TONIGHT, the National League's finest play the pick of the Vauxhall Conference, as well as the ICIS, Unibond and Dr Martens League. Next up, they travel to Leckwith for a game against the Konica League of Wales next Tuesday, March 4th; incredibly, the week of the FAI Cup quarter finals. Konica? Comical more like.
No one's disputing the worthiness of giving our best domestic players representative honours. Indeed, the March 18th fixture against a Republic of Ireland B side is a worthy fixture, as we're last year's end of season representative games against Croatia and the tour to the US, which yields a return under 21 encounter against the Americans in April.
But tonight's game, and particularly the one in Wales, are indicative of the poor decision making process and administration in Merrion Square. Yet more bad footballing decisions made by bureaucrats.
It would be unfair to saddle the league's new Administrative Secretary (whatever that means) Sean Walsh with all the blame for these seriously flawed fixtures. After all, Walsh inherited them and they must have had the imprimatur of the NL president Michael Hyland as well as a majority of the management committee and the board of control, despite objections being raised at that level which were ignored.
The bottom line is that these fixtures come at the wrong time of the season, and will disrupt the leading teams' preparations for the league run in and the cup. As it is, 15 of the 16 man squad will be involved in the quarter finals while five of the Premier Division games scheduled for the cup quarter final weekend of March 9th will have to be cancelled and none can be rearranged for next week.
Walsh had originally allowed the Derry City Shamrock Rovers game to be played tomorrow week, 24 hours after the Konica game, but yesterday cancelled that rearranged fixture. With cup replays, inclement weather and the week of the game against the B side on March 18th also ruled out, a needless backlog of fixtures seems inevitable.
So why play them? To feather political caps? And what kind of subliminal message do they send out to Irish football fans? That the National league is only as good as the Vauxhall Conference or the Konica League? If the NL wins, so what? If they lose - and the Vauxhall Conference is a seriously competitive, near professional league - it must be considered very damaging. The NL are on a hiding to nothing with these games.
The biggest losers may well be the cup holders Shelbourne, because they have the most numerous contingent - originally seven but reduced to six by Greg Costello's withdrawal yesterday. It shouldn't be this way, yet while rival managers might normally be peeved at Shelbourne's representation, privately they are grateful that their cup quarter final preparations have not been hit so hard.
Shelbourne will not be able to train properly for the quarter final in Bray and the odds on at least one of the seven incurring an injury must be considerable. Certainly Damien Richardson and the Shelbourne players, along with everyone else represented in the NL squad, would be entitled to question their own priorities that week. Mass defections seem possible.
Admittedly that would be tough on the NL side's unfortunate manager, Pat Devlin, whose preparations have already been hit by a turn out of 10 for last Monday's training session, and the cancellation of yesterday morning's session due to complications over the players' gear.
It's all a bit of a farce, and as Pat Dolan, the St Patrick's manager, said on Sunday: "I don't think the league needs a match against the Vauxhall Conference. I think the players should have representative honours but I think we should be aspiring toward a full time league where we produce international players and we don't go for tokenism.
What frightens me is that in the week leading up to the cup quarter finals we've got our best players away in Wales. So, obviously, some one enjoys these trips.
"Nobody's interested in this country whether we beat the Welsh League. Nobody's interested in whether we play the Vauxhall Conference. Why do we play these games? For the same reason we make poor decisions at administrative level. The same reason we were instructed to turn up for a reserve game in Monaghan on Saturday even though they had notified us they could," not fulfil the fixture, before we got another fax on Friday saying the game was called off.
"I don't want to be moaning, but the likes of Shels, Shamrock Rovers and ourselves have contributed a lot to the league in the last few weeks but we need help. And these things need to be clear cut. It goes back to the fact that when they (the National League) appoint a full time person for the league, do they appoint a chief executive? No, they appoint an executive secretary. What does that mean?
"We need guys that come into, clubs and say `what can we do to help you?' Not pedantic little decisions that backfire and make them look stupid. Let's make the right decisions. Let's made sure that common sense comes back into football with refereeing decisions and administration and then we'll all be happy.
"There are a lot of good thing - in the league now, but let's aspire to full time professionals, decent facilities and an international selection that actually means something. Not arranging games away to the Welsh League in the week of the cup quarter finals. But who'll be accountable, who'll be responsible?
"Nobody."
