Our game still in league of its own
The week that was just in it magnified the good and the bad. First there was all the hype and hoopla preceding the Airtricity XI’s participation, alongside some of the elite names in European football, in the Dublin Super Cup.
But then, before a ball had even been kicked, came a rumpus about payments for players and complaints about the absence of shower facilities in the Irish team’s designated dressing room at the Aviva.
No such problems for Shamrock Rovers at their excellent Tallaght base ahead of the big Champions League game against FC Copenhagen. Instead, arguably the only disquieting feature was the near-hysteria in the run-up, with ourselves in the ‘meeja’ recklessly tempting fate by devoting a huge volume of column inches to the millions up for grabs should Rovers continue to progress.
Copenhagen hotshot Dame N’Doye rudely let the air out of that particular balloon after 40 minutes of a stirring home performance on Tuesday evening, but at least Rovers have the consolation now — dubious though it might be — of a Europa League play-off against Partizan Belgrade.
Unfortunately, there’ll be no lining, silver or otherwise, for Sligo, their notable achievement in drawing 0-0 away in the Ukraine scuppered by an early double whammy at the Showgrounds against Vorksla Poltava on Thursday.
And then there was the tangled web which enveloped St Patrick’s Athletic’s game against Karpaty Lviv, with a League of Ireland club once again making the headlines for all the wrong reasons, another instance of a good story gone bad.
And that was even before the Ukrainians proceeded to hand out a bit of a football lesson on the pitch.
Within the game here, there would have been considerable sympathy for the position of the players, part-time pros demanding meagre enough compensation for their sacrifices in the course of a series of arduous assignments which, via Iceland, Kazakhstan and the Ukraine, had brought them as far as a Europa League third qualifying round second leg game. Yet, even as an act of strategic brinkmanship, that very public commitment to strike action on the day of the game — a move which even the players themselves accepted would deal a “devastating blow” to the club and the league — always looked like a disproportionate response to what might have been characterised as, at worst, a slap in the face.
Fortunately, the intervention of the FAI helped ensure that sanity prevailed at the 11th hour but it all meant that, not for the first time, the last seven days would have sent out very mixed signals to those who view the domestic game with suspicion at the best of times.
Though the Dublin Super Cup Airtricity players were themselves not making a huge song and dance about it, the optics of their being given the only showerless dressing room of the four teams participating in the competition looked awful. The inconvenience, in a practical sense, might have amounted to nothing more taxing than a short bus ride within the stadium complex to the Wanderers dressing rooms, but the inevitable message that went out was of domestic players being treated as second-class citizens.
It would have been nice, therefore, if the players could have delivered an upbeat story on the pitch but I think a lot of the criticism directed at Damien Richardson in the aftermath of the three- and five-nil defeats to Man City and Celtic was harsh. In the absence of most of the likely Sligo, Pat’s and Rovers picks, the Airtricity selection was always going to be starting with a handicap. Certainly the tournament was good for some of the individuals taking part, with the eye-catching display of an already highly rated player like Dundalk’s Daniel Kearns sure to help convince the sceptical of the real quality to be found in the League.
Nevertheless, with European competition always the paramount consideration for participating Irish clubs in the summer months, some careful thinking will have to be done ahead of future Super Cup competitions to ensure that the Airtricity League involvement — if, indeed, it should be involved at all — amounts to something more substantial than making up numbers.
When making any kind of positive noise about the domestic game one always does so in mortal fear of provoking the curse of the asterisk.
The moment someone murmurs “it’s all calm out there” you can be almost certain that news will break of a club going to court, if not right to the wall.
And with media folk once again being seduced by the siren call of the same mythical European breakthrough which had dashed so many Irish football dreams on the rocks in recent years, it was both sobering and encouraging to hear Shamrock Rovers manager Michael O’ Neill — speaking ahead of the home game against Copenhagen – insisting that, even if Rovers were to claim the holy grail, the comparative riches involved could not be allowed to radically alter the sustainable model which has seen the club become the one to emulate for all those who’ve flown too close to the sun and just about lived to tell the tale.
Hope springs eternal, of course, but a reality check is never a bad thing.
- Contact: liammackey@hotmail.com
