The_Banker
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This article was printed in the Sunderland FC fanzine "A Love Supreme" and provides an alternative view on investment in The Premiership. I have posted it in the Letting off Stream section as the writer is obviously, letting off steam!!
I didn't write it, but I would agree with the sentiments expressed..
Niall Quinn – Saint or Sinner?
I am a supporter of my local football team. I go to all their home games, and as many of their away games as I can. I support them through thick and thin. I am unbearable when we lose; I am euphoric when we win. In short, I am just like most of you Sunderland fans reading this article.
However, there is a major difference between me and you. You support a club in a league that has fans all over the world, has proper stadiums, money to attract and keep the best players and the best of facilities to develop and train those players. I support a club that plays in a league that for a long time has been ignored by our own sports media, ridiculed by ex-players, holds many games in venues unsuitable for pub football teams, with little or no proper facilities to train players, and virtually no facilities to develop players.
I support an Irish football team called Cork City FC who play in the Republic of Ireland’s indigenous eircom League. Most Sunderland fans will know my club’s name from being the middle fixture in Sunderland’s pre-season tour of Ireland, or as the club from which you’ve purchased Roy O’Donovan for a song. The main reasons for having a pre-season tour in Ireland were to promote Sunderland football club, sell lots of Sunderland merchandise, to attract new fans from Ireland and to highlight the current Irish connection with the club. For a private company like Sunderland, this type of tour is the kind reasonable marketing drive you would expect. Yet for an Irish football fan like myself, this was just a PR circus that will, more than likely, ultimately do more damage to the eircom league. To Sunderland fans, Niall Quinn might be a saint, but to most eircom League fans, he is a sinner.
Niall Quinn professes to be an “Irish football man”. However, he ensures that huge amounts of Irish money go into English, not Irish, football. For Sunderland, Niall has brought Irish investors, Irish sponsors and, Niall hopes, lots of Irish fans making the trip to Wearside to spend their euro on merchandise and match tickets. Niall Quinn tells us all this is a good thing. And it is; for Sunderland.
What about Irish football though? Why doesn’t Niall think it a good idea to invest in an Irish football club? Not the kind of investment of a few hundred euro to be a member of a supporters club, but real serious investment like the reputed €2 million contributed to Drumaville by Charlie Chawke? That some of money would run an eircom League club for a season, and guarantee a top two finish, more likely a title win. A title win gets you into the Champions League qualifiers and a shot at the group stages. An investment of the size of the total Drumaville contribution could fund an academy, build training facilities and make a good start on a brand new stadium. It’s unlikely that this investment will ever happen though, as people with money, like Niall Quinn, do not deem their country’s league worthy of investment. Because of the likes of Niall Quinn, the English Premier League is rammed down our throats morning, noon and night, and our league and clubs are simply a footnote. Because of the likes of Niall Quinn, young Irish players are conditioned to feel that you must go to England to “make it”; if you don’t, you are a failure. Yet we do have a league here in our own country that can give a player a long and rewarding professional career, with teams well able to compete in European competition every year.
The eircom league is surviving because enough of us care about Irish football to support it. We want to feel part of a local club, that we can love, support and identify with. We want the same success for our home club as you do for yours. We don’t want to see hundreds of young Irish lads shipped off to clubs in England, their heads filled with the hype spouted by the likes of Niall Quinn. So many of those lads could play at a decent level of football here, learn their trade and then take their chances. So many of them do not have to come back, disillusioned, seen as a failures and lost to our local clubs having left Ireland at 15 and 16 years of age. Why doesn’t Niall put some of his money into developing them here in Ireland? He can still pick them up for a song later on if they make the grade.
Businessmen are entitled to do whatever they want with their own money. Niall Quinn is entitled to do whatever he wants with his. But please Niall, spare us the platitudes and the patronising. You are no friend of Irish football. You are a hard nosed business man, trying to make as much profit as you can from your own business, which just happens to be a football club.
As another plane load of Irish barstoolers* from Cork head off to Sunderland of a weekend, lured by the fame of Roy Keane (ex-Cobh Ramblers player) and the guff from Mr. Quinn, Niall thinks “this means more and more money coming into my club”. I shake my head sadly and think “this means more and more money going out of mine”.
*barstooler means the “football fan” who watches “his” club and football from the comfort of a bar stool. The Irish barstooler gets his exposure to live football on 2 weekends away during the English season, where he gets to drink too much and act like he was born in the shadow of Roker Park/Anfield or where ever. He doesn’t enjoy the game itself very much, as it takes over 90 minutes to get through, there are long periods when not too much happens, and worst of all, he doesn’t have Andy Gray telling him what is going on. But at least the barstooler can come back and sneer and tell me and other CCFC supporters that “Your lot are sh*t boy” and then, in a Scouse/Geordie/Cockney accent, launch into a football chant he learned the previous Saturday.
