On Soccer:After the week in which Ian Paisley came to Dublin and shook hands with Bertie Ahern outside Farmleigh, the manner in which Dermot Ahern's call three months ago for a merger between Irish football's two governing bodies was casually dismissed looks more disappointing than ever.

As Paisley seeks to maximise the financial benefits of the deal he has done with Sinn Féin, cross-Border relations now look set to be strengthened in a whole range of areas. But having seemed to be fractionally ahead of the political posse three years ago when striking a deal to re-establish an all-Ireland football club competition in the form of the Setanta Cup, the FAI and IFA now appear well behind it because of their failure to build on this early success.

Not for the first time, Linfield manager David Jeffrey revealed some frustration with the competition's structures a couple of weeks ago when he called for its expansion and a change in the timing so that it does not come around just as the Irish League and the North's cup competitions are reaching their conclusions.

The timing of the tournament is never going to be perfect as long as clubs from North and South operate different seasons. More worrying, though, is the fact that any attempt to expand the competition would presumably require the additional places to be allocated evenly. Yet Linfield have been the only Northern side to progress beyond the group stages in each of the last two years, a pattern that won't change this year unless Dungannon Swifts win by eight goals in Cork.

The big wins secured by Cork and St Patrick's Athletic over Portadown and Dungannon two weeks ago served to highlight a problem that will not be addressed unless the Irish League attracts substantially increased investment so as to make up some of the ground lost on the League of Ireland in recent years. The problem is only a handful of the Northern top-flight's 16 clubs have even the potential to seriously compete on an all-Ireland stage and they cannot come close to achieving their potential within the current structures.

It's an issue that will be entirely beyond the control of the Setanta Cup organisers when they sit down to review this year's competition but it is important they continue to look at ways of maximising competition between North and South.

The reality, indeed, is the excitement generated by the establishment of the Setanta Sports Cup, as it is now known, was due in no small part to the widely held sense that it was a stepping stone towards something far more significant and beneficial.

Leading clubs both North and South have expressed support for the development of a unified league that takes greater account of the island's small population and the domestic game's limited finances.

The present situation is plainly outdated given the nature of the competition from the outside world.

If it is to happen, however, then the competition just cannot stand still for long and it can certainly not afford to be in any way devalued, as it was by the FAI this year when they decided that the winners of the League Cup will have to play off against the First Division champions for a place in next year's event.

The IFA and FAI, meanwhile, continue to plan their proposed joint bid for the 2011 European Under-21 Championships but it is difficult to see why Uefa is so keen to send the tournament here unless it were to mark something of much wider significance.

It would take a little vision and a lot of leadership for major progress to be made in the next four years but Paisley's conversion to cross-community co-operation provides ample evidence of just what is possible in the North these days.

Dermot Ahern knows that better than most and if his January speech amounted to more than a pre-election stunt for the consumption of his own constituents it may be time for the lifelong Dundalk fan to start driving his proposal forward rather than just making it and then walking away.