Cuningham and Breen in training.

CHRISTYG

I seem to remember Stephen Geoghan (sorry about the spelling!) playing. Did he not have one cap, as a substitute against someone?

Bateman

No. He didn't. 99% sure.

KdjaCL

Nope he never played
During the match he overheard one of the trainers asking if he should get geoghan warmed up.
the trainer was told "hes not here to play".
I used to work with geoghan.
Bring on RIJECKA and thank god it wasnt Hadjuk Spilt
Not that it matters.
Kdja

Pigman

Nope Geoghagan never played for Ireland. His inclusion in the squad against Macedonia (so many bad memories!) was purely a token jesture. Same thing happened to Glen Crowe and Johnny Glynn (1991?). No League of Ireland player has been capped since 1986 to be precise.

As for the summer league I think it's a great idea. Attendances will improve due to better weather conditions (on average) and the teams themselves will be more match-ready when the European preliminary rounds come around.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Christy perhaps you're thinking of Pat Scully who plays for Rovers. He got a cap under Charlton whilst playing for Arsenal. People mix himself and Geogho up cos they played at Shels together.

KdjaCL

Scully got a B international.
Are they classed as caps??
Im not sure.
kdja

Pigman

They're not counted. That's a fact.

CHRISTYG

1 more question before I leave this topic. With the Eircom league starting on July 9, when does it end (e.g. how many times do the teams play each other) I ask because the SPL in Scotland starts at the end of July, and by the teams playing each other 4 times, manages to spin a 2 team league (Well, you know what I mean!) out until May. Will it be (I hope not!) a simillar situation in Ireland?

Bateman

Teams will play each other 3 times

28/07/'02 FAI Cup Rd 1
18/08/'02 FAI Cup Rd 2
08/09/'02 FAI Cup Q-F
06/10/'02 FAI Cup S-F
29/10/'02 FAI Cup Final


26/01/03 Home Derry City
(final day)

From season 2003 onwards though, it will be March-October, with teams playing each other 4 times. Rivalry will probably be diluted with playing each other 4 times.
There are still questions to be answered as regards the schoolbuy structures, will they move to summer soccer, probably not is the answer.
It seems like a good move, but was not thought through properly, and there was little consultation. Worth a try? We'll see.

CHRISTYG

Going off-topic for a while, if Sky get their act together, that means that Sky Digital viewers in Northern Ireland as well as the South (sorry, I meant the Republic) will be able to see the Eircom league. Is it too early to say, or will the live games all be Friday nights?

Bateman

or will the live games all be Friday nights?


Very early to say. Basically, the league still has not got its act together with a simultaneous kick off time, so the clubs (driven by self interest) kick off whatever day and tmie they wish. Any TV games are likely to be Friday nights though, or any in Dublin anyway.

thegills

Bateman; I don't think the clubs (driven by self interest) kick off whatever day and time they wish. It's driven by Sky kick-off times. Do you think Pats want to play every Friday night at home and away to the likes of Derry on a Tuesday night.

I like the idea of a Summer league but surely this season its doomed with the latter stages of the league and cup being played in November and December when pitches are in bits and the weather is ****e!!

Bateman

surely this season its doomed with the latter stages of the league and cup being played in November and December when pitches are in bits and the weather is ****e!!

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Yes, very much so. But thats only for this season, the end of the season will be around October, in the longrun, not much better but a little milder.

We switched to Friday nights because Sky Sports gave some clubs (crap) floodlights. The Dublin teams have adopted Friday night as the normal ko time, and are willing to listen to other suggestions.

Derry and Dundalk are driven purely by self interest in playing on Thursday nights. They were commercial decisions, Derry from Sundays, and Dundalk from Friday nights. It is crap for away fans. When a team says to you "we are going to get a couple of hundred (if you believe them) more on Thursdays than Fridays", and the league allows for such a farcical situation where the clubs run the league and not the FAI, what can you say?

Personally, I cannot think of a better time to play football games than 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, with the odd live game on Friday night. Simultaneous ko times are vital if RTE is going to show any more interest, can you blame them not wanting to show a cracker from Friday night on Sunday, when its old news?

