John Caulfield: Why bigger would be better in the League of Ireland

The new SSE Airtricity League structure was announced on Thursday and, with 12 set to become 10 in the Premier Division in 2018, it means that, quite late in the day, clubs now know that three teams will be relegated and one promoted from the First Division at the end of the coming season.

I have to say that, in principle, I’m against the reduction in size of the Premier Division. It’s not that I’m against change in the structure of the League of Ireland, but rather that I would have preferred if they had gone the other way and expanded the top flight to 16 teams.

As things stand, the 12 clubs who will make up the Premier Division for the coming season represent a good geographical spread and I’d be concerned that if it was the country clubs who were to lose out by virtue of three of them going down, then that healthy variety would be diluted under the new format. Overall attendances could be affected too, since it’s some of the provincial clubs who command the biggest support in the league.