Fran Gavin hails 'brave decision' to go with ten-team Premier Division

FAI Director of Competitions Fran Gavin has defended the decision that will see three teams automatically relegated from the top flight and only the First Division champions promoted at the end of the season.

Gavin was asked about the format of the league when taking part in a discussion, along with extratime.ie reporter Macdara Ferris, on RTÉ Radio Sunday Sport ahead of the new season, which kicks off next Friday.

Ten-team top flight

“It was taken in consultation with the Premier Division clubs,” said Gavin about the decision to reduce the size of the top flight in 2018 to ten teams.

“They formed their own association, the Premier Club Alliance, and they were looking for a change of structure. Amongst themselves they came up with the decisions to go to ten teams.

“I suppose it is a brave and courageous decision as it meant that three of them were going to go down in order to get a ten team premier and ten team first division.

“Three teams going down is a high number from a league with only 12 teams. It was the clubs who made the decision which was endorsed by the FAI.”

With half the Premier Division potentially being dragged into a relegation tussle and only one team to come up from the second tier, it is no wonder many of the managers were not too happy with the decision when they spoke to extratime.ie reporters at the league launch last week.

“I still don’t know the reason for doing it,” said Finn Harps boss Ollie Horgan. “It could put clubs in danger. There will be bigger clubs than Finn Harps that will be in relegation battles.”

Shane Keegan spoke about his immediate concern at Galway just being about avoiding relegation, saying: "the number one target is to still be in the division.”

Cobh manager Stephen Henderson already seemed to be writing off his clubs chances of getting out of the first division.

“Hopefully we can get through this season, without getting ourselves into trouble financially.

“The playoffs are not there anymore and we don't have the finances to challenge the likes of Waterford, Longford and Shelbourne.

I can’t believe its not Wexford Youths

Within the First Division there will be two “new” clubs with Wexford FC and Waterford FC joining the league. It means that those clubs start the season debt-free, which is a requirement of the licensing process.

There was a certain amount of controversy with the awarding of the licences to those clubs but Fran Gavin stressed that both clubs had met all of the licensing requirements.

“That was the old Wexford Youths,” said Gavin about Wexford Youths debts. “The new Wexford FC are starting afresh. We didn’t have an application for a licence from Waterford United or Wexford Youths this season.

“A new entity in Waterford and a new entity in Wexford applied. They both went through a very rigorous process of club licencing.

“It is an independent committee that sits to examine the matters all around those clubs. They passed those and were granted a licence. That is a tough process to go through. It is independent and not the FAI who does that.”

Attendances

The 2016 season had severe fixture congestion for clubs at the top of the table at the end of the season which also saw some midweek games attract some paltry attendances, such as a St. Patrick’s Athletic v Cork City crowd of 369 on a Monday night in mid-October.

Considerable effort was put in by extratime.ie during the season to get attendance figures from all the clubs (with the exception of Derry City who did not supply attendances).

Our figures for the total attendance in the League of Ireland in 2016 was 344,245, which is a drop from the previous season when compared with the FAI’s stated figure for 2015 of “almost 370,000”.

“When you add in everything – the cups, the league, European matches – more people watched the SSE Airtricity League and League of Ireland football than we ever had,” said Gavin.

Midweek matches

In relation to the small midweek games, Gavin noted that “last year was unique that both Cork and Dundalk had really good European campaigns.

“Unfortunately that led to some of the games being moved away from the prime dates on Friday to Monday or Tuesday.

“We know that is not the best time to have a game but unfortunately the success on one side led to disappointing attendances at those games.

“We’ve extended the season by one week, shortened the break to try and get those matches in at the appropriate times.

“With the competition which we are going to have this year with all those competitive games, we will get the crowds back and see attendances increase.”

You can listen to Fran Gavin and Macdara Ferris discussing these issues with RTÉ’s Darren Frehill here.