CHRISTYG

Well, tonight was the opening evening of "the brave new world for Irish soccer" (as I'm sure SOMEONE called it!) so what were the results, and almost as important-although that's only to me as an outsider- what were attendances like (although I've never actually seen an official attendance figure for League of Ireland soccer. Do they actually print them, and if not, why not?)

Bateman

League clubs don't print tickets, and fiddling on the stiles is rife. This combined with tax dodging is why we rarely see accurate attendance figures, although the Star on a Monday is usually reasonably reliable.

From being at Bohs-UCD (by no means a glamour fixture) myself, crowds are not up significantly. Pats were due to play Rovers but their Intertoto involvement meant the game being postponed. That game would have got a (relatively) high attendance.

Basically though, its business as usual, fairly decent football played to crap crowds, missed by the hordes who can't wait for the Premiership to start. Its frustrating, but hey, we love it. Its REAL football.

Attendances and media interest should improve when the bogball and stick fightning All Irelands end in the Autumn. Other than that, there won't be decent crowds, save for Pats-Shels, a major grudge match, and Bohs-Rovers (Aug. 2). Christy, if you haven't been to a game, go to one. Or wait and let Bohs-Rovers be your first.

KdjaCL

Definitley go see Bohs/Rovers/Pats/ Shels game 1st.

Or if your in Kildare go see them.

I hate Bohs/rovers but if i can i go to Bohs/Rovers game i do.
they always crackers (6-4 sweet)

And Bateman is right the Star on monday is as close as you`ll ever get unless you know waht each stand holds and are a good counter ...LOL

Kdja

Ciaran

Originally posted by Bateman
From being at Bohs-UCD (by no means a glamour fixture) myself, crowds are not up significantly.

The crowd in Dalymount looked bigger to me than the corresponding game (i.e. Bohs-UCD) last year. The Jody stand seemed to be pretty much full from block C down.

Bateman

The Jodi holds 2700, but you are right, no big improvement on last seasons corresponding fixture. Better news however, Cork got 6,000 for their game with Shels, and WON, so hopefully some of the doubters will come back. Its not unheard of for Cork to get crowds of 10,000 when they are near the top of the league. Drogheda got 4,000 which is excellent, and Kildare got 1,000, which is great for a team playing their first game (and it wasn't even a league game), but charging 25 seating and 10 standing was a bit crazy. Hopefully the Kildare prices were a one off though.

The crowds will probably grow with summer football, but by how much will depend largely on European success or lack of.

CHRISTYG

Kildare? Is this a newly formed club I haven't heard of? Are they in the league, or are they what are usually described (insultingly!) as a "non-league club"

Bateman

Commentators Ignorant Beyond their Years
- If you thought that most of the ill-informed guff would be overand done now that the World Cup is finished, you'd be sadly mistaken.

Eamonn McCann

Many football people will have breathed a sigh of relief as well as regret at the final whistle of the World Cup finals. Now there'd be respite from addle-pated articles yammering on about the zeitgeist. During the tournament blithe ignorance blithering idiocy had been no impediment to ink. The Irish Times published a column conveying Kevin Myers' thoughts on how to take a penalty. I'm not at all sure if I didn't read a piece by Eoghan Harris about the Celtic Tiger stalking the Connemara Pony.

But we sensed relief too soon. Last week, the July issue of Magill appeared. Magill is the Fine Gael of Irish publishing - a feeble thing compared with the force it once was, and unable to decide what to believe in so as to give a chance of a comeback. But this is no excuse.

The writer didn't have lacunae in his knowledge. Rather did his knowledge form a lacuna in the vastness of his ignorance. "The players who in recent years have been representing Ireland have, almost without exception, gone directly from the amateur local level to the English Premiership" (Of the squad in Korea-Japan, no more than five took this route.) "Most local clubs date from the early '60s, when Match of the Day began to beam into small-town Ireland." Roy Keane and John Giles "jumped fully-formed into the arms of Manchester United".

