The FAI yesterday revealed details of its new cross-Border cup competition, a six-team event which new television channel Setanta Sport has backed with 1.6 million in sponsorship over the next four years as well as a commitment to broadcast 10 of the 13 annual matches live.
The deal, which follows months of talks between the association and its northern counterpart, will restore regular competitive soccer between clubs on the two sides of the Border for the first time since Linfield beat Athlone Town in the last Tyler Cup final, back in the 1980/81 season.
The first staging of the new event will take place next April, with the top two clubs in each league, as well as the cup winners, being drawn into two groups of three, after which each will play each other on a home and away basis. The two group winners will then face each other in a once-off final.
"This is the sort of thing that I set as a priority when I joined the FAI last year," said the association's chief executive, Fran Rooney. "I remember the success of previous cross-Border competitions, the rivalries and interest they generated. We're confident that this competition can recapture that mood and that it will become an important part of the football calendar on both sides of the Border."
Rooney also pointed to the scale of the sponsorship as being a major step forward for an association that has had persistent difficulty in the past with persuading broadcasters that games involving domestic clubs have any serious value.
Although the figures are far from clear-cut because Setanta is paying to sponsor the competition - it will be known as the Setanta Cup - as well as to broadcast its matches, the deal involves a payment to the association, which effectively owns the tournament, of just over 30,000 per match.
After some 300,000 is deducted from the overall figure to cover marketing and other expenses, around 1.3 million in prize money will be left over to be divided up amongst the competing clubs.
Rooney said yesterday that the precise breakdown of the figures involved had yet to be worked out, but that he envisaged each club receiving a basic fee for participating, with the winners and runner-up then being awarded substantial bonuses.
The two finalists will have five games added to their season's schedule. Given that there has already been considerable disruption to the league because of European competition since the switch to summer football, Rooney said that the previously announced review of the calendar would now take on an added significance.
"I think that we need a sensible calendar that takes account of all competitions - the league, league cup, FAI Cup, European competitions and now this new event. We need to be fair to everybody and that's what we intend to do as we consider the matter in a very broad context over the next few months."
Speaking on behalf of Setanta Sport, the company's CEO Niall Cogley said that it sees the new competition as a "signature event", one "we feel will capture the imagination of the Irish public. We want to innovate, complement and invest in the indigenous industry. This is an opportunity for us to do all of those things."
Cogley would not necessarily have been perceived as having been especially enthusiastic about domestic soccer during his time as head of television sport in RTÉ and he made a point yesterday of stating that the idea of this event predated his arrival at Setanta.
"My involvement here was to tie things up rather than to initiate it," he said, but he went on to observe that "a lot of the calls we've been getting have been about this sort of thing, about whether we are going to cover the Eircom League and other Irish events, so we certainly see that there is the interest there and we intend that this will become the football event on the island over the coming years."
He added, however, that talks have already taken place with the FAI about the possibility of live or deferred coverage of league and cup games and that an announcement on this could follow shortly.
David Chick, the chairman of the Senior Clubs' Committee of the IFA said that in terms of Northern Ireland this would be the game's biggest sponsorship deal and added that, "in terms our clubs, it will be right up there with qualifying for Europe when it comes to incentives for winning the league or cup".
The issue of security, representatives of both associations said, is not a major concern. "We've spoken to the police forces both north and south and they have no worries. I think one of the things that we're very proud of is how far we've come in recent years in terms of the behaviour of our supporters."
Though the inaugural competition will be held next April Rooney said that it could subsequently be switched to November.
How the cross-border cup works
The Setanta Cup will involve six clubs each year, three from each side of the border. Clubs will qualify by winning or finishing second in the league or by winning the FAI or IFA cup. In the event that a team qualifies by more than one route, then the third-placed side in the league will win entry to the competition.
The six competing clubs will then be drawn into two groups of three with each club playing the other two in its group on a home and away basis. The top side in each group will then go forward to the tournament final which will be a single match, the venue for which will be decided on a year-to-year basis.
Around 300,000 will be divided amongst the six participating clubs annually. The breakdown of how the money is to be allocated has yet to be decided, but it is likely that clubs would be guaranteed in excess of 30,000 with the balance being distributed as prize-money to the finalists.
The FAI will organise the competition, while the IFA was described yesterday as a "participating partner" in the event. Fran Rooney said at the launch that he hopes to see the competition develop into something to which significant additional sponsorship could be attracted.
Previous cross-border competitions have included the Dublin and Belfast Inter-City Cup which ran between 1941 and 1949, the North-South Cup which survived just two years at the start of the 1960s and the Blaxnit, Texaco and Tyler cups which were stages, one after the other, almost consecutively between the 1967/68 season and the 1980/81 campaign.
