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The FAI stole our game - now they’re giving it back  With
the new Eircom League of Ireland season starting on Friday, martin doyle
finds out what the FAI is doing to promote the game and asks one of the
organisation’s biggest critics what he thinks.
What do Hull City, Crystal Palace and Stoke City have in common? That’s
right. Each has a larger average home gate than the combined attendance
at all Eircom League of Ireland games (Premier and First Division) on
any weekend.
The truth is there are more Irish football fans sporting their favourite
teams’ colours passing through the departure gates of Dublin Airport
on a Saturday morning en route for Liverpool or Manchester than through
the turnstiles of Dalymount Park or Tolka Park on a Friday night.
But they are just the most visible members of Irish football’s lost
flock. Just as the Catholic Church has lost more of its faithful to Tesco,
Woodie’s and a nice lie-in on a Sunday morning than to the Hare
Krishnas, so Irish soccer must search for its strays in pubs, living rooms
and cinemas.
Mission Impossible IV? Maybe not. The task of reviving the fortunes of
domestic football has been put in the safe hands of Noel Mooney —
former goalkeeper with Cork City, Limerick and Shamrock Rovers —
whose background in sales management and passion for the game should make
him the perfect man for the job.
If Mooney was under any illusions that his new role was going to be a
big ask and a hard sell, the relegation of champions Shelbourne within
days of him starting as FAI national clubs promotions officer in December
2006 must have shattered them.
Since then it’s not been all doom and gloom however. Last season’s
average weekend attendance was just over 14,000 — short of the 15,000
target but well up on the previous year’s 11,088. Over a season,
that’s 100,000 more bums on seats. This year’s target is to
add another 15 per cent.
The five-year plan is more ambitious. Mooney said: “I wish we had
10 10,000-seater stadiums all ready to go with corporate facilities but
we have to be realistic. We know where we want to be in five years —
the Premier League reduced to 10 teams with top facilities that can bring
in crowds of 3,000-5,000.
“That will take us over the 30,000 mark. There’s no point
saying it’s going to be easy. It’ll be bloody hard work to
get us there but it can happen.”
Cobh and Waterford have just built new stands and with Shamrock Rovers
set to move in to a 6,000-seater stadium in Tallaght next season —
where they have a catchment area of 300,000 people — and champions
Drogheda just waiting on planning permission to build their 10,000-seater
stadium, it seems feasible.
“Since we’ve took over the League four or five millionaires
have taken over League of Ireland clubs — Garret Kelleher at St.
Pat’s, Jack McCarthy at Limerick, Mick Wallace at Wexford,”
says Mooney.
“There’s no question we’ve done things right to attract
these investors into the League.”
Mooney’s ambitions seem modest when put in the context of the numbers
actually playing the game. Tens of thousands go to the cinema, who haven’t
acted since they were a donkey in the Nativity play, yet every week 450,000
people play soccer.
All the FAI have to do is to turn a fair percentage of these active participants
into passive spectators. But how? Well, for starters the FAI man says
clubs have got to make themselves the sporting focal point of the community.
“We have a formula for our club promotions officers to build relationships
with 30 schools and 30 schoolboy clubs. We think there is a very close
connection between the kids who are playing who obviously love soccer
and them going to see their local League of Ireland club.
“We want to leave a resonance in schools that shows our clubs are
far more than 11 people playing football on a Friday night, that we have
something to give back to the community. The key to this is to make the
clubs the sporting focal point of the community. Soccer is the biggest
participation sport by a fair distance in Ireland.”
To compete with the English Premiership the Eircom League needs exposure.
To that end they have secured primetime coverage on RTÉ TV on Mondays
at 8pm whereas before the only highlights programme was on TV3 at 11pm.
“One of the things I’m most proud of since I came here was
the announcement of the RTÉ deal. All the kids the club promotions
officers are dealing with will be able to see the League of Ireland highlights.
People may say that might take from the crowds but I don’t believe
that for a second — it promotes the sport and makes you want the
live experience on a Friday night.”
Mooney accepts many football fans will never be weaned off the English
Premiership. That’s not to say he understands the attraction, however.
“I wouldn’t spend the money going to see a Premiership game.
People are spending the equivalent of a season ticket to a League of Ireland
club to go for one weekend.
“The Sunderland thing I can’t get my head round at all. You
buy your Sunderland shirt, your season ticket, you fly over every second
week then Roy Keane becomes manager of Yeovil or Manchester United. What
do you do, stay supporting Sunderland?
