My idea for a new format for the league of Ireland

Lads can someone provide a link to the "you need a promotion and relagation to have a national team"? I've seen that posted a number of times on here. I think that has to be some kind of mistake. Nearly every country in the world has a national team, even tiny countries. I am sure they do not have leagues with promotion/relegation.

Is the rule not getting mixed up with someething else? For example, to be able for clubs to enter European competition then you need a league with promotion/relegation.

In any case, even with a 20 team division league there could still be a promotion/relgation to the winner of a regional league plaf-off series or something

Liechtenstien don't have a league but their clubs do play in Switzerland.

AnCearrbhach wrote: Saint Tom wrote: Cork dont bring a large support anywhere Been over this loads of times use the search tool it's boring at this stage.

basically what needs to happen is scrap the first division, have 4 provincial leagues, with the four winners going into a play off for promotion to the premier division. The Munster senior league will have to include teams like from the other counties in munster and not just from cork like it is now.

This.best way to improve the league is the fai to take a f**kin interest and the best fans in the world to get off the sofa and go to a match.billy agrees with starry shocker,but they do seem to pop up every month or so.

I commend the OP for spending some time to think about how to improve the league.
This is the part where I piss on your parade ABFC.

A one team league would be unwatchable. The current league table isn't full of excitement as it is.
In a one team league you would essentially have 4 sides in European spots with maybe one or 2 hoping to go on a bit of a run and get in there. That means in a 20 team league we`d have 14 teams plus with nothing to play for at a very early stage of the season. Would you go to watch Bray and Finn Harps playing a game to decide who finishes 16th?

The big USP for a one team league is that it would give small clubs games against bigger clubs. It could just as easily do the opposite and drag our better clubs down.

All that is before we mention the fact we are required to have a 2 tier league by UEFA.

As has been suggested the most sensible thing to do is to make a 10 team Super league.
If its good enough for the Swiss its good enough for us.
The league would have 4 European spots and 1 automatic relegation place and 1 play off relegation place means conceivably a team in 6th battling for Europe could end up in a relegation battle.
Mid table would consist of one or 2 teams at best.
Small teams like Bray and Limerick rolling into town twice a season does nothing for a club trying to build crowds.
There also isn't the pool of decent players in the country to support 12 top tier teams.
If the league had 5 marquee fixtures every week that would be much more marketable.
To have such a small premier division would require a strong first division. The reason it didn't work before was because this wasn't the case. UCD being a Premier Division side also didn't help but if they manage to find their way in there then we`d have to live with it.

The 10 sides in the league would need to be tightly policed and if they step out of line e.g not paying managers and players or other stupid stuff. Then they should be relegated.

If we had a strong regionalised FD with at least 8 teams in each division with a finals phase similar to the MLS that would be far preferable to the current system.

FD sides are starting to wake up to the merits of such a system as Athlone have come out this week and supported it.

Where would the teams come from?
A regionalised first division would be much more appealing to club sides who have shown an interest in the past but opted against joining the league due to costs. Sides like Tullamore, Castlebar, Carlow/Kilkenny and Monaghan United could be tempted into such a format.

For the league to grow we would need both divisions to be strong. We`d require 10 "model clubs" conducting themselves in a professional manner. They wouldn't have to be full time professional to do that.

Our major problem is not that we don't have enough clubs its that we don't have enough well run clubs. Every club never seems to be far from some managerial/owner/player/financial based circus.

The First Division clubs would ideally aspire to that and be able to build their clubs in the FD.

The Dutch first division system is worth a read. Its a bit complicated to write here but I like the system of giving a team a place in a promotion play off after every round of games.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eerste_Divisie


Edited by Bitored - 19 Jul 2015 at 5:45pm

Wexford getting promoted isn't going to help the league next season. They'll get relegated, they've no real stadium and they don't pay their players.

Bitored wrote: corkery wrote: Wexford getting promoted isn't going to help the league next season. They'll get relegated, they've no real stadium and they don't pay their players. You could say the same about a lot of the current Premier Division sides. At least with Wexford they are amateur and haven't committed to paying players. The league needs sides like Wexford to grow and develop or else discussions on league formats are pointless. Wexford have had awful attendances only beaten by UCD this year. If they are to develop they need to get into the Premier and try to grow a fan base if they cant do that they are just going to be another Kildare County/Kilkenny City and the rest.

12 teams or larger produces the type of farce where the League winners will this year likely finish +70pts ahead of Limerick or 2011 when Rovers finished 71pts & 145 goals more than bottom side Galway, who thankfully as a Club have since bounced back superbly. In fact iirc only two seasons in the last 10 have seen a bottom Club finish within 50 pts of the League winner.