Tommy Martin: League of Ireland must learn that people can be seduced, if you woo them right

Tonight’s visit to the Emirates is one of those golden shores that appear on the horizon and fill the heart, at least until the next big wave rolls by

Thu, 29 Oct, 2020 - 06:00

Tommy Martin

For Dundalk, a glimpse of the possible.

Even the League of Ireland’s best and brightest clubs live in a state of pitch and roll, fortunes surging and plunging in the domestic soccer’s precarious waters.

You can win the league and get relegated three years later (sorry Cork).

Tonight’s visit to the Emirates is one of those golden shores that appear on the horizon and fill the heart, at least until the next big wave rolls by. These are moments to savour for an Irish club and they are hard-earned.

League of Ireland people are often either dismissive of the Premier League’s chintzy glamour or openly hostile to its voracious marketing.

But none of the Dundalk squad will be unmoved by the chance to strut their stuff in one of English football’s great cathedrals.

They will adopt the demeanour of cold professionals but no player puts in the endless hours of graft required to make a living from the game without being a romantic.

Only true love can make you that dedicated and though the marble halls of Highbury are in the past, the name of Arsenal Football Club will stir the heart of anyone who was once a boy kicking a ball against a wall.

But Dundalk are not lucky competition winners, nor is this a glamour friendly.

Although no one will be inviting Dundalk to high-level talks about a European Super League, tonight they and Arsenal are as equals. Both have, by the great Uefa competition algorithm in the sky, been placed in the same group stage orbit on merit.

People might say that Dundalk’s run to this group stage was handy.

To casual football fans, Inter Escaldes, Sheriff Tiraspol and KÍ Klaksvik may sound more like transcontinental haulage firms than crack European rivals. But none of them would have been terrified of Dundalk either and still they had enough nous to grind their way through.

That Dundalk have qualified for the Europa League group stage twice in the six or seven seasons of their current ascendancy speaks to the need to buy enough tickets to win this particular raffle. They have stayed the course, even through the chaos of this season.

But what does it all mean? The pitch and roll again. At half-time in their opening match against Molde, with Dundalk a goal up, a glimpse of European respectability.

A victory worth five times their League of Ireland-winning payday within their grasp. Arsenal trailed Rapid Vienna at that stage. Dundalk would be top of their group. Look at me Ma!

Then the swell came. Molde upped it. Dundalk fell back. Their novice manager was too slow to see the surge. Legs suddenly wearied by the slog of their domestic campaign. Tackles and blocks, snapped into with enthusiasm in the first half, were now beyond reach. Two Molde goals came. Submerged. And Arsenal next…

Still, at least a League of Ireland team were leading sports news bulletins and commanding over-subscribed attention spans for a time.

But then came Saturday evening. Bohemians’ defeat to Finn Harps gave Shamrock Rovers the league title. Blink and you missed it. Ireland’s most storied club winning its first championship in nine years and it generated column inches that would disappoint your average parish bake sale.

A perfect storm maybe: An unexpected result, late on a busy Saturday chock-full of international rugby, Championship GAA, Premier League soccer and without celebratory pictures to go with it.

But what other national league would see its decisive title moment confined to the ‘In Brief’ section?

Pitch and roll. Storm surges and periods of calm. Maybe the Emirates is too much to hope for.

Dundalk players will remember Stephen Rice putting Rovers ahead at White Hart Lane back in 2011 and wonder if they might get moment like that. Wouldn’t it be great?

But the golden shores lie elsewhere. In places like Molde. Small, well-organised clubs in small, well-organised countries with nice, neat little stadiums. Leagues like Norway’s which signed a six-year domestic TV deal worth €220m in 2015.

Denmark, the country we usually turn to when we want to feel bad about ourselves, generates €30m a season for its domestic TV rights.

Leagues that make Irish clubs think, well we wouldn’t make that much, but could we at least make something?

The League of Ireland doesn’t make big money because not enough people pay to watch it.

But 25 years ago people didn’t walk around with Leinster or Munster jerseys on.

People can be seduced, if you woo them right. If the League of Ireland is the small craft negotiating perilous seas, there are currents moving that may or not take it somewhere better.

Let’s presume an end to Covid chaos comes.

Plans for an All-Island league had received widespread backing on both sides of the border.

These were pitched on ambitious commercial terms that would see the league begin to generate, heaven forfend, actual revenue.

We don’t exactly how yet, but Brexit will change how British clubs recruit from overseas. It seems unlikely that they will continue to hoover up talented Irish children quite so indiscriminately. If a decent football industry can be provided here, then some of them will stay at home to light up domestic football for a time at least.

Next season, Uefa launch the Europa Conference League, effectively division two of the Europa League. We don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, or how much revenue it will generate, but the stated aim is to guarantee group stage football for 34 of Uefa’s 55 member nations, rather than the current 26. That’s more tickets for the raffle.

Most positively, the sun shines in Abbotstown.

The grim house arrest under which Irish football lived is over. In its place, proper governance and a hot-shot CEO from England who, one hopes, doesn’t think he’s the James Bond of football admin.

For Irish football, a glimpse of the possible.

But it needs all hands on deck.