Life on Leeside- The Greg O'Halloran column
Credit: Extratime Team (ETPhotos)
It is 12 years this month since I went to Hull City as 16 year old. At the time, they were in the third division and now find themselves in the Premier League. When I was there, they had crowds of only two thousand and the ground was a bit of a shambles. It was hard to get there at the time, no direct flights meant I had to get on trains from place to place and I rarely got home but I really enjoyed it.
They were bottom of the league in the third division at the time but Mark Hateley came in as manager as well as an investment from David Lloyd, the Tennis player and not the cricketer. They were still struggling to get crowds though. One week you might get two thousand and then the next week three but that might drop down to one; very like a LoI team. Peter Taylor came in then and they kept getting promoted and if you look at them now they’re in the Premier League with gates of well over 20000.
It’s really amazing how the club was eventually built-up and fans started to come back through the gates. It shows how important fans are to come to games because without them there would be no club. I’d love to see a LoI club go in a similar fashion and build up a massive fanbase eventually.
Hull is a city very similar to Cork but when I was over there the quality of football wasn’t great. However, the facilities for the players were excellent, especially the youth system. In Ireland, there is no system and you just go straight into the A Championship or U-21’s. In England, you become a YTS and it is all government funded, which means all the young players are full time for two years and if you’re good enough you then make the step up to the full team.
With the exception of a FAS course there is nothing and I’d like to see that being changed by the government here. If there is a setup like that for youths you’ll have the players coming through at local clubs rather than going to English academies. The clubs would then start to make money if young players were doing well. If you look at the players who’ve gone to England from Cork it’s frightening. Imagine if they stayed here, we’d have a really good quality league.
You’ve got internationals like Kevin Doyle and Shane Long, Paddy McCourt and Niall McGinn for Northern Ireland and the four of them are talent that came from the league. When I was here, Shane Long was only in the youths and it shows the quality of the LoI that he can make such an impact for Reading across the water. We went over to watch Reading v Charlton a couple of months ago and the only difference was that they were playing in 30000 seater stadium, the football was the exact same. But if you were to put that game into Turner’s Cross on a Friday night, you’d get people complaining that it was the worst game ever.
With all of those players here we’d definitely be getting somewhere on the European stage. You have to try and get a team into the Champions League proper, it would be brilliant. Some people might say the league is not good enough and there are always problems but if you get a steady crowd and good people behind the scenes in a club it can be done.
When my YTS finished, Dave Barry asked me to come back to Cork and I was very fit when I came back and there were some great players here like Ollie Cahill, Patsy Freyne and Dave Hill. We did well as a team even though St Pat’s were the main side in the country at the time. And if they kept going like they did it must be asked would they have been in Europe by now?
I think the government really need to look at the situation in the league. All you hear is: revenue this, revenue that. They really need to give the clubs a bit of a break but they don’t look at the positive aspects. The GAA are a great association but they get a lot of government funding. If you look in the middle of the country there is probably the best pitch you’re likely to see and it’s always a GAA pitch. Not that I’m an expert in Politics, but the government should fund youth teams as starting at under 21 is a bit stupid if you ask me. They’re not giving clubs enough money either to sustain a full-time setup.
The league is successful on the pitch if you look at the amount of players who’ve moved cross-channel and become successful. Maybe a decent underage setup will stop players going to England at 15 or 16 and coming back and because of that the majority are coming home without an education and ending up being on the dole. Back to the revenue, if they wind-up clubs you’re going to have more unemployed people who are going to end up on the dole and then causing more trouble for the government.
If clubs got a slight bit of a push we could really get a team into the group stages in Europe and the benefits from that for all concerned would be massive. Imagine the income for the city of Cork, or even Dublin, if it did happen? As soon as we do get a team in, you’ll have everybody praising the league and the government will probably be taking credit then.
Finally, the mid-season break is upon us this weekend and I’m off to Turkey with my wife and mum to chill out before I get back to work. We haven’t a big squad and most of us had played a lot of games, so it is something that I’d welcome.
They were bottom of the league in the third division at the time but Mark Hateley came in as manager as well as an investment from David Lloyd, the Tennis player and not the cricketer. They were still struggling to get crowds though. One week you might get two thousand and then the next week three but that might drop down to one; very like a LoI team. Peter Taylor came in then and they kept getting promoted and if you look at them now they’re in the Premier League with gates of well over 20000.
It’s really amazing how the club was eventually built-up and fans started to come back through the gates. It shows how important fans are to come to games because without them there would be no club. I’d love to see a LoI club go in a similar fashion and build up a massive fanbase eventually.
Hull is a city very similar to Cork but when I was over there the quality of football wasn’t great. However, the facilities for the players were excellent, especially the youth system. In Ireland, there is no system and you just go straight into the A Championship or U-21’s. In England, you become a YTS and it is all government funded, which means all the young players are full time for two years and if you’re good enough you then make the step up to the full team.
With the exception of a FAS course there is nothing and I’d like to see that being changed by the government here. If there is a setup like that for youths you’ll have the players coming through at local clubs rather than going to English academies. The clubs would then start to make money if young players were doing well. If you look at the players who’ve gone to England from Cork it’s frightening. Imagine if they stayed here, we’d have a really good quality league.
You’ve got internationals like Kevin Doyle and Shane Long, Paddy McCourt and Niall McGinn for Northern Ireland and the four of them are talent that came from the league. When I was here, Shane Long was only in the youths and it shows the quality of the LoI that he can make such an impact for Reading across the water. We went over to watch Reading v Charlton a couple of months ago and the only difference was that they were playing in 30000 seater stadium, the football was the exact same. But if you were to put that game into Turner’s Cross on a Friday night, you’d get people complaining that it was the worst game ever.
With all of those players here we’d definitely be getting somewhere on the European stage. You have to try and get a team into the Champions League proper, it would be brilliant. Some people might say the league is not good enough and there are always problems but if you get a steady crowd and good people behind the scenes in a club it can be done.
When my YTS finished, Dave Barry asked me to come back to Cork and I was very fit when I came back and there were some great players here like Ollie Cahill, Patsy Freyne and Dave Hill. We did well as a team even though St Pat’s were the main side in the country at the time. And if they kept going like they did it must be asked would they have been in Europe by now?
I think the government really need to look at the situation in the league. All you hear is: revenue this, revenue that. They really need to give the clubs a bit of a break but they don’t look at the positive aspects. The GAA are a great association but they get a lot of government funding. If you look in the middle of the country there is probably the best pitch you’re likely to see and it’s always a GAA pitch. Not that I’m an expert in Politics, but the government should fund youth teams as starting at under 21 is a bit stupid if you ask me. They’re not giving clubs enough money either to sustain a full-time setup.
The league is successful on the pitch if you look at the amount of players who’ve moved cross-channel and become successful. Maybe a decent underage setup will stop players going to England at 15 or 16 and coming back and because of that the majority are coming home without an education and ending up being on the dole. Back to the revenue, if they wind-up clubs you’re going to have more unemployed people who are going to end up on the dole and then causing more trouble for the government.
If clubs got a slight bit of a push we could really get a team into the group stages in Europe and the benefits from that for all concerned would be massive. Imagine the income for the city of Cork, or even Dublin, if it did happen? As soon as we do get a team in, you’ll have everybody praising the league and the government will probably be taking credit then.
Finally, the mid-season break is upon us this weekend and I’m off to Turkey with my wife and mum to chill out before I get back to work. We haven’t a big squad and most of us had played a lot of games, so it is something that I’d welcome.
