The clubs of the SSE Airtricity League may live their lives in something like permanent survival mode but taking charge of their own destiny is not actually on their agenda.
In the recommendations section of the 75-page report Declan Conroy delivered to officials from around the country on Monday night, a return to self governance is one of the possibilities fairly summarily ruled out. That should be controversial but in reality it's unlikely to cause anything more than a bit of backroom murmuring.
If anyone was wondering how reluctant the clubs are to actually govern themselves these days then there are some pretty big indicators in Conroy’s assessment of the state of the senior game here.
In 2007, with unease about their relationship with the FAI running deep and mistrust of some of its key figures high, they voted to a merger with the association that handed over executive control to a committee on which they have a minority of the seats and which does not even keep them informed of its discussions or, in certain instances, decisions.
Most clubs are hand to mouth operations and yet the association does not tell them how much revenue is generated by the league or how much it spends on administration and promotion.
Conroy’s report is billed as having the potential to be something of a new beginning or at least the basis for some serious new thinking yet, remarkably, it is to be debated, implemented or discarded in the absence of those key numbers.
Conroy says he has seen the figures and, where required, assigned values to the league’s share of global association contracts, like the one with RTÉ, because apparently nobody else has even deemed it necessary. He can’t reveal them to the “stakeholders” though as they’re “confidential”. The clubs must simply accept his assurances that the association subsidises the league and work from there.
There is absolutely no reason to doubt him but it seems an astonishing starting point from which to consider a programme of radical change aimed at delivering a brighter future.
That said, little enough of what is contained in the report actually seems all that radical. Some of it, indeed, seems blindingly obvious; like clubs becoming more professional, working harder to embed themselves in their local communities and exchanging ideas at regular intervals with the association and their rival clubs. It is a poor lookout for the ones that really needed to hear this sort of stuff from an outside consultant but doubtless a few of them did.
There is some genuinely interesting stuff too about improving standards in various ways, getting players into schools and establishing partnerships with local third level colleges so as to encourage and enable volunteers to gain relevant educational qualifications.
On this latter point, however, there is nothing about money. That may make clubs wary because the one thing that everyone agrees the game here needs is a lot more coaches but becoming a well qualified one through an FAI run course can be a pricey enough business. Offering better, properly recognised training in other areas would be great but if we’re not talking about giving it to people for free here then it will simply be added to your average club’s mile long wish list.
Conroy addresses various other items on that list, with the suggestion that better, bigger, more specific sponsorships and “more bums on seats” will generate more income. He can provide no guarantees that either is achievable but expresses confidence that they both are.
It’s more than a hint of ‘trust me on this’, about it all. In an improving economy he may well be right but regardless of the reportedly positive response his proposals received from clubs on Monday, there is bound to be considerable disappointment that there are no commitments here from the association to provide the sort of funding that is required to kick-start this transformation of the senior game.
One of the most concrete proposals made is for a league “champion” to be appointed so as to promote the competition and a dedicated press officer in order to better focus what is currently a collective effort on the part of the association’s media department. The association may well go for those alright but it would be pretty interesting to see who might be handed the task of fronting things up
There is, meanwhile, an awful lot of talk of “greater positivity” being projected to the outside world. This, in a league where clubs won’t discuss fines imposed upon them at present for fear of incurring further fines. Even the pretence that openness is a virtue has been abandoned by the FAI these days.
Some will be more afraid of the structural reform envisaged that would allow for up to three teams from a 10-team top flight being relegated in any given year. Assume that the ‘big four’ would be safe over the next few years and you’re left with the others notionally having a 50/50 chance of survival. Try selling that to your local bank manager as the basis for a business plan.
The intention, Conroy says, of the smaller Premier Division, increased use of play-offs (for one of the Europa League places as well as promotion/relegation and a six/four split two thirds of the way into the campaign is to generate more matches that matter.
All, or variations on them, have been tried then abandoned in the past and the league, as it happens, hasn’t actually done too badly on this front over the last couple of years, but clearly he has a point: you can jazz things up so the stakes are kept that much higher.
At some point surely, however, you have to remind yourself that this is supposed to be a league you are dealing with and ask whether, in order to get a few more people in, you are prepared to turn it into a series of cups because you know that old line about the league table not lying? Ours will.
There is, it’s worth repeating, some good and important stuff here for the clubs to take on board but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the association gets off lightly in part, perhaps, because of the brief that Conroy was given. That, he says, was not to recommend solutions (though he has decided to do that anyway) but rather to set down a starting point for the next phase of the debate.
This he does rather well but asking him to set specifically out to identify solutions in a few key areas might have provided a more valuable return for all concerned.
There is, for instance, various references to the potential for growing TV revenues. It is far from clear whether this is actually realistic but the Norwegians have a colossal deal for domestic rights while the Scots have had some success at selling their game overseas.
An exploration of how these things were achieved along with a look at what leagues have been most successfully growing their crowds; why or which have the best community programmes and what these entail; a study of which country’s clubs have the best youth development scheme and which bits of them might be successfully transplanted to here. All of these things merit consideration before any big decisions are made about the future of the league here.
That these things do not feature in the report is not Conroy’s fault if they were not part of his brief but it’s hard not to wonder why they were not included. Hopefully it was not that the FAI feared it all might make for some uncomfortable findings.
The report, in any case, can and should be a pretty decent basis for starting a conversation; it is just one in which a great deal of talking really still needs to be done. The FAI said last night it will be writing to clubs this week to establish a timeframe for progressing things but the idea of next season being a transitional one seems fairly fanciful.
Despite all the limitations suggested by their average €650,000 turnover and less than one member of administrative staff, the onus is on the clubs, though, to speak up for themselves again. Conroy comes across as entirely genuine when he says he wants to spark a debate. It’s time for those who actually make up the league to rediscover their voices.
