{"id":7215,"date":"2015-06-05T13:06:18","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T12:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etims.net\/?p=7215"},"modified":"2015-06-05T13:06:18","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T12:06:18","slug":"is-irish-football-doomed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/etims.net\/?p=7215","title":{"rendered":"Is Irish Football doomed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read this letter on the brilliant Football365 Mailbox<\/a> page and thought it very much worth sharing ( you mean stealing – Ed<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Very interesting, and rather harrowing summary..any Irish readers offer an opinion?..please add to comments below…<\/p>\n

Irish Football Is Screwed
\n<\/strong>There has been much made of John Delaney’s revelation of the loan\/bribe that was made to the FAI from FIFA in light of the Henry handball. However this latest scandal might be a positive in finally shining some light on the dark state of Irish Football.<\/p>\n

Following Hull’s relegation, it currently stands that there will be no Irish born players under 23 in a premier league squad next season, a staggering statement considering some of the talent we’ve produced in the past. The Republic of Ireland are currently ranked the lowest of the British Isles sides, and last year hit an all-time low of 70th, 10 years previous they were ranked as high as 12th, and what makes that even more depressing is we’re still heavily reliant on players from 2004 like O’Shea, Keane and Given.<\/p>\n

Many in the media seem interested in why the payment was made from FIFA to the FAI, but I would like to know where it went from there. The story we have been given is that it was a written off loan for the Aviva Stadium, a stadium half owned by the IRFU and heavily subsidized by the government, which was already finished by the time the money was transferred.<\/p>\n

It seems none of the money has been put into Grassroots football, which is pretty much non-existent outside of Ireland’s Cities. There hasn’t been a team in my local area for over 15 years because there is no pitch and the GAA had a ban on the playing of “foreign games” on their facilities, when I did play football as a kid, I had a 20 mile drive just for my teams home games.<\/p>\n

Even our league is a shambles, of the current 20 professional teams, many of which operate on part time basis, half are located in Dublin or neighbouring counties, for many fans of League of Ireland teams there is no such thing as a derby.<\/p>\n

In the past 20 years 11 teams have folded from the league, when that happens in the lowest league’s in Scotland or non-league in England it sparks massive outrage, in 2012 Monaghan United decided mid-season that they simply weren’t bothered anymore and folded, Sporting Fingal were shut down in 2010 a year after qualifying for Europe, and just last year Shamrock Rovers had to field a B team just to make up the eight teams required in the first division. There is great talent in the league, players like Shane Long, Wes Hoolahan and Seamus Coleman are proof, but nothing is being done to produce more players like them.<\/p>\n

As glad as I am that Blatter is gone, I do sympathize with the notion that he did a lot for underdeveloped footballing nations, and in this war that’s brewing between UEFA and FIFA, smaller European countries like Ireland will be the major losers in the long term.
\nSe\u00e1n G, THFC, Cavan (I challenge anyone to name 5 League of Ireland teams without googling)<\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read this letter on the brilliant Football365 Mailbox page and thought it very much worth sharing ( you mean stealing – Ed). Very interesting,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/etims.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/00020393_medium.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2J7If-1Sn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7217,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7215\/revisions\/7217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}