A united front is best option for associations

JOHN DELANEY'S suggestion on Saturday that he is personally in favour of an all-Ireland league, if only those pesky Northerners could be talked around, has prompted backers of Platinum One's proposal to take him at his word and set about doing just that.

His comments seem rather curious, as it happens, given his initial reaction to the proposal was probably a good deal more negative than that of his IFA counterpart, Howard Wells, and it will be interesting to see just what Delaney might do in the event that the clubs are successful in effecting a shift of opinion in Belfast.

On the face of it, it's hard to imagine what logical arguments might be used to counter the idea North of the Border now that football there appears to have moved beyond the point when it served as some sort of sporting extension of the Troubles.

Wells has said that the association's signed contracts with clubs for their participation in its new premier league constitute the main barrier to progress on the issue.

But if the prospects for the much trumpeted launch can be gauged at all accurately by the fact that with the first round of games just a couple of weeks away, the boys at Windsor Avenue have yet to comfirm a title sponsor, then a Plan B might come in handy sooner rather than later.

The Irish League revamp actually appears to have been modelled in no small measure on our own but without, it seems, anything like even the levels of financial support that have left the leading League of Ireland clubs clamouring for change.

Up North, the key task will be to keep the two biggest clubs - Linfield and Glentoran - happy and with representatives of both having signalled that they are more than happy to "engage" with the all-Ireland leaguers the IFA may well find that hard to do beyond the very short term.

Just now, as it happens, the IFA looks set to be hopelessly outmanoeuvred by Linfield on the stadium issue. For the past couple of years the association has been weighing in behind a variety of schemes being floated for a major new multi-purpose stadium in Northern Ireland.

In the meantime, they informed Linfield they would be curtailing their contract to play all senior internationals at Windsor Park which would have been all well and good had some hotshot not signed a 104-year deal with the club on the association's behalf back in 1984 when the stadium was partially redeveloped.

It really seems to have been a doozy of a deal with the IFA retaining ownership of the stand they paid to build while agreeing to pay a portion of their match revenues, including 15 per cent of their Sky TV money, to the Blues.

Somewhat surprisingly, the more business minded amongst you might think, nobody thought to stick in an exit clause and after the IFA indicated they might want out, Linfield's legal people rather cheerfully valued the remaining 80 years of the contract at around £30 million.

Now the club has come up with proposals to redevelop the ground again and to extend its seated capacity from 14,000 to 22,000 at a cost of around £20 million.

The IFA have been desperately hoping the proposed new stadium at the former Maze prison site would win approval but the project has been in serious doubt for some time due to the cost involved and is now widely expected to be cancelled, leaving the association to go back, tail between legs to their old landlords.

Delaney, of course, has stadium issues of his own with the FAI set to go to market with 10,000 premium seats and 35 corporate boxes over the next couple of months.

At the weekend he remained bullish about likely demand but the market research they did a year ago for what was due to be a spring launch must look a little dated given the starkly changed economic climate since then.

If sales prove difficult, as they might well at a time when firms and fans alike are having to tighten their belts, then the balance will have to be borrowed.

But the bottom line, Delaney insists, is the association has lines of credit that will allow then to cover their obligations, most of which kick in next year.

Given that one of its sponsors is NIB, a bank that has been aggressively chasing market share over the last few years, that would not be any great surprise but interest rates have close to doubled in the three years or so since the original sums on the project would have been done.

All of which has the potential to leave the association with a substantial debt to service at a time when the growth in sponsorship revenues is, at the very least, slowing, government funding is bound to tighten but expenditure and expectations are continuing to grow.

These then, are shaping up to be challenging times for Irish football on both sides of the border. You could be forgiven for thinking a radical rethink is in order and a few encouraging noises from governments North and South just might prompt one.

For the moment, however, it seems the people who need to engage prefer not to.

emalone@irish-times.ie