Out-of-contract PFAI players rely on kindness of others

In the absence this year of FAI support for the PFAI’s annual training camp for out of contract League of Ireland footballers, the players’ union has had to dig into its own resources and rely on the charity of clubs and others to ensure that the 2017 programme could kick off as planned yesterday.

Bohemians provided balls, bibs, and cones, CX Sports donated kit and Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk offered the Roadstone complex and Oriel Park, respectively, for games. That just left the not inconsiderable matter of sourcing a training pitch and, as it happens, the PFAI didn’t have to go too far to find one: Just a few 100 yards, in fact, from the pitch they would normally use at the National Training Centre at Abbotstown. But the move has come at a cost, the FAI’s insistence that their own facilities are unavailable meaning the PFAI are this year having to pay rent to use an alternative training complex within the National Sports Campus.

“It’s €120 per session for us to use the facility here,” PFAI general secretary Stephen McGuinness said yesterday.