1 week Ago
THE BEDROCK OF the FAI’s pathways plan – effectively a blueprint for how the entire sport is structured in Ireland – is an aligned calendar. Its shorthand is ‘Summer Soccer’, in which schoolboy and adult amateur leagues are brought into line with the League of Ireland season. The move has been officially voted through: the FAI board had the power to push it through themselves, but decided instead to put it to a vote among the FAI’s representative body, the General Assembly.
It was passed at a meeting that blended an in-person ballot with online voting, and by a fairly slim majority, with 57% in favour. Summer Soccer means Summer Soccer, and all that. The FAI now have a huge job of work to ensure leagues now actually enact the change.
Across the country, there are currently 22 leagues playing the aligned calendar, with another 47 playing the winter season. Twelve of those 47 are moving to the aligned calendar, meaning the FAI have to work on the remaining 35. The FAI were met with opposition from some leagues before the vote, and that opposition is now more intense than ever before.
sent by the SFAI to Abbotstown in which they say the “enforced” move to an aligned calendar has “uncorked overwhelming anger and created an atmosphere that’s impossible to work in.” Some of the opposition to the move comes from classic politicking. The Leinster FA, for instance, wrote a letter to the FAI board decrying a “flawed voting procedure”, saying it was carried by the LOI side of the house, who are not directly impacted by the change.
An objection rooted in an argument that “those entitled to a vote turned up and cast that vote legitimately” is not a very strong one. Plus, the Leinster FA have elected a representative to the FAI board, which unanimously endorsed the summer move. Figure that one out.
But, in fairness, much of the opposition is earnest and comes from very real concerns, which includes the sudden pitting of football against the local GAA club and financial commitments made by clubs on the basis of projected membership numbers that may be affected by the change. Plus, football has generally always followed the rhythm of the school year, and breaking with any tradition so embedded is a very difficult thing to do. But on the whole, this column believes a move to summer soccer to be a leap worth taking.
First of all, while the current schedule is tradition, it has also not traditionally worked. Ireland is the only country in Europe operating different calendars at different levels of the game, and if it was such a good idea, someone would have followed our example by now. Playing in the winter also means trying to squeeze fixtures in around the worst of the year’s weather, which, when aligned with sub-standard pitches and facilities, regularly leads to cancellations.
The trade-off is that Irish kids simply don’t get to play enough football, with the football calendar lasting 30 weeks on average across the country. In the inter-sport war for players’ affections and commitments, a better games programme would be a strong weapon for football, and yet the sport is choosing not to play in the best weather and on pitches when they are at their most firm. This is low-hanging fruit.
It would of course be possible to improve the games programme under the current calendar if facilities were much better, but the scale of the investment needed on that front is becoming more and more remote with every mention of the word tariff. Switching to the summer is a cheaper means of doing things. Aligning the calendar would also minimise the disruption caused by schoolboy players signed by LOI academies, while at adult level it would give amateur side a better shot at competing with professional sides in the FAI Cup.
At the moment, the misaligned schedule is serving up a series of hammerings. On a broader level, the FAI’s ambition to belatedly follow the rest of Europe in creating a single league pyramid linking all adult levels rests on everyone playing the same season. The basis of the Leinster FA’s rejection of the calendar vote is instructive: it shows that they view the professional side of the game as totally separate to their patch.
This fracturing and narrowed interest is the original sin of Irish football, and an aligned calendar would be of symbolic importance in fusing some of these ancient divisions. The biggest argument in favour of the aligned season is the fact that it’s already happened in some leagues and counties, and the sky hasn’t fallen in. Clashes with GAA training in these summer schoolboy leagues have generally been handled with conversation and co-operation between GAA and football clubs and, where that joined-up thinking has not been facilitated, clubs and leagues have been advised to be consistent and clear with their training and match schedule so parents and players know where they stand.
The FAI’s aligned calendar has flexibility built within it: leagues don’t have to play formal league games during traditional holiday time in July and August if they don’t want to, but the agreement to play during the summer at least focuses minds to offer alternative or one-off formats for the benefit of those who do want to play. Ultimately, the FAI are lobbying clubs and leagues to break with tradition to offer more people the chance to play more football. In a football culture as badly in need of improvement as Ireland’s, that’s a plunge worth taking.
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