But idiocy rather than ignorance was most marked. "This means of expressing ourselves to the external will have been received from the violator, and will provide a way fot the violated to seek the approval of he (sic) who has tried to persuade him he is something indigenous, however necessary this may be in one sense, validates the violater's (sic) poor opinion in another. And by succeeding at the other, I, we affirm a part of our own dread that we may no longer be fully ourselves. "I wasn't fully myself eihter after 3,000 words.

Insofar as there was a discernible point about football it was that the National League is an embarrassment, that Premier Division grounds across the water are the natural and appropriate fields of freams for football people here. This of course - its the reason the Magill piece is wrth mentioning - is the view of an influential faction of the sport's opinion-formers.

These are the commentators who typically tell us that Roy Keane, Ryanair, U" and the Tax Avoidance Kid represent the clued-up cosmopolitian Ireland of the future which only the incorrigibly uncoll hesitate to embrace. The National League, on the other hand, epitomises the ram-shackle Ireland of a time happliy fast fading.

The National League kicked off last Friday. Some of us feel a lilt in our step already. We will have a cluster of bejewelled vignettes stored in the memory from last season - Liam Coyles hundreth goal, or Paul Doolin of UCD giving a master-class in how to orchestrate a midfield without running too far or very fast. And while we won't remember many matches, or any maybe, which we could honestly estimate as classics, all of us will recall a number of engrossing encounters between decent sides giving their all.

There will have been dreay, shivering afternoons and evenings, too, that we came away from cursing. But that's part of it as well. If you never left a ground swearing that that's effing it, you'll never be back, well, you've never really been there in the first place.

Fans of the National League are not a separate section of the footballing public. Many will be heavily involved at junior livel in their areas. A high percentage will also follow this or that cross channel or European side. They will have a much deeper knowledge of the game generally and a finer appreciation of play than those whose involvement in football consists entirely in having affixed their hopes of happiness in life to the fortunes of some glamour-studded outfit run by hot-money chancers.

We're regularily invited to revere the great, serious-minded men of football across the water - Sir this, so-and-so OBE. The National League has Ollie Byrne, not a man to invite reverence, with a seemingly constant urge towards infuriating behaviour, who pours his whole being into Shelbourne. Why does he do it? It must be love. There's no other explanation. The only good reason for giving your life to, as opposed to living your life through, a football club. All love is occasionally irrational in its manifestation.

The real reason many self-proclaimed "football fans" and self-regarding "football analysts" disdain the National League is that there's no money in it. Nobody makes big bucks from involvement. To some that's proof positive it can't be of real value. Buts its worth is beyond measure when compared with football as misunderstood by the sorts who imagine they're taking the game seriously when they ponder the wisdom of such tosh as: "It was probably inevitable that soccer would become a vehicle for the unashamed expression of our post-colonial imagination, a sort of surrending to that which, in other contextsthe national project of de-Anglicisation sought to eliminate."

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Bateman

Kildare County were formed after there was a vacancy in the eircom league First Division following the merger between St Pats and St Francis, when St Francis pulled out of Senior football.

Kildare County are basically a hybrid between a couple of Junior teams from Kildare, Newbridge Town being the most influential. The people who are running the club are from a Schoolboy and junior football background, and are working very hard without the cynicism that dogs many clubs operations in the league. They will be a breth of fresh air to football in Ireland, hopefully. They have an excellent commercial footing, having sold 10 year season tickets, with Ray D'arcy being the first to buy one. Stephen Finn (of RTE's Soccer Show) is involved, and with a sound financial footing and a crowd of 1000 for their first game which wasn't even in the league, they will be one of the favourites for the First Division title. Manager Dermot Keely has the pedigree but not necessarily the bottle for the job, and many of the squad have Premier Division experience.

Only drawback is the 25 seating 10 standing admission fees charged into Station Road, Newbridge for the Limerick game. Most hope this will be a one-off.

Ciaran

Originally posted by Bateman
Only drawback is the 25 seating 10 standing admission fees charged into Station Road, Newbridge for the Limerick game. Most hope this will be a one-off.

Christ, that's nuts. I hope they don't come up if they're going to charge those sort of prices;)

Bateman

10 to stand isn't so bad, but the 25 seating will put families off, they will have to lower the prices, I can't see people paying it on a consistent basis.