FAI don’t care about league, claims Caulfield

Former Cork City manager John Caulfield fears the League of Ireland will be scraping a fragile existence a century from now, without major support from the FAI. And he warns Cork City will never be more than a couple of years of poor results from a threat to the club’s survival.

In the frank interview, carried in Neal Horgan’s new book, The Cross Roads, launched today at FAI Headquarters, Caulfield delivered a gloomy prognosis of the domestic league’s health.

“In 2005 you won the league,” he says to Horgan, the club’s regular right back in that campaign.

“The crowds were there and you were going well. Then three years later you were bankrupt. What’s the difference between then and now? You were full-time then — have things progressed? No they bloody haven’t. At the higher level, within the association, and I hate to say this as I have so much enthusiasm for the league, nobody is backing it from above. If you’re asking me do the people at the top have a real interest in professional soccer, I’d say no f..king chance.

“In that organisation, they might say they want professional football in Ireland but they don’t really. The votes are carried by the junior football leagues who are really against us having professional soccer here.

“They won’t admit it of course, but they have no interest in our league. They want to follow Manchester United and Liverpool.”

The interview was held while Caulfield was still in the City hot seat and before crisis engulfed the FAI and the make-up of its board changed. But Caulfield saw nothing during his spell with Cork to convince him the league has a bright future.

I’ve found that I’ve wasted my time talking about it. No one from the FAI or those junior clubs that carry the votes in the FAI really want to back it.

“I hate to sound so negative. There’s been so much good progress by Cork City, be it with the UCC connection, with the underage structure, the women’s team. Lots of progress in some ways. But unfortunately, yes, it could all fall with one or two bad years on the pitch.

“If we have a few bad years, then yes, we might need begging bowls in order to survive. That’s primarily because we don’t have the proper support and planning from the Association. Whether that will ever change, I can’t say.”

Caulfield praised how Cork’s member-based trust rescued the club after the winding-up order served in 2010. But he wonders how the membership model can facilitate the added investment he says the club needs.

“The club was on its knees. FORAS did a brilliant job in saving it. But their whole philosophy was to save the club and be a backup with the assistance of others — not to run it by themselves. Then as things worked out, they ended up running the club on their own.

“CCFC is at a crossroads: it’s a €3 million operation now — so the decision is whether to move on and keep moving, or stay put. The problem you have, if you aren’t going to let outside money come in, is you need to grow the membership and increase the membership fee.

“If you don’t you get left behind. So does the club change the constitution to bring in more money? FORAS need to be sure in that regard, of where they are going in the future. They could possibly sell up to 49% of the shares and keep control while raising investment, that’s one option.

“The danger is if we have one or two bad years on the pitch then the club could quickly get into trouble again, as it’s so reliant on first team results.

“The only way we could have a fully professional league is probably by having a breakaway league, run by businessmen ... It’s the same with our club. Ideally you might have a number of businessmen backing up FORAS, because ultimately we are in a professional business.”

The Cross Roads by Neal Horgan is available now