“If all the Irish players moved out tomorrow what happens then?
That’s not an emotional attachment to a club, that’s more
like a cult following. I wish them well but if I was in Dublin I’d
look out for Bohs or Shamrock Rovers or UCD — it’s where you’re
from. It’s easy supporting Liverpool or Manchester United but it
gets very boring after a while does it not?
“And the other thing is that there’s no question about the
quality of football here. I was in Cork when Kevin Doyle and Shane Long
arrived, Alan Bennett was there.
“But the people who go to matches at the moment are the real hardcore.
My job is to get the average soccer fan switched on to the League. It
is a challenge, no question, but if it wasn’t a challenge I wouldn’t
be here. It’s a dream challenge for me.”
Noel Mooney is a realist as well as a dreamer. The former Cork City man
is full of commonsense from the big picture to bread and butter issues.
Mooney said: “Clubs have to become more professional, have a ticket
office, different levels of membership, a travel club, a supporters’
club, a junior supporters’ club, a club mascot. It’s madness
that some clubs have full-time managers and full-time teams but no full-time
administration. Clubs need a general manager so you can get an answer
straight away instead of waiting for a committee meeting for a decision.”
Mooney is refreshingly free of marketing bullshit. He doesn’t ask
if a project will wash its face. He wants to know if the stadium’s
toilets flush and if there is soap to wash your hands.
Facilities are key so Mooney is encouraging a greater emphasis on the
overall matchday experience, pre-match entertainment, better programmes,
better websites. He is developing a national fans’ database so fans
will receive not only a monthly e-zine but also a text message reminding
them about the coming weekend’s game.
“A couple of clubs have their own marketing plans that you couldn’t
disagree with. Drogheda for example had an open day in the local shopping
centre that attracted 30,000 people with all their players signing footballs.”
You might think Drogheda’s promotions officer has it easy given
their success on the pitch but Mooney says clubs that promote themselves
effectively will attract crowds even without success on the pitch.
“Galway United’s marketing plan — the way they engaged
with the community, linking in with all the schools, the schoolboy clubs,
ethnic groups, it’s just powerful to watch. They’ve just done
a presentation to the FAI on their marketing plan for 2008 and it’s
as good as anything you’ll see in world football.”
Mooney knows he doesn’t have all the answers and is happy to learn
from others.
“I don’t just sit there and come up with all my ideas while
doing yoga. I look at the Norwegian, Dutch, Australian Leagues. The open
day thing is huge in Britain, as are fans’ forums. We’re going
to do more of them where the clubs meet with the fans not in a confrontational
way but round the table and the board discuss where the club is going.
A lot of clubs have limited companies behind them of course but they also
belong to the fans, the people. A chairman mentioned at a forum in England
his plan to change the club colours. He learnt straight away he was going
down the wrong road.”
This man is on the right one.
There’s a powerful advert on the eleven-a-side.com website for
Daire Whelan’s Who Stole Our Game? The Fall And Fall Of Irish Soccer.
How did we get from this to this, it asks, contrasting a sepia print of
an old League of Ireland game with a cast of thousands in the crowd and
a modern scene where four fans lounge on an otherwise empty terrace.
Noel Mooney has read the book — which doesn’t spare the FAI
— and he’s not afraid to admit that he wasn’t always
the association’s biggest fan.
“I’m a soccer fan and it was my impression before I joined
the FAI that it had held back the game but since coming here it’s
been a very healthy surprise. John Delaney is ringing and texting me the
whole time, asking me what I need to get the League up and running. His
door is wide open.
“That book, Who Stole Our Game, what I’ve seen since I came
here is the FAI are trying to give it back.”
Daire Whelan has another take on events.
“I was brought up going to League of Ireland games by my uncle Fran
Gavin,” explains Whelan, “who played for Shamrock Rovers with
John Giles and Eamon Dunphy, then with Paul McGrath at St. Pat’s.
Every Friday night I’d be in Tolka or Dalyer but I was also a Manchester
United fan and a Dublin GAA fan. As you grow up you start asking questions
like why aren’t more people at these games? I decided it would make
a really interesting book to find out why and how it went from 20,000-plus
crowds to where people no longer gave a damn.”
He took as his starting point the 1950s and examined the game in a social
and cultural context as: “I didn’t want it to be a Statto-type
book.”
