Return to reality is not easy after one season in top flight

IT’S NEVER easy returning to a lower level after a brief flirtation with the bright lights, but in sport there’s simply no choice other than carrying on regardless. That was the reality for the club formerly known as Wexford Youths on Saturday when they resumed life in Division 1 of the SSE Airtricity League.

It was about as far removed from the fanfare that greeted their brief stint in the top flight as one could possibly imagine.

The new season had started the night before and was ushered in with live television coverage of four-in-a-row seeking Dundalk’s 2-1 win over Shamrock Rovers in a jam-packed Oriel Park.

Fast forward to the following afternoon and it was an entirely different scenario. A mere 320 hardy souls were clocked passing through the turnstiles of St. Colman’s Park in Cobh, an old-style ground in every sense.

A perimeter wall divides the playing area from the small stand, with spectators as close to the action as it’s possible to get at this level of football.

The pitch was in an awful condition, unavoidably soft after the recent heavy rainfall and cutting up badly as the game progressed.

There was no place for frills and it was more about true grit and determination than sublime skill for both teams.

Wexford battled their way to a late 1-1 draw and will be delighted to return home with an early-season point, but it’s likely to be a long, trying year as the come-down from the Premier Division is immense in every aspect of the game.

Furthermore, the changes made to the league since the conclusion of the 2016 campaign would suggest that the gulf between top and bottom is going to get even wider.

It has been decided to change from a twelve-team Premier structure and eight in Division 1 to an equal divide of ten apiece. In order to do that, three clubs will be relegated this time around with only the top team at the lower level promoted.

If this system had been in place last season, there would have been absolutely nothing to play for in the second half of the Division 1 campaign as runaway leaders Limerick were already assured of top spot at that stage.

The interest was maintained by the three-way battle for the two play-off spots, with Drogheda United and Cobh Ramblers eventually edging out UCD before the Louth club came through two legs and then relegating Youths, who finished eleventh in the Premier Division, with a 3-0 home win after a 2-0 loss in Ferrycarrig Park.

Familiarity tends to breed contempt in Division 1, with Wexford set to face the other seven teams four times apiece over the 28game campaign. Already the next clash with Cobh, in Ferrycarrig Park on April 14, promises to be a spicy affair after their manager, Stephen Henderson, was highly critical of his counterpart Damian Locke in the aftermath of the visitors’ late equaliser last Saturday.

The Ramblers boss felt the ball should have been returned to his team from a throw-in as it had been knocked out of play when team captain Christopher ‘Kaka’ McCarthy picked up an injury. That didn’t happen and it has left considerable quantities of bad blood as a result, but Cobh were clearly trying to wind down the clock.

There tends to be a very short shelf life at this level of football, a point borne out by an item in Saturday’s match programme listing the eight First Division managers. Remarkably, Collie O’Neill of UCD is the longest serving even though he was only appointed in December, 2014.

The turnover of players from season to season is also considerable, and it’s noticeable this term that the stronger clubs have strengthened their squads even more in an effort to safeguard against the threat of relegation.

Most Division 1 clubs, with the exception of Waterford and their new millionaire owner, Lee Power, plus Shelbourne to a lesser extent, haven’t the luxury to do the same, although the cash injection didn’t save the Blues from a shock 1-0 defeat to Athlone on Friday.

In a week when the arrival of the ‘Super 8’ in Gaelic football has highlighted how the rich will get richer while the poor get poorer, that situation is a mirror image of life in the League of Ireland.