In 1998, RTÉ’s Prime Time highlighted the precarious journey of Irish teenagers moving to England to pursue a career in professional football.
“The game of soccer is no longer a sport,” said Miriam O’Callaghan, “it is an international business with English clubs quoting shares on the stock exchange.
“Young players are now the raw material for this business with each new talent worth millions of pounds.
“So, what are the risks for the many young Irish players who dream of a full-time football career with its promise of money, adulation and celebrity status?”
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Back then, Everton scout Michael Doherty was not even trying to hide how “easy” it was to pick off Irish talent at 16 and, as tended to happen, discard them at 18.
“I think English clubs look at [Ireland] as a sort of free market,” said Doherty. “It is quite easy to bring them over.”
Neither of the two boys interviewed by Prime Time – Alan Kinsella, then 14, and Alan Hughes – ended up having prolonged careers in the game.
“It’s terrible,” said Hughes, the former Brighton youth goalkeeper. “You are there for two years and it is so hard to settle down, and when you finally settle down you are told to go home again.
“Nobody really tells you things are not going to work out.”
[ Behind the scenes at St Patrick’s Athletic’s academyOpens in new window ]
Brian Kerr featured, speaking in his previous role as FAI technical director, and on the cusp of managing the Republic of Ireland under-16 and under-18 squads to unprecedented European Championship titles.
“They are going to England younger and younger, they are going on trial at 12 and 13 years of age,” said Kerr. “At the moment, four of our under-14 international team from last season have been signed up.
“That’s a very unnatural situation for young kids to be going into. They should be in their own environment among their parents. They should be staying in school.”
Kerr had the vision, demanding that the youth development being done in the 2020s by clubs like Shelbourne, St Patrick’s Athletic and Shamrock Rovers became an FAI priority in 1998.
But the FAI is dealing with a €70m debt and, as a result, are unable to fund a proper academy system. The need for such a system has increased in recent years, after new Brexit laws blocked players from signing for an English club until they turn 18.
[ FAI warns of Brexit impact shrinking Ireland’s talent poolOpens in new window ]
This means that League of Ireland clubs are overwhelmingly responsible for producing talent in a country that used to rely on boys like Kinsella and Hughes being developed at clubs like Everton and Brighton.
Kerr’s voice resonates down the decades: “Statistically, it has been shown, the players who go at 18, 19, 20 with experience of playing in the League of Ireland behind them have done much better.
“It is very hard to put a value on being at home, among your own peers, family and friends, and the support structure that that gives people.
“I think there is an opportunity now for the national league to expand, to improve its quality and to keep more of our better players at home for a later stage of their careers.”
Football Families, a new documentary about the same subject, produced by Shinawil, airs the first of three episodes tonight (Thursday, July 31st) on RTÉ One at 10.10pm.
It focuses on the Shelbourne FC academy with a cameo from Damien Duff, who resigned as the club’s first team manager last month.
The introduction to the programme is immediately misleading: “The tide has turned for Irish football ...”
The stark reality faced by individual teenagers, forced to move to England in 1998, is replaced by an insurmountable scenario facing modern League of Ireland clubs.
Duff repeatedly states that the gap between the Shels’ academy and what he experienced living inside the Blackburn Rovers training ground from age 16 is widening.
“Do I see enough players that take my breath away, that maybe happened 10, 15, 20 years ago? No, I don’t.”
An obvious difference between the two shows – produced 27 years apart – is the teenagers featured in 2025 are not blinkered by a need to attempt a moon shot to clubs like Everton or Manchester United straight after their Junior Certificate.
“I would love to eventually play in England, that’s my end goal,” said Dan Ring after scoring 43 goals for the Shelbourne under-17s. “But I know there is a long way to go.”
Football Families deals in reality; the most determined 16- and 17-year-olds who cannot break into a League of Ireland first team are increasingly moving to European academies, with German clubs now seen as the smart destination.
“The industry in the UK and across Europe is much bigger,” admits Colm Barron, the Shelbourne Academy head. “They go into a full-time training environment from the age of 16.
“We cannot compete with what the [foreign] clubs can offer them from a development perspective.”
Episode one continually comes back to the lack of funding. An FAI audit of every League of Ireland academy is being sent to Government on August 15th, to ideally secure an €8 million annual investment from the next budget.
Football Families, begins tonight at 10.10pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player
