Setanta Cup: There may be high hopes for the inaugural Setanta Cup, which kicks off on Tuesday evening at the Oval where Glentoran take on Longford Town, but if Thursday's rather low-key launch for the competition is anything to go by, there are clearly doubts too about the ability of the cross-Border competition to establish itself as a significant part of the island's soccer calendar.

While Setanta's €1.6 million investment over four seasons has ensured that the prize money on offer to competing clubs will be substantial by the standards of the game here even the station's chief executive, Niall Cogley, sounded a little tentative as he contemplated the event's future this week.

"We keep saying that we have to be positive with this," he told club and league officials from both sides of the Border in Belfast, "but I don't think we should be thinking that it's something where we just click our fingers and it's all going to go right. It's going to take a good deal of work on all our parts, but we hope it's going to develop into something we'll all be proud of and the signs are certainly good."

For the clubs the opportunity to win some €150,000 for playing five games is too good to treat lightly and their pursuit of the cash will ensure that the competition is taken seriously by managers which should, in turn, guarantee that the games are competitive.

The timing of the event has, however, proven problematic with the first match coming just days before the season in the South kicks off while the final is scheduled for after the end of what is proving to be a tight three-way Irish League title race between the North's three representatives - Glentoran, Linfield and Portadown.

All profess to be enthusiastic about the first cross-Border competition in 25 years with the Glentoran chief executive, Tom Dick, going as far this week as to suggest it might pave the way to an all-Ireland league.

"People in football know that there has to be an all-Ireland league somewhere down the line," he said. "Football's going to die if we don't have it. Linfield aside, there's no visiting supporters in this league and there are too many clubs.

"Supporters want to see you play against the best teams possible and they don't really mind who that means. It would mean a lot of work, the clubs here would have to go full-time."

Linfield, though, weren't even represented at Thursday's launch and, even allowing for the fact that the funeral of one of the club's former stars was taking place at roughly the same time, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Dick's enthusiasm might not be wholeheartedly shared across Belfast.

The history of these competitions (there have been five previous incarnations) does not inspire confidence either with only two - the Inter City Cup back in the 1940s and the Blaxnit Cup in the late 1960s and early 1970s - surviving for more than three seasons.

Crowds of more than 20,000 were common in the mid-1940s, but when the violence that accompanied Linfield's trip home from Athlone after the second leg of the last Tyler Cup final in 1980 put an end to that competition there was little appetite for a swift crack at another revival.

A great deal has changed in the 25 years since, but the soccer business in Ireland has not got any easier and it remains to be seen whether substantial prize money and considerable television exposure is enough to help this competition find its niche in an increasingly packed market.