Emmet Malone/National League: There was a time, fondly recalled in so many biographies, when footballers left Ireland to make their name in the English game with little more to weigh them down than their boots and a map to some windswept training ground in their back pocket.
During the boom years players grew used to being considered a somewhat more precious commodity. Parents of youngsters who could kick a ball straight for the right sort of club on a Sunday afternoon could expect to find Alex Ferguson sitting at their kitchen table on Monday morning. Clubs went out of their way to make it clear how much they wanted our children and suitably star-struck parents often supplied them without asking too many pertinent questions.
The last few weeks, though, have provided confirmation that the good times are over. Each day brings news of another set of young players who have fallen victim to the new economic realities of the English game. The list of unemployed footballers grows longer and those who do manage to find new employers are finding that after the years of "player power" the game has entered the era of assertive accountancy.
The recession within football is taking its toll on almost everybody from top to bottom. When Chris Coleman took over as caretaker manager at Fulham some of the club's established names were, if their contracts were about to run out, being offered new deals worth half as much money. The club, which in many cases was still offering £8,000 a week, made it clear if the player didn't like the terms he could move on. Behind the scenes a lot of players have been quietly grumbling but the signs are that many realise they are unlikely to do better elsewhere.
It is not easy to work up a huge amount of sympathy for someone who is still clearing more than €500,000 annually at the end of the process. In the lower reaches of the English game the figures are a little more grim. York City's policy is apparently to impose a salary cap of £500 on its first-team players for next season. The prospect of perhaps 15 years on that wage followed by a scramble to find a new career in later life is presumably a good way short of what those players were aiming for when they reckoned fate had done them a favour by handing them a first professional contract at the age of 16.
Still the grind goes on and there is no lack of Irish players caught up in it at present. On Friday Clive Delaney became one of the latest of our under-age internationals to be released by his club. Keith Foy, Stephen Capper and Clifford Byrne are just three of the many others to be let go and more are expected to find themselves in the same position during the weeks ahead.
West Ham had offered Delaney a deal and then changed their mind. Yesterday the former UCD central defender was at Easter Road hoping to woo Hibernian boss Bobby Williamson - the same Williamson who is trying to offload a good portion of his first-team squad, including Nicky Colgan - into providing him with alternative employment.
Delaney is much better off than many. Aside from being well qualified for life outside the game after his studies here, he is, as his agent Eamon McLoughlin (of Drury Sports Management) observes, fortunate insofar as he is coming from a Premiership club which, despite his short time at Upton Park and the fact he never featured in the first team, puts him at an advantage when competing with players who carry the stigma of having been rejected by clubs in the lower regions.
McLoughlin estimates clubs outside the Premiership will, on average, seek to reduce the size of their first-team squads from about the 26-28 mark to about 18-20. This time last year the Professional Footballers' Association had about 500 unemployed players on their books but lay-offs on that scale would go close to doubling the figure.
Those who survive find themselves, like the stars at Fulham, being offered greatly reduced money with a far greater emphasis being placed on performance. Appearance money, says McLoughlin, can account for 50 per cent of the value of a contract on offer these days.
The implications for the game here are mixed with clubs in Ireland better able to compete for players but further than ever, it seems, from obtaining decent fees for locally produced talent except where FIFA regulations dictate compensation must be paid.
But it is a grim reflection on our clubs that, for all the progress they have made in different areas, they are still not perceived as sufficiently attractive to prevent youngsters being sucked into a system which will discard the majority and offer almost all but a handful of the rest little more than a modest income for a quarter or so of their working lives.
