Tale of two Premier clubs, one a sinking ship

SIX months ago it all seemed very different. St James's Gate were a club with the bright, future and Shamrock Rovers were, once again, at a crossroads but as Pat Byrne says "football is the maddest game in the world" and around these parts it has a tendency to be just that bit more crazy than in most parts of the globe.

Now the Gate's time in the National League is all but certain to be ended by a specially convened management committee meeting on Monday night, while it is Rovers whose future is assured. It is they who will have a new 10,000 seat stadium in the heart of Dublin's largest suburb, while for St James' Gate there is the prospect of either a return to the Leinster Senior League or, even more disastrously for one of the domestic league's founding clubs, complete extinction after 94 years in football.

The common factor in the starkly contrasting fortunes of the two clubs is the name of Premier Computers and if the company is a popular one with Rovers fans just now, then around the Iveagh Grounds there are those who wish they had never heard the name that seemed, briefly at least, to be their password back to the forefront of the local game.

The company, or rather several of the main businessmen behind it, had initially started to become involved with the Crumlin club during the 1993-94 season but it was at the start of last year's campaign that the extent of their commitment to the club became apparent.

At that point the company announced that it would be sponsoring the club to the tune of £150,000 for one season - by far the largest such deal in the league and well in excess of what Bord Gais were putting up in return for having their name attached to the league as a whole.

Some of the money was immediately put into strengthening the team and although progress on the pitch was not as great as might have been expected from a club that had enjoyed such a large injection of funds the ongoing commitment of the group, led by Premier's Managing Director Alan McGrath, was signalled towards the end of last season when rumours of a proposed multi million pound move to a greenfield site in Tallaght began to circulate.

Problems with Guinness itself, arose over the move and, in particular, over a proposal to change the club's name in order to help it to forge an identity with the community in its new area. As doubts over whether the move could successfully be completed began to emerge, Rovers's problems at the RDS - where the club had become unsettled - provided McGrath and his colleagues with an alternative which they were quick to pursue.

"The problem at the Gate was that there was more red tape than there is at any other club," says Pat Byrne, who as manager at the Iveagh Grounds was the central figure in the day to day development of the club since his arrival from Shelbourne and a key link between the club's committee and their sponsors.

"The club was offered the move to Tallaght and they couldn't take it and then they were offered a sponsorship for this season but they decided that they wanted to go their own way. The problem then was that everything last year was paid for by Premier and when you took them out, then there was nobody there to hold things together."

Certainly his point regarding the constraints placed on those running the club by Guinness and its sports club, the Guinness Athletic Union (GAU), is supported by former chairman of St James's Gate, Peter Mulhall, who felt that while the brewery wished to retain a veto on developments at the club, it did not wish to become actively involved in its development.

"It was difficult because they would make the point that they owned the club but when you said `right you own it, what are you going to do with it?', they woo say `oh, nothing, that's up to you.'"

Mulhall, however, says that he did have reservations about the proposed involvement of Premier at a time when, although hardly setting the domestic game alight, they were not under particularly great pressure to generate the £30,000 or so required to keep an amateur team in the National League.

"I felt there were a lot of problems because there were too many people who held sway at the club between the executive at the Iveagh Grounds, Guinness itself and then Premier and a lot of the time they just didn't all seem to be pulling in the same direction."

Difficulties with the availability of the pitch at the Iveagh Grounds which was shared with the GAU's Gaelic club had contributed to the failure of the club's attempt to develop a youth structure that might prove a source of young players for the senior side in years to come and help the club establish new roots in the Crumlin area while another problem, all parties agree, was the fact that GAU members were entitled to free admission to the ground thereby ensuring that, even on those rare occasions that the first team attracted a decent crowd, there were negligible gate receipts.

By the end of last season all these difficulties, combined with the eagerness of Rovers's owners to relinquish the reins, had ensured that Premier money would be lost but despite the sudden loss of funding, those left behind at St James's Gate still felt that the club could survive in the National League.

At the start of the season, however, a request to the league for assistance in getting through the opening weeks of the new campaign seems to have sparked a series of moves that, in the space of less than two weeks, has led the club to the verge of extinction.

"We were told that the best thing to do was to go to them and ask for their help but that turned out to be exactly what we shouldn't have done. If we had just kept our mouths shut and gone on with it, nobody would have been any the wiser but now we're being edged out to make way for Newbridge Town because they have backing from Chelsea," says long time Gate player Colum Kavanagh, who is now a member of the board at the club.

"How many clubs have gotten into trouble over the years? But then how many of them have been called in and told that they have to show their books and provide guarantees from a sponsor who they are still negotiating with? Nobody has ever been treated the way we have been by the League. It's obvious that they want us out," he says.

At Rovers, meanwhile, Byrne is busily putting into place the plan originally designed for the Gate with word expected back from South Dublin County Council on September 16th regarding their application for permission to start construction of their new stadium on a site adjacent to the Square in Tallaght.

"No disrespect to Tolka Park, but the fact is that we don't want to be there. The sooner we get a place of our own the better and if things go to plan now we should be out in Rovers's new ground by early or mid September of next year," says Byrne who is now the commercial manager at the club.

"Having been the biggest club in the country for years, Rovers are now probably two or three years behind the other big Dublin clubs but everybody is keen to get out there and start closing the gap. The facilities we will have will be the best in the country and with the potential support in the area we can get back to the top where we should be."

The stadium is likely to cost McGrath along with his partners, Brian Kearney and Mark Howell - who now constitute the Rovers board - between three and a half and four million pounds, while, Byrne stresses that considerable resources have already been made available for the development of the club, both on and off of the pitch, "we're not neglecting one for the other," he says.

Former chairman John McNamara, whose eight year involvement with the club is believed to have cost him in the region of £100,000 is certainly enthusiastic about the new developments remarking that "we always said that we would step aside if somebody came along who could move the whole thing on a stage further and Alan McGrath is certainly doing that.

"The game here desperately needs new thinking and virtually every club in the country needs investment of this sort if football is going to thrive here again but out in Tallaght the potential support must be 6,000 to 8,000 for every match so this should really set Rovers up for the future and that is very important to me," he says.

The current management team of Alan O'Neill and Terry Eviston, who were appointed by McNamara last season, may, meanwhile, have to prove their value to the new regime prior to being guaranteed their role at the club after the move.

Anxious to arrive in Tallaght on the crest of a wave, the new owners are said to have given the pair considerable funds with which to win a trophy this year, not all of which has been spent yet.

Their determination to prove themselves while the team plays at a temporary home along with rumoured tensions within the overall management structure, may make this an eventful year for Shamrock Rovers but then theirs are problems that the people in charge at St James's Gate would happily settle for these days.