The Rise and Growth of the League Of Ireland Page 14

By Conor Mcevoy

Since what seems to be the dawn of time the League of Ireland has constanstly been over looked and almost frowned upon on the island of Ireland but times are changing! Since the covid-19 restrictions the league has gone on an upward trend with the quality of games and in particular the rise of attendences becoming a joy to see. As a passionate fan of Irish football this is a pleasant susprise as it seemed every other person on the island had a greater interest in the powerhouse Premier League just across the water, although this is still a losing battle more and more people are starting to take a bigger interest in their local club and are trurely starting to understand what it means to “support your local”.

I spoke to host of the League of Ireland podcast “Pelicast” Dave Cabrini who is a die hard Drogheda United fan and he explained as a match going fan why he feels the league has grown.

He explained to me that there is two main reason to why he feels the league has grow signifciantly mainly due to covid were he said “covid made people realise how much they like being out of the house and seeing things in person”. Interesting the second ppint Dave raised isnt something I thought of but he could be really onto something is the point he made on the European Super League scandal. Dave said “Fans of Manchester United and Liverpool etc. are realising their beloved clubs dont really give a damn about them and could be the only way to sustain this upturn in fortunes.”

There has been a 29 per cent increase in attendences with an extra 110,660 people going to Premier Division matches since 2019, as 486,365 showed up in 2022 with the weekly average jumping from 10,436 pre-pandemic to 13,510 last year. The start to this season has been even more impres sive with after 15 games this season their has been 82,981 specators whilst after the same amount of games in 2022 73,616 attended matches.

The question now to League of Ireland fans and board members is how do they maintain the consistent rise of the league and attendences. I asked Dave how he feels we should go about this in which i explained “I think we could see a sustainable upkeep in crowds as we’re seeing people want to see live football, the best way to maintain this growth is to have better facilities. We need to improve overall facilities, im talking cleanliness, views from the stands, toilets and food. I’d love to see clubs stepping up and doing more incentives for fans, like “Kids go Free” days”. My view on this is very similar to Dave as facilities need to be priority but i also feel the social media game by the League needs to be improved. As someone who runs a twitter account that promotes Irish football and sees the interaction when Irish play ers/clubs do well its time the league and their social media team improve promotion of the league as the standard of players continue to improve. Due to the new rule that our top talents at home cant move to England until their 18th birthday we are getting to see some potential superstars develop at home! The likes of Sam Curtis and Justin Ferjazi are two top talents who under old rules would of moved to England years ago but luckily fot the league we get top witness them week in week out at home and with the right social media push it could bring in even more eyes to the league.

I also spoke to James Coleman host of Friday nights LOI on twitter who is a big Silgo Rovers supporter who spoke to me about the serious talent in the league with alot of Internationals coming into the league.

“The introduction of so many internationals right across the league also shows just how good the quality of the game is getting.” At just james’s club this past international window they had Max Mata and Nando Pinaker in the New Zealand squad and Eanna Clancy in the Ireland u21 squad.

I also asked James and Dave for one thing they feel needs to be improved for the league to get to the next level and surpringly they had to two completely different answers. Dave feels 99% of people will say facilites but he feels “ we need to invest much more in the number of clubs in the country, we need to jump on this upturn in support and push to get new and old clubs into the league, im talking abouthe likes of Kildare, MonaghanBelfast etc. and introduce clubs from Mayo, Leitrim and Letterkenny. We could do so much more to improve this League but I feel we need to have more clubs in the league first.” As a Monaghan man myself i would love to see Monaghan United return after we went bust in 2012 and bringing back a local club would be huge for our local community.

James feels “there has to be a clear pathway between between schoolboy/girl level and the domestic league and even beyond. Without a decent underage structure leading into senior football, talented young footabllers fall through the cracks and end up pursuing other interests.

We can see the first hand with the quality of players now in the LOI and ecent results in Europe the standard of football is improving expoentially. The introduction of a third tier into LOI may be an answer to some questions and having a clear pathway between amateur, semi-pro and professional football.”

The constant rise in standard of the league with big attendences theres only one way the league will go and thats up. But saying that it will eventually plateau if the governement dont get their fingers out and invest into the leagues facilities so our talented players can continue to develop at home!

If you reading may be interested in checking out the league of Ireland make sure to check out LOI.TV were they show every game is shown on a Friday night for absolute pennies for the season!