I didn't write it, but I would agree with the sentiments expressed..
Niall Quinn – Saint or Sinner?
I am a supporter of my local football team. I go to all their home games, and as many of their away games as I can. I support them through thick and thin. I am unbearable when we lose; I am euphoric when we win. In short, I am just like most of you Sunderland fans reading this article.
However, there is a major difference between me and you. You support a club in a league that has fans all over the world, has proper stadiums, money to attract and keep the best players and the best of facilities to develop and train those players. I support a club that plays in a league that for a long time has been ignored by our own sports media, ridiculed by ex-players, holds many games in venues unsuitable for pub football teams, with little or no proper facilities to train players, and virtually no facilities to develop players.
I support an Irish football team called Cork City FC who play in the Republic of Ireland’s indigenous eircom League. Most Sunderland fans will know my club’s name from being the middle fixture in Sunderland’s pre-season tour of Ireland, or as the club from which you’ve purchased Roy O’Donovan for a song. The main reasons for having a pre-season tour in Ireland were to promote Sunderland football club, sell lots of Sunderland merchandise, to attract new fans from Ireland and to highlight the current Irish connection with the club. For a private company like Sunderland, this type of tour is the kind reasonable marketing drive you would expect. Yet for an Irish football fan like myself, this was just a PR circus that will, more than likely, ultimately do more damage to the eircom league. To Sunderland fans, Niall Quinn might be a saint, but to most eircom League fans, he is a sinner.
Niall Quinn professes to be an “Irish football man”. However, he ensures that huge amounts of Irish money go into English, not Irish, football. For Sunderland, Niall has brought Irish investors, Irish sponsors and, Niall hopes, lots of Irish fans making the trip to Wearside to spend their euro on merchandise and match tickets. Niall Quinn tells us all this is a good thing. And it is; for Sunderland.
What about Irish football though? Why doesn’t Niall think it a good idea to invest in an Irish football club? Not the kind of investment of a few hundred euro to be a member of a supporters club, but real serious investment like the reputed €2 million contributed to Drumaville by Charlie Chawke? That some of money would run an eircom League club for a season, and guarantee a top two finish, more likely a title win. A title win gets you into the Champions League qualifiers and a shot at the group stages. An investment of the size of the total Drumaville contribution could fund an academy, build training facilities and make a good start on a brand new stadium. It’s unlikely that this investment will ever happen though, as people with money, like Niall Quinn, do not deem their country’s league worthy of investment. Because of the likes of Niall Quinn, the English Premier League is rammed down our throats morning, noon and night, and our league and clubs are simply a footnote. Because of the likes of Niall Quinn, young Irish players are conditioned to feel that you must go to England to “make it”; if you don’t, you are a failure. Yet we do have a league here in our own country that can give a player a long and rewarding professional career, with teams well able to compete in European competition every year.
The eircom league is surviving because enough of us care about Irish football to support it. We want to feel part of a local club, that we can love, support and identify with. We want the same success for our home club as you do for yours. We don’t want to see hundreds of young Irish lads shipped off to clubs in England, their heads filled with the hype spouted by the likes of Niall Quinn. So many of those lads could play at a decent level of football here, learn their trade and then take their chances. So many of them do not have to come back, disillusioned, seen as a failures and lost to our local clubs having left Ireland at 15 and 16 years of age. Why doesn’t Niall put some of his money into developing them here in Ireland? He can still pick them up for a song later on if they make the grade.
Businessmen are entitled to do whatever they want with their own money. Niall Quinn is entitled to do whatever he wants with his. But please Niall, spare us the platitudes and the patronising. You are no friend of Irish football. You are a hard nosed business man, trying to make as much profit as you can from your own business, which just happens to be a football club.
As another plane load of Irish barstoolers* from Cork head off to Sunderland of a weekend, lured by the fame of Roy Keane (ex-Cobh Ramblers player) and the guff from Mr. Quinn, Niall thinks “this means more and more money coming into my club”. I shake my head sadly and think “this means more and more money going out of mine”.
*barstooler means the “football fan” who watches “his” club and football from the comfort of a bar stool. The Irish barstooler gets his exposure to live football on 2 weekends away during the English season, where he gets to drink too much and act like he was born in the shadow of Roker Park/Anfield or where ever. He doesn’t enjoy the game itself very much, as it takes over 90 minutes to get through, there are long periods when not too much happens, and worst of all, he doesn’t have Andy Gray telling him what is going on. But at least the barstooler can come back and sneer and tell me and other CCFC supporters that “Your lot are sh*t boy” and then, in a Scouse/Geordie/Cockney accent, launch into a football chant he learned the previous Saturday.