O’Neill takes keen interest in league

Martin O’Neill has insisted his engagement with League of Ireland football as Ireland manager will not just be for show.

O’Neill yesterday attended the launch of the SSE Airtricity 2014 season which kicks off next Friday and, in front of an audience at the Aviva Stadium which included managers and players from Premier and First Division clubs, said he hoped to track the progress of future international talent in the domestic game.

“I’m obviously going to try and take a few games in,” he said. “Hopefully, as the managers might tell me during the course of the season, it will not be a PR exercise or anything like that. I hope to see some players coming through. I actually think that they will do. And I’m really looking forward to it.”

The national team manager noted with interest Chairman of the National League Executive Committee Eamon Naughton’s observation that 11 of the players capped at senior level for Ireland last year were graduates of the League of Ireland.

“Hopefully [we’ll discover] one or two more players along the way,” said O’Neill.

Assessing the mood ahead of the new season, he went on: “This launch is obviously exciting for everyone. I have a lot empathy, or sympathy perhaps, with the players but particularly the managers. We had a photograph taken down on the pitch and it was interesting to see the lads gathered — one or two elder statesmen like myself and one or two of the younger lads, who looked really nice today, but who will look like me in the middle of June when results are not going that all that fantastically well. I’ve only had about 135 years experience of this.

“But, overall, it will be great. I’m looking forward to meeting the managers through the summertime. I hope I’m around here for the next couple of years for you to still be inviting me to this day. But we’ll see.”

O’Neill raised laughter with his comparison between Irish League football in his day and standards North and South now. “I played in the Irish League for a team called Distillery — aptly named,” he quipped.

“I was a young student then at Queens University and there were five or six older members of the team at that time who hadn’t been to university. As the senior players often said to me, [it was more the] university of life, like in the pub on a Friday night before we would take part in the games on the Saturday. I think that league has become more professional and hopefully down here too it’s more professional.

“But as someone who played domestic football in Ireland, I understand the importance of the domestic game and congratulate all the managers and players for the tremendous work you are doing to develop Irish football.”

After yesterday’s launch, O’Neill and FAI chief John Delaney went to Derry where they celebrated the 25th anniversary of City’s treble success. Tomorrow, O’Neill and Roy Keane will attend the inaugural President’s Cup season curtain-raiser at Richmond Park between league champions St Pat’s and cup holders Sligo Rovers (kick off 4pm), before the pair head to RTÉ studios — with the Irish squad for Wednesday’s game against Serbia at the Aviva Stadium — to attend the annual televised 3/FAI International Awards ceremony.

With just a week to the big kick-off, among the highlights of the new SSE Airtricity League season will be the return to the Premier Division of Athlone Town after a gap of 18 years, the debut in the First Division of Galway FC and the novel appearance, also in the second tier, of a Shamrock Rovers B team.

Meanwhile, O’Neill will be at Vicarage Road today to watch Watford against Blackpool while Keane will be at the Britannia Stadium where Stoke City host Arsenal.