“Ireland started changing in the ’60s. If you ask people why
it changed, people will always point to one factor — for example
English soccer on TV — but it’s never that simple, it’s
always a multitude of factors. The very fact people could afford a car
meant you didn’t go to the match any more because you had to visit
the wife’s family.”
So as people’s lives filled up with options the stands slowly emptied.
“And then basically no-one did anything about it. The clubs were
too busy fire-fighting, there was no overarching structure like the GAA,
the upper echelons of the FAI were concerned with the international side.
The League was run by the clubs.
“Ollie Byrne (the late Shelbourne chairman) admitted he wasn’t
interested in solving the League’s problems, his focus was on sorting
Shelbourne’s. That’s why in fairness the clubs ceding control
to the FAI is a good thing. Whether it’s too late though is the
question.”
Where did the money from 20,000 gates go?
“It wasn’t spent on facilities that’s for sure and players
would be the first to tell you they weren’t paid huge amounts. The
Irish economy back then was run in an under-the-counter way. There wasn’t
the foresight to look 20 years hence whereas every 20 years the GAA would
develop and improve Croke Park, even in the 1930s.”
So who did steal the game?
“The people who ran Irish soccer, from the club owners to the people
who ran the clubs to the administration, the FAI — you have to blame
the ones who were centrally involved in it.”
He welcomes the proposed salary cap which will prevent clubs bankrupting
themselves to bankroll short-term success on the pitch.
“If Fran Gavin, who has represented players’ interests, can
introduce an issue like that you have to trust in that. You see it working
in US sport, the NBA and baseball.”
While he acknowledges the value of improved television coverage he questions
the timing, citing the example of soccer in the US, which turned down
TV coverage until it had the package right in terms of stadium facilities
so that you could not only see it on TV but see that it looked good.
“Whatever Americans do regarding sport as entertainment I usually
listen to and they didn’t want to promote something that didn’t
look good. Any improvement is good, I applaud that, but in the context
of the overall consciousness of a sporting nation how big a change is
it? Look at how big rugby has become.”
Perception is all. Rugby has managed to shed its elitist image and the
GAA, for an amateur organisation, is ultra-professional when it comes
to promoting itself but Irish football has an image problem.
“The writer Eamon Sweeney, who is a Sligo Rovers fan, is quoted
in my book as saying in Celtic Tiger Ireland the League of Ireland is
seen as something for losers, backward, the last thing people want to
be associated with.”
The FAI hasn’t helped by lurching from Saipan to Staunton, as it
is closely associated with the image of the domestic game, but its success
in attracting business people to invest in the game and its coup in securing
Giovanni Trapattoni is a huge boost for the game, believes Whelan.
So what should the clubs be doing?
“We need to go to a less-is-more model. At the moment there are
33 games in the Premier Division, plus the shield, the FAI Cup, the League
Cup, the Setanta Cup — teams probably end up playing each other
four or five times a season. You look at the NFL, there’s 16 games
in a season. You look at the GAA Championship, how many games do they
play? The Champions League has overtaken the Premiership.
“So you make it more of an event, ditch the secondary competitions.
There are too many Dublin clubs. Look at rugby, at the way Dublin people
have embraced Leinster. The clubs may be dying but the provinces are thriving,
it’s the same thing, less is more.
“I don’t think the All-Ireland League is a panacea but it
is the way to go. It makes it more interesting to see Linfield play Shamrock
Rovers.”
Whelan makes the point that Shels had 25,000 at Lansdowne Road for the
Champions League qualifier against Deportivo La Coruna a few seasons ago
but only 1,000 the following week at Tolka Park. “You’ve got
to figure out how to bring those floating fans to Tolka on a Friday night.”
Arthur Mathews, the Father Ted writer who is also a diehard Drogheda United
fan, criticised the modern tendency for sports fans to be promiscuous
with their affections but Whelan argues that if the domestic game is to
thrive it must be pitched at the event junkie, not the addict who is dependent
on his weekly fix.
“We’re all floating voters, very few of us are dyed-in-the-wool
hardcore fans. I’d go for an All-Ireland League of 10 clubs, playing
18 games a season. We’re not going to commit to going every week
so why not have fewer games that more of us will go to which therefore
generates its own interest.
“The problem is that whenever there’s a debate on the League
of Ireland, 99 per cent of those taking part are the diehards. It’s
the wrong constituency to be talking to. It’s crazy asking them
about improvements or what needs to be done, they’ll go anyway.
You should be going into a pub and asking people having a pint why they
wouldn’t go to a game.” |
