SOME YEARS back, in rather better times for that country, a tour guide in Iceland told a group of tourists I was part of that the local population had regarded the second World War – a calamity for most of the rest of Europe, an “emergency” here – as a major opportunity because of the money and employment opportunities that came with the arrival of so many foreign troops, first British then American.
Similarly, it seems, the economic crisis gripping this and many other countries just now is viewed as something of a boon by those running the League of Ireland. Most of the rest of the population has been successfully divided then conquered with regard to pay cuts of between five and 15 per cent.
Many footballers are facing the prospect of losing half or more of their wages while a good few too will no longer have the opportunity to earn a living from the game at all.
A couple of years ago, the growth in wages, if not quite the scale of it, was hailed by John Delaney as evidence that clubs here were developing the capability to keep the country’s brightest young talent at home by offering good players a well-paid alternative to a career in Britain. More recently, he told an Oireachtas committee that the fact some 90 per cent of players here are currently out of contract represents a “terrific” opportunity for clubs to put their houses in order.
It is against the background of such a dismal economic outlook that just about everything with regard to the game here has been viewed over the past 12 months. Bohemians’ successful defence of their league title looked, on the one hand, all the greater an achievement because of the grave financial uncertainty at the club which had prompted significant wage cuts and the thinning of the first-team squad. However, two of the teams expected to rival most closely – Cork and Derry City – spent the year lurching from one desperate crisis to another while St Patrick’s Athletic’s attempt to rein in costs meant, even as they enjoyed a decent run in Europe that included one tremendous fightback against Russian opposition, they spent most of the season battling against the threat of relegation back at home.
Shamrock Rovers emerged as the season’s success story despite their failure to win anything. After some 20 years of struggling to survive the club began to show the benefits of a new and progressive regime, a young, enthusiastic and hugely-capable manager as well, of course, as a council-built home in a Dublin suburb that greeted their arrival with open arms.
Late on, they were upstaged slightly by Sporting Fingal, another club to benefit from a more enlightened approach to senior club football by a local authority, with Liam Buckley’s side putting his old one out of the cup on the way to winning it.
Sporting joined UCD in winning promotion from a first division that was relatively free of problems and while their arrival combined with the expulsion of Derry means the top flight will again be dominated by clubs from Dublin and the east coast, Delaney admitted last week that liquidity has displaced location as the most attractive feature the league looks for in its clubs heading into 2010.
