United front on fixtures needed

News of agreement last night between the clubs on a programme of PremierOn Soccer: Division fixtures that will ensure the season ends of schedule will come as a relief to those who had feared a costly runover and some potentially nasty recriminations between the league and FAI over just who should foot the bill when the clubs came looking for compensation, writes Emmet Malone

Last week's difficulties over the league games involving St Patrick's Athletic and Bohemians which were scheduled for the Friday after their Carlsberg FAI Cup semi-final has added to the tensions between the two organisations with the league feeling that the association chose to get involved where it shouldn't have and the FAI insisting that it was left with no choice by the league's failure to resolve the situation.

Publicly, it is the league that has taken the greater hammering with one Sunday paper even managing to suggest that they had somehow fixed the Friday games, actually scheduled more than six months ago, in the knowledge that they would come less than 48 hours after an important cup replay.

The reality is that the organisation, which is already swamped with games to be played between now and the end of November, was put in a fairly ridiculous position by the decision of the two clubs concerned to schedule a replay for the Wednesday when the semi-final draw was made. If the game had been fixed for Tuesday there wouldn't have been a problem.

As it was the timing of what turned out to be a memorable game has caused severe difficulties for Merrion Square with the clubs concerned appealing the initial position of the league that the timing of fixtures couldn't be appealed and the league set to appeal the Fran Rooney decision to accept that appeal for consideration.

What this latest row seems to highlight once again, however, is the somewhat bizarre attitude of clubs to the league's fixture list which is already overloaded because it is squeezed into just 31 weeks.

It is admittedly something of a mystery why an organisation that has been singing from the rooftops about the benefits of summer soccer would, at the outset, schedule so many rounds of midweek games in the last, and coldest, month or so of the season.

But even setting the issue of the weather aside, the fact that there are so many games due to be played meant that there would never be any room for manoeuvre when the problems with postponements came to pass.

While it was impressive when so much goodwill was shown to Shamrock Rovers and Bohemians when they were playing in Europe and an admirable gesture that the league took a break during the Special Olympics, both decisions start to look just a little rash when you are left with a situation in which the defending champions, still very much in the hunt to retain their title, are faced with 12 games in 41 days.

There is also dissatisfaction amongst the clubs not in contention for honours over the way that the bigger sides have sought to manipulate the timing of their games in order to extract the maximum advantage.

Cleary, however, there are issues to be addressed in relation to the fixture list, not least the ability of clubs to defer games at times when they are without players who are on international duty. It seems bizarre to cry foul for years over the fact that players from the league were ignored by international managers but then effectively make them less attractive to clubs by making no allowances for their importance to their employers.

The absence of Wes Hoolahan was, in fact, the first issue to be raised in relation to the game between Bohemians and Shelbourne originally fixed for the same night as the under-21 international in Neuchatel.

Issues like this, all sides appear to agree, need to be addressed while a decision will have to be taken before Christmas on whether to break during next summer's European Championships in Portugal.

With those clubs that still pay players on the basis of the length of the season reluctant to see the number of weeks the campaign is spread over extended, however, it seems inevitable that there will be problems again next year unless the number of games is cut and there does not seem to be the stomach for that.

The very least that needs to be done is that a greater proportion of the fixture list needs to be worked through in the opening part of the season and, ideally, when the weather is most favourable to going to games. The season almost certainly needs to be extended too and the league needs to be in a position to assert complete control over the scheduling of games.

It could be that the organisation's powers, far from being tightened, are actually greatly undermined during the weeks ahead. If it happens then we may all be able to look forward to a summer league with a Christmas programme. How about that for the best of both worlds?