In a League of its own

Since there’s nothing guaranteed to send shivers up the spine of a journalist more than the words “powerpoint presentation” — apart, possibly, from a sentence beginning, “Here, this expenses claim you submitted...” — the media savvy Declan Conroy would have known that there were bound to be more pleasant ways of spending a chunk of what was his combined birthday and wedding anniversary than by unveiling his League of Ireland review to a hic of hacks in a Dublin hotel on Tuesday morning.

And, having already done the same for the FAI board and SSE Airtricity League clubs on preceding nights — as the climax to months of research before the writing up of his admirably comprehensive 75-page report — it was hardly a surprise that he was beginning to look distinctly weary as a relentlessly critical tone dominated the intensive 50 minutes of meeja questioning which followed his presentation.

And I can’t absolve myself. I may have been one of those who was interviewed by Conroy in the course of his research — though, disappointingly, my suggestion that clubs be obliged, under a stringent new licensing directive, to provide half-time tapas to the press doesn’t seem to have made the final cut — but, on Tuesday, I found myself asking him at one point if the lure of England’s Premier League was now so irresisitible and virtually all encompassing for Irish football fans that, no matter what radical revamping or tinkering around the edges might take place in the domestic game, the current dubious health of the League of Ireland might actually be as good and as bad as it’s ever going to get.