THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

It was my partner Caroline who encouraged me off the sofa to see a live game again. When I did I was first pleasantly surprised; the game had improved, players were much fitter, playing surfaces were much better, and the standard of refereeing had improved beyond belief. Then I was enthralled by the match tactics of Mr Pat Devlin. It’s commonly accepted that a coach is relatively helpless once he has prepared his side for the kick off. Sure he can wave and shout from the dugout and inject inspiration during the interval but otherwise all he can do is put the subs on.

Mr Devlin, however, uses the players on his bench to monitor play in a way I have not seen any other coach do. He manipulates the shape of his team on the pitch to reflect the immediate circumstances of the match; players often fill several roles during the ninety minutes and he often declines to cover his goalkeeper against injury to afford himself a wider choice of outfield player. When the team is successful one is in awe at the versatility of the players, when the team struggles one questions what an individual team member’s most effective role is. It was thinking completely foreign to me until I realised how truly revolutionary it was. This season it has, on occasions, failed a Bray Wanderers team that has struggled for a variety of other reasons, but such errors do not mean that the theory itself is invalid.

The improvement in refereeing is spectacular. I do not imply by this that individual decisions are not as fiercely disputed as ever. But I don’t think even the most biased fan thinks that officials are corrupt and once integrity can be taken for granted it’s not the matter of decisions that should interest the observer but the ability of those officials to regulate the match as efficiently as possible with the minimum dislocation of play. The first requirement is fitness, which has vastly improved, in keeping with that of the players. The second is an unobtrusive charisma, a powerful understated presence for the player coupled with anonymity for the spectator. The worst kind of refereeing is when the official seeks to become the spectacle. It is refereeing for the wrong reason and I have only found one current League of Ireland official consistently guilty of this aberration.

So much for the good. But while the product on the pitch improves, its administration and marketing continues to be woeful. The short-comings of the FAI and the Eircom League have been widely publicised. The truth is that these organisations are staffed at executive level by people who are unqualified for the responsibility. Twenty years as hon treasurer of Ballylickey Rovers, however admirably fulfilled, does not equip a man for office in big business – which is what professional soccer has become. The embarrassing gaffes I can excuse, the inefficiency I can’t and the benign corruption I won’t.

Most clubs in the League of Ireland are still run from the inside pockets of the local businessmen, without whom they would flounder. Often these are admirable people involved in a private folly that leaves them considerably out of pocket. Occasionally they are local business impresarios who see “their” soccer club as an extension of their empires. Whatever the motives, most rule organisations with little or no administrative structure. If they ran their own businesses the way they do their football clubs they would rapidly go broke. Few seem to have realised that funding for their organisations has to come from sources other than the unpredictable gate receipts for what is still a minority spectator sport in this country. All the more since, thanks to arrogant indifference to marketing the match product, the development of the support base is largely left to a programme appeal “to bring a friend” to the next match.

Since the League administration is ineffective, it is effectively run by these few large egos at club management level. Fixtures are switched; kick off times changed at a moment’s notice. “A real supporter would find out” is the reaction to protest at this cavalier treatment of the potential paying customer, a mind set that keeps the blinkers in place. It’s enough to make a professional marketing man weep.

The League of Ireland is currently a private club whose members are mostly grouped on the East coast. It is arranged thus so that the richest clubs, based in the capital, can play each other ad nauseam in such close proximity that both home and away supporters can conveniently attend without undue travelling, thus boosting gate receipts. The business of bumping up the number of matches in the season’s programme by having clubs play opponents three times is indefensible. Although the home advantage is supposedly balanced by reversing the location of these three matches the following season, since each season is self-contained this is a fallacy, the imbalance remains.

There is no financial or football justification for twenty professional football clubs in the Republic; the “second” division has been created to support the greed of the major clubs in providing a structure where the majority of provincial clubs can exist in financial limbo. The money gulf between the divisions means that any promoted club needs an unrealistically huge injection of cash to afford the kind of squad to maintain senior status. It is precisely this circumstance that has caused such turmoil at Drogheda United this season.

What the game in Ireland really requires is the return to a single division of perhaps sixteen clubs representative of the whole country, affording these competitors the chance to remain viable. Feeder leagues could be maintained on a regional, cost effective basis, with promotion dependent on having suitable facilities.

Going to a soccer match in the Republic, while rarely comfortable, is generally a good experience. Quite apart from the possibility of seeing an exciting, sometimes excellent, product the social environment is usually welcoming. It’s an event to which you can generally bring the family. Despite lack of segregation the craic is usually good. Sadly an ugly element has begun to invade the terraces from fringe hooligan elements. I heard an anti-IRA chant from a gang of Bohs supporters in their home match against Derry that I doubt they would have the courage or stupidity to repeat at the Brandywell.

The major offenders are so-called Shamrock Rovers supporters, however. Watching a group of visibly better-qualified oafs abuse Dundalk’s keeper Connolly as “you fat bastard” was absurd enough to be amusing, for the spectator if not for the keeper, whose function requires him to try to concentrate on the game. But pursuing him round the ground in order to pelt him with sweets and coins is not so funny, particularly when the major response from the gardaí was to threaten criminal charges against Connolly when a sweet thrown back into the crowd was alleged to have struck a child. I would not designate the knot of gardaí who broke into an amble as effective crowd control and I wonder why none of those throwing objects and abuse were charged.

The worst display came when these yobs spat and threw coins at Jodi Lynch when the Bray defender lay in agony after dislocating his shoulder near the corner flag in the Carlisle. Video footage is available; have any prosecutions been filed?

Ultimately the game survives. Simple enough to be understood everywhere, demanding enough to separate the poseur from the pro, exciting enough to satisfy spectators around the world, big enough to defy any coaching theory, it is the reason we congregate to exult and despair. It makes firm friends of people with nothing else in common but the beautiful game. See you next season.

Brian de Salvo

first published in Seagull Scene, 10 January 2003