EMMET MALONE ON SOCCER:If the proposed All-Ireland League gets the go ahead we will again see the lower-tier sides losing out
THE OLD saying about desperate times calling for desperate measures appears to have become the unofficial motto of the League of Ireland in recent weeks. There have been squads trimmed, pay cuts agreed and even talk of impending bankruptcies.
The majority of clubs backing Platinum One's attempt to establish a new All-Ireland League, mostly the country's biggest, have thus far survived relatively unscathed but it's a measure of their growing frustration with the rather battered environment in which they are meant to collectively ply their trade they have written to the Minister for Sport, Martin Cullen, requesting he intervene so as to make FAI chief executive John Delaney see what they reckon to be sense.
The letter was sent two weeks ago and there are rumours the Minister has had a quiet word with Delaney. But as yet the seven clubs that signed the letter (of the eight League of Ireland sides originally pencilled in for the new 10-team all-island top flight, Shamrock Rovers declined) have received no reply to their appeal.
In the week the FAI's agm will be held in Galway the situation is a curious one. The agms have been rather meaningless affairs for some time now, with carefully sanitised agendas drawn up with the aim of portraying the football family as a unified little clan.
Certainly the level of division witnessed on these occasions would have caused understandable levels of concern to those at the top of the table, but at least there was a sense that the get-togethers provided an opportunity for what those in the politics business like to describe as "full and frank exchanges".
Now the agms and the week long "festivals of football" staged in the preceding days are little more than elaborately assembled PR events that few in the media (or, one presumes, in football) take all that seriously.
This week a Giovanni Trapattoni press conference is being used as a carrot to entice the press along but 18 months into the association's stewardship of the league and with the national team somewhat out of season it's not half the attraction that a genuinely open debate on the domestic game's current problems would be.
If it achieved absolutely nothing else, the 62-page discussion document circulated to clubs by Platinum One (which can be read at irishtimes.com/sports/soccer) might have served as the basis for such a debate, but the official line appears to remain that everything is not only under control but also moving in the right direction.
It was claimed once again at the weekend that attendances are up but there is certainly no sense of it among the sample of clubs contacted by The Irish Times in recent days, with just one suggesting more people are paying into their games this year than last - but then that team are playing in a higher division this time around.
A couple of the clubs that have experienced particular problems of late also cite the current economic climate as having hit their budgets, with sponsors, advertisers and behind-the-scenes benefactors all finding it easier to say no these days.
The game's biggest bankrollers remain on board but nobody is quite sure for how long.
Denis O'Sullivan of Arkaga, the venture-capital group that owns Cork City, apparently told the last meeting of the All-Ireland League group that the company would give up on the club if there weren't signs by the end of the year that the project would be successfully realised.
St Patrick's Athletic, meanwhile, are still looking to invest in improving their squad. But if you want an idea of how important Garrett Kelleher's largesse is to that club's business model then how about this: it is widely believed a recent offer made by the Richmond Park outfit to a player from a rival club was worth just over €250,000 per annum, which is more or less the club's entire gate receipts for last season.
Combined losses for the league as a whole have either doubled or trebled (depending on whom you believe) since Genesis reported a few short seasons ago that the situation was unsustainable, and while the top clubs continue to pay ever higher sums for a few of the very best players, as in the case mentioned above, and significant sums to many others (wages of between €50,000 to €80,000 are not uncommon).
Frantic belt tightening is the order of the day elsewhere, with at least two high-profile Premier Division clubs - Sligo Rovers and Galway United - expected to either abandon full-time football or drastically reduce the number of full-time players they employ next season.
Those arguing that the clubs in question are being selfish by leaving the rest behind must contend with the fact that even some of those set to be sidelined seem to feel something radical simply has to be done. And clubs in the First Division, some of whom pay players around €50 a week - a figure well below the minimum if you tot up the time spent training, playing and travelling to and from games - generally feel they simply could not be any more marginalised.
Apparently, though, the people who run the game believe all of this is part of an adjustment process as clubs at all levels get used to playing by the new, much more stringent rules. The league's director, Fran Gavin, said on Sunday that substantial new sponsorship deals were in the pipeline and would be announced over the coming months, but there much scepticism out there.
To date, the FAI has effectively allocated a portion of broader commercial deals in much the same way the league got a proportion of the TV money when it retained its autonomy. The figures now are larger but there has yet to be one deal of major significance that suggests the commercial world has any real faith in the senior domestic game as a stand-alone "product".
Television is an interesting case in point. The present levels of coverage are seen by some as conclusive evidence you need to be careful what you wish for. There are live games almost every week and RTÉ's efforts on the highlights front are heroic but nobody is paying anything remotely significant for the rights.
Word has it that, while the clubs wait on the Minister to reply, they will make some sort of bid to have the current situation and Platinum One's proposals to address it discussed on Saturday.
It would be nice to think the day might mark the start of an open, reasoned and wider debate involving all the interested parties. In the circumstances it seems that is the least that is required, but after the last few months it's hard to be optimistic.
