We should applaud Roy for staying on board when the knives were out
WHAT a week it has been for Irish football with everyone singing and dancing after the international team smashed home seven goals, kept two clean sheets and got two wins.
But in this peculiar twist that always haunts the professional game here, the League of Ireland was just forgotten, overlooked and told to get back into its place.
How ironic then that with the public signing Stephen Kenny’s name, it’s the League of Ireland that has produced a manager who is incredibly popular considering the team’s results.
Difference
This week has also shown that in different age groups on the international ladder, our professional league is making a difference in producing these players.
This is why I take my hat off to FAI chairman Roy Barrett.
When he came on board with all this ‘visionary’ nonsense, you must credit someone when they have recognised that they have scored an own goal and not give up and disappear from view.
Instead, they have stayed on board, steadied the ship and worked for the good of Irish football.
Niall Quinn is a legend in the game and had a lot to say in his time when he was with the FAI, but he seems too have disappeared when overlooked for the
League of Ireland director’s job when Mark Scanlon was appointed.
From what I hear, and despite the feelgood factor creeping back into Abbotstown, the big test for those running the game is not the international team but our professional league.
I think we should applaud Roy for staying on board when the knives were out. It shows that he is there for the right reasons. In modern football in so many top leagues, those in charge make a fortune .
Roy is giving his time and expertise because he wants to leave the association in a much better place than the one he inherited.
I have been impressed by his loyalty to Stephen Kenny when so many critics have looked down their nose at someone from the SSE Airtricity League getting such a big gig.
Clearly, Roy is a very bright man whom I’ve admired for going about his business quietly and privately, trying to make things better.
I always worry about the power of FAI committees but, in modern life, it’s not just politically correct to tick the boxes. They must empower the committees and have people who can make the right decisions.
The only committee people who will be looked upon as brilliant game changers are not those loving the power that they wield in deciding Stephen Kenny’s future.
Lucrative
The talent that is needed in Abbotstown are the game changers who can improve facilities in the SSE Airtricity League, identify a lucrative TV deal and ensure that the new fashion of League of Ireland clubs providing so many players for our underage teams is something that will grow into a game changer.
Roy is a very connected man and we need a new respect for our top players and managers. Stephen Kenny is a great manager but so, too, is Stephen Bradley.
However, we are still failing on every FAI committee if we don’t have SSE Airtricity League players not just on underage teams but for the full international side.
Just look at
Jamie McGrath.
He was a very good player at St Patrick’s Athletic and Dundalk, but he was not miles ahead of his teammates.
The challenge for Roy is to work out that pathway, so that if our top players do go abroad, then it’s to bigger clubs than St Mirren.
Roy’s challenge along with every committee should be ensuring that its structures, investment and TV revenue are at least as big as the St Mirrens of this world at our top clubs. It’s been a big week for Irish football and I salute Roy for his work, but it will only be a great week when we get serious about addressing the obvious problems within the League of Ireland that never seems to capture the nation’s love in the way that St Mirren’s McGrath or Rotherham United’s Chiedozie Ogbene did on Tuesday night.
A bit done, a lot more to do because the SSE Airtricity League must never play second fiddle to the senior international team.
It must be on a par.