A dose of 'Big Society'
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If, like me, you took a break from blanket coverage of our recent election and tuned into
the BBC last week, you may have heard British prime minister David Cameron banging on
about ‘Big Society’. He insists that it is a concept he is passionate about, and no wonder. It
is an idea that boils down to the following; if you have a problem, sort it out yourself. A
handy political solution to all sorts of tricky issues.
Is your local schooling system hopelessly inadequate? Problems with anti-social behaviour? Perhaps your local road network is more suited to spelunking than having a car driven across it. Well, dear constituent, according to Big Society you’ll need to sort that out yourself.
In a political context it smacks of abandonment but it’s an idea that might find some purchase on the rocky shore of League of Ireland football.
Every year the start of the league season seems to offer the same unedifying spectacle as various clubs scramble to cross the line laid down by the club licensing committee. It has become an almost traditional game of tag that emanates partly from the unhelpful economics of league football in this country, but also from the outdated ‘cute-hoorism’ that still shuffles about in too many club boardrooms. At a time when the national electorate have loudly booed the old order of nod and wink politics, too many of our football clubs still engage in the worst kind of legislative loop-holing.
Perhaps it is a legacy of our subjugated past but the instinct to pull the wool over the eyes of whoever happens to be laying down the rules doesn’t serve us well. Apart from being self destructive in an environment where the rules are designed to help rather than exploit, it also betrays an immaturity that the Celtic Tiger was supposed to have banished.
The question that club licensing attempts to pose is whether your club is suitably well run to fulfill its obligations for the coming season. Its purpose is to set out a system of minimum requirements; a template, not of best practice, but of a form of acceptable practice. Licensing was never intended to offer a guarantee of survival, nor could it ever hope to do that.
Every club is different. The financial structure that keeps any one club afloat will differ from the next and that’s the way it should be. Football clubs are autonomous bodies, generally run by grownups who are perfectly well aware of, and well able to, make decisions for themselves. Why then, every time a club fails (or nearly fails), is there a rush to lambast the failings of club licensing?
Licensing is not interested in honours students. It patrols the borderline between pass and fail, and any club that chooses licensing requirements as the height of its ambitions must accept that even a slight downturn in fortune will put them in trouble. When the worst happens it is not necessarily the fault of licensing. Sometimes it is a matter of unfortunate circumstance, sometimes a club simply discovers that its local community is not sufficiently invested in it to support a team playing at that level, but often it is a failure that should lie squarely with the club themselves.
Too often Irish football practices the double standard of resenting the authority of the licensing structure while simultaneously blaming it for not saving them from their own shortcomings. I wonder if, in February 2009, anyone at Derry City or Cork City had the thought that, if only the FAI knew what was really going on they would surely not have given them their license? And how confident can we be that no club officials have had the same thought this year?
Don’t get me wrong, there are clubs in the League of Ireland family that conduct their business with prudence and dignity, but how many times must we witness a club’s ambition over reaching itself before we realise that having to refer to ‘some’ well run clubs is not good enough. Perhaps Irish football would benefit from a liberal and self administered dose of ‘Big Society’.
When a club asks itself if it can afford its' wages bill, they should not look to the FAI for an answer, it should be right in front of them on the balance sheet. And when things go wrong there is little point in waving their club license in the air asking how this could be. Blaming others for our own failings is a practice that utterly disempowers us. Our league should be bigger than that.
Is your local schooling system hopelessly inadequate? Problems with anti-social behaviour? Perhaps your local road network is more suited to spelunking than having a car driven across it. Well, dear constituent, according to Big Society you’ll need to sort that out yourself.
In a political context it smacks of abandonment but it’s an idea that might find some purchase on the rocky shore of League of Ireland football.
Every year the start of the league season seems to offer the same unedifying spectacle as various clubs scramble to cross the line laid down by the club licensing committee. It has become an almost traditional game of tag that emanates partly from the unhelpful economics of league football in this country, but also from the outdated ‘cute-hoorism’ that still shuffles about in too many club boardrooms. At a time when the national electorate have loudly booed the old order of nod and wink politics, too many of our football clubs still engage in the worst kind of legislative loop-holing.
Perhaps it is a legacy of our subjugated past but the instinct to pull the wool over the eyes of whoever happens to be laying down the rules doesn’t serve us well. Apart from being self destructive in an environment where the rules are designed to help rather than exploit, it also betrays an immaturity that the Celtic Tiger was supposed to have banished.
The question that club licensing attempts to pose is whether your club is suitably well run to fulfill its obligations for the coming season. Its purpose is to set out a system of minimum requirements; a template, not of best practice, but of a form of acceptable practice. Licensing was never intended to offer a guarantee of survival, nor could it ever hope to do that.
Every club is different. The financial structure that keeps any one club afloat will differ from the next and that’s the way it should be. Football clubs are autonomous bodies, generally run by grownups who are perfectly well aware of, and well able to, make decisions for themselves. Why then, every time a club fails (or nearly fails), is there a rush to lambast the failings of club licensing?
Licensing is not interested in honours students. It patrols the borderline between pass and fail, and any club that chooses licensing requirements as the height of its ambitions must accept that even a slight downturn in fortune will put them in trouble. When the worst happens it is not necessarily the fault of licensing. Sometimes it is a matter of unfortunate circumstance, sometimes a club simply discovers that its local community is not sufficiently invested in it to support a team playing at that level, but often it is a failure that should lie squarely with the club themselves.
Too often Irish football practices the double standard of resenting the authority of the licensing structure while simultaneously blaming it for not saving them from their own shortcomings. I wonder if, in February 2009, anyone at Derry City or Cork City had the thought that, if only the FAI knew what was really going on they would surely not have given them their license? And how confident can we be that no club officials have had the same thought this year?
Don’t get me wrong, there are clubs in the League of Ireland family that conduct their business with prudence and dignity, but how many times must we witness a club’s ambition over reaching itself before we realise that having to refer to ‘some’ well run clubs is not good enough. Perhaps Irish football would benefit from a liberal and self administered dose of ‘Big Society’.
When a club asks itself if it can afford its' wages bill, they should not look to the FAI for an answer, it should be right in front of them on the balance sheet. And when things go wrong there is little point in waving their club license in the air asking how this could be. Blaming others for our own failings is a practice that utterly disempowers us. Our league should be bigger than that.
About Simon O'Gorman
Simon O'Gorman began reporting for Extratime in 2010. He remembers Milltown and Flower Lodge and, back in the mists of time, saw Diego Maradona play at Lansdowne Road. He now lives in Co Kildare and … View Full Profile