“BOHEMIAN FC – SELLING OUT THEIR TRADITIONS AND VALUES – RIPPING OFF THEIR OWN SUPPORTERS – ALL FOR A ‘HOME’ DERBY ON THE SOUTHSIDE.” Bohemians fans watching from the far end of the Aviva reacted dismissively to the message displayed by the supporters of Shamrock Rovers, a club that has moved around a fair bit in their time. Most seemed happy to be part of the biggest crowd ever to watch a League of Ireland game.
As a showcase of the growing mass appeal of Irish domestic football, Sunday’s game was a tremendous success. The digital pitchside hoardings carried ads for Fallon & Byrne’s “game-changing corporate events”; Sherry Fitzgerald and Cardinal Capital Group were also paying to be part of the occasion.
Paradoxically, the scaled-up event also lacked the fervour that is the League of Ireland’s chief selling point. Once the clouds from the prematch pyros had dissipated, the game was played in a low-key Sunday afternoon atmosphere and the players responded with an early-season, still-getting-into-the-swing-of-things kind of performance.
The attention of the Bohs fans centred on their new super-striker Lys Mousset, the ex-Bournemouth and Sheffield United player who has come to Dublin after spending most of 2024 without a club.
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Moose-maniacs speculated wildly about how many goals the phenomenon would score this season – 25? 30? (But wouldn’t that reflect badly on the league? Who cares!) The start of the season is a time for hope.
Ten minutes into the game those expectations had been downgraded somewhat as the burly Moose struggled to get around the field and affect the game.
His first major involvement was a rampaging run that ended with him crashing into a defender. A few minutes later he charged forward again as the screams of MOOOSE rang out all around – but the move fizzled out with a clumsy stepover.
Then, on 25 minutes, Mousset flicked a clever ball around the corner for Connor Parsons. Parsons cut outside his man and McGinty pushed his shot on to the post, but Ross Tierney arrived to score the rebound just ahead of the Moose.
There was not much more from the centre forward, who looks like he will need quite a few games to regain his old sharpness. He was coming short, looking for balls to feet – was this because he is a Roberto Firmino-type linkman, or because he didn’t want to run in behind?
On 56 minutes he made way for Colm Whelan, who at 24 has already come back from two torn ACLs yet still proved a much more willing and persistent front-runner than Mousset.
There is a wider question there as to whether it really makes sense for League of Ireland clubs to try to salvage the careers of once-promising 29-year-olds who have lost their way, rather than betting on still-promising players such as Whelan.
Shamrock Rovers were taking the latter approach, giving another start to their 16-year old striker Michael Noonan four days after he became the second-youngest goalscorer in the history of European club competitions with his winner against Molde.
Just before half-time Noonan pursued a ball down the channel, with Robert Cornwall a half-step ahead of him. The youngster chased but Cornwall cleverly slowed up as he came on to the ball and Noonan bundled him over from behind to concede a free-kick. Ability and enthusiasm are great but experience can still get the better of them.
The atmosphere heated up in the tense closing minutes, the Bohs fans gloating over the failure of Rovers’ last desperate attacks.
Stephen Bradley remained on the offensive after the final whistle, blasting Heimir Hallgrímsson for supposedly disrespecting the league. “We’ve got an international manager telling my players to leave. To have a chance to play for Ireland! That’s incredibly disrespectful to me and the league … I think that shows you the thoughts that they [the Abbottstown regime] have – they’ll give you soundbites, but I think that shows you what they really feel about it.”
[ Shamrock Rovers’ Stephen Bradley rebukes ‘out of touch’ Heimir HallgrímssonOpens in new window ]
To be clear, what Hallgrímsson had said, in the midst of comments praising Rovers’ run in the UEFA Conference League, was: “There’s a lot of scouting on those players at the moment. Hopefully they will get a career change from this good success.”
“His comments regarding our players moving to give themselves a chance to play for the Ireland team is absolutely ridiculous. It’s so out of touch with what we need. It’s incredible, I actually can’t believe [the media] didn’t pick up on it. And he wasn’t questioned on it,” Bradley said.
Maybe the reason nobody challenged Hallgrímsson on that point is that the logic of what he was saying was so obvious. The players who are good enough to play international football are generally to be found in the rich leagues.
If you look at the countries whose leagues are ranked closest to Ireland in the current Uefa coefficient (Moldova and Slovenia) you find that the vast majority of their international players play their club football abroad. The same rule holds when you look farther up the table at countries with higher-ranked leagues: Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Belgium, Portugal, France ... the best players in all these countries gravitate towards the big-money leagues, and the best Irish players are no different.
“We’re trying to grow a league. We’re trying to entice players to stay here longer and improve in every aspect ... And that comes out of our national team manager’s mouth? It’s incredible,” Bradley said. Except Hallgrímsson’s job is not to grow the League of Ireland but to identify and pick the best Irish players available.
“The comments show a complete disconnect between the national team and our domestic league,” said Bradley. But it’s been like that as long as anyone can remember. What’s new is that the League is challenging the national team’s status as the thing Irish football fans care most about. Bradley spitting fire can only help.
