Parking the bus
Credit:
On the road with Derry City. I’m doing it the easy way. As the team does the
two hundred odd miles down to Ferrycarrig Park for the apparent formality
of putting Wexford Youths out of the FAI Cup, my itinerary from Gorey doesn’t
even take me out of the county.
Stephen Kenny is concerned he’s put too many youngsters in the mix but, with seven games in June it’s time to put his economy budget squad to the test. Although I have a soft spot for Youths I can’t see what he’s worried about. Wexford inhabit a different soccer planet; they don’t even have an economy squad budget, have lost all their home first division games and are joint bottom of the entire league. Derry, on a roll, stand second in the premier table. When they came to Wexford seeking promotion last season they scored five. On the club’s last cup visit it was six. Derry has seven first team regulars in the starting lineup. You can get 14-1 on a Youths win. Nuff said.
But, having failed to score in the opening minutes, Derry turn turtle. There’s a big hole on the right side of the defence and Danny Furlong gets a hat-trick, the match ball and man of the match and City, defeated 4-1, get back on the bus stunned for the long trip home.
There’s hardly time to clean their boots before the Candystripes are travelling south again. Monday, so it must be Saint Patrick’s Athletic. Stephen Kenny makes five changes and his team takes the lead. Pats, who should have won the match in the first half, equalise but Derry prove more durable and the players climb back on the coach with a deserved point.
Four days later and it’s another Dublin round trip of best part of four hundred miles. Now it’s Tallaght stadium and again City look stretched during a first period during which they try no fewer than three different right backs in the first twenty five minutes but Hoops left flanker McCabe still scores. But a one goal lead at the interval is a poor return for Rovers ascendancy. James McLean has returned after suspension for this match and it’s his pin point corner on the right that services Zayed’s precise near post equalising header. Once again Derry show second half stickability to take another point back on the bus. They’ve clocked up well over a thousand miles by now.
On Friday Derry play Bohs and on the following Tuesday they entertain Sligo. At least these two games are at home but then come two more trips to Dublin in a weekend – to play the same club, UCD, twice. What does all this madness add up to?
Only a lunatic would consider this fixture congestion a responsible way to run a league for impoverished part time clubs in a small bankrupt country. With little enough time between matches for recovery and the treatment table, the only coaches who can operate professionally in such circumstances are the ones with four wheels.
We have too few clubs playing too many matches. No club should play another more than twice in a league season, once at home, once away. Extend the membership of the senior division to sixteen clubs and run a regional competition for reserve sides incorporating non league clubs. When you suggest that changes are urgently needed to the way we structure and market domestic football you are told it would take two seasons to implement any innovation. Don’t the game’s administrators realise that, like the country, the game is in dire straits? What we need is executive initiative not civil service reserve.
The rewarding aspect of Derry City’s crazy odyssey, for those of their fans who can afford to follow it, is the revelation that soccer, whatever impossible demands we inflict upon it, remains a wonderful game. When I tried to pick out outstanding Wexford players in their FAI Cup triumph I found that every one of them had excelled on that particular evening. That, although good tactics reap a just reward, the pitch is too big, the element of chance too great to prevent even the most astute coach from being able to put the genie of the beautiful game back in the bottle with any certainty that it will remain there for ninety odd minutes.
Meanwhile, on Friday Wexford Youths, fresh from their Derry triumph, go down six-nil in a cup competition nobody needs. Like the man said, it’s a funny old game.
Stephen Kenny is concerned he’s put too many youngsters in the mix but, with seven games in June it’s time to put his economy budget squad to the test. Although I have a soft spot for Youths I can’t see what he’s worried about. Wexford inhabit a different soccer planet; they don’t even have an economy squad budget, have lost all their home first division games and are joint bottom of the entire league. Derry, on a roll, stand second in the premier table. When they came to Wexford seeking promotion last season they scored five. On the club’s last cup visit it was six. Derry has seven first team regulars in the starting lineup. You can get 14-1 on a Youths win. Nuff said.
But, having failed to score in the opening minutes, Derry turn turtle. There’s a big hole on the right side of the defence and Danny Furlong gets a hat-trick, the match ball and man of the match and City, defeated 4-1, get back on the bus stunned for the long trip home.
There’s hardly time to clean their boots before the Candystripes are travelling south again. Monday, so it must be Saint Patrick’s Athletic. Stephen Kenny makes five changes and his team takes the lead. Pats, who should have won the match in the first half, equalise but Derry prove more durable and the players climb back on the coach with a deserved point.
Four days later and it’s another Dublin round trip of best part of four hundred miles. Now it’s Tallaght stadium and again City look stretched during a first period during which they try no fewer than three different right backs in the first twenty five minutes but Hoops left flanker McCabe still scores. But a one goal lead at the interval is a poor return for Rovers ascendancy. James McLean has returned after suspension for this match and it’s his pin point corner on the right that services Zayed’s precise near post equalising header. Once again Derry show second half stickability to take another point back on the bus. They’ve clocked up well over a thousand miles by now.
On Friday Derry play Bohs and on the following Tuesday they entertain Sligo. At least these two games are at home but then come two more trips to Dublin in a weekend – to play the same club, UCD, twice. What does all this madness add up to?
Only a lunatic would consider this fixture congestion a responsible way to run a league for impoverished part time clubs in a small bankrupt country. With little enough time between matches for recovery and the treatment table, the only coaches who can operate professionally in such circumstances are the ones with four wheels.
We have too few clubs playing too many matches. No club should play another more than twice in a league season, once at home, once away. Extend the membership of the senior division to sixteen clubs and run a regional competition for reserve sides incorporating non league clubs. When you suggest that changes are urgently needed to the way we structure and market domestic football you are told it would take two seasons to implement any innovation. Don’t the game’s administrators realise that, like the country, the game is in dire straits? What we need is executive initiative not civil service reserve.
The rewarding aspect of Derry City’s crazy odyssey, for those of their fans who can afford to follow it, is the revelation that soccer, whatever impossible demands we inflict upon it, remains a wonderful game. When I tried to pick out outstanding Wexford players in their FAI Cup triumph I found that every one of them had excelled on that particular evening. That, although good tactics reap a just reward, the pitch is too big, the element of chance too great to prevent even the most astute coach from being able to put the genie of the beautiful game back in the bottle with any certainty that it will remain there for ninety odd minutes.
Meanwhile, on Friday Wexford Youths, fresh from their Derry triumph, go down six-nil in a cup competition nobody needs. Like the man said, it’s a funny old game.
