From afar, the 2024 League of Ireland Premier Division is open to ridicule. Up close, the season has been a wild, Dublin-derby-fuelled, financially nonsensical race to the final Friday night.
Defending champions Shamrock Rovers are still going for another title but their manager, Stephen Bradley, says their overall standards slipped during this campaign as they expanded their ambitions to a successful European campaign.
Rovers’ domestic results have certainly plummeted. Victory over Waterford in the final game could see them finish on top with 61 points, which is a stark drop from 72-, 79- and 78-point finishes in their previous three title-winning years.
The field has never been so bunched. According to St Patrick’s Athletic manager Stephen Kenny, the coaching and spread of players across all 10 clubs has markedly improved since he left Dundalk to become Republic of Ireland under-21s manager in 2019.
More below on the rapid revival of Kenny’s managerial career.
But first, let’s deal with a two-team title scrap that is comparable to a marathon runner (Shelbourne) trying to hold the lead from gun to tape despite losing their Nike AlphaFly 3 shoes halfway around the course.
The Nikes, in this instance, are Will Jarvis and Gavin Molloy.
[ Time for Shelbourne ‘to stand tall’ as they look to end 18-year wait for title ]
If Shels fail to beat Derry City at the Brandywell on Friday and Rovers achieve the five in a row by overcoming Waterford in Tallaght, Damien Duff’s enforced squad repairs midseason will offer an obvious excuse.
The Irish club scene will always be a seller’s market, heavily impacted by its summer schedule; Jarvis was the league’s outstanding attacker until Hull City recalled their loanee in July and Molloy signed for Aberdeen in August.
The signings of Ali Coote, Harry Wood and former Ireland international Aiden O’Brien could not replicate the impact that English winger Jarvis had off the left.
Shelbourne had the mark of champions when two Jarvis penalties sank Shamrock Rovers on May 24th. However, they struggled to cope with the loss of key players, collecting only eight points from a possible 30 between July and October.
As the season went awry for both Shels and an inexplicably poor Derry City, no club managed to fill the void left by Rovers’ equally baffling results. Waterford, Galway United and Sligo Rovers each threatened to pull off a shock triumph , but inconsistency proved their undoing.
Since Kenny’s appointment last May, St Pat’s stormed up the table to put themselves into the last European spot with one game remaining. The 52-year-old hardly reinvented the wheel by signing Zach Elbouzedi and giving teenager Mason Melia a sustained run in the team. But Kenny did remind everyone why he was appointed Ireland manager in 2020, as St Pat’s performances in Uefa Conference League qualifiers, particularly a 1-0 victory over Sabah in Azerbaijan and a draw at home to Istanbul Basaksehir, almost saw them join Rovers in the group stages.
Preseason, the smart money was on Derry to push Rovers all the way to a fifth successive title. That narrative quickly evaporated but 12 goals from Johnny Kenny and classy turns by Dylan Watts and Josh Honohan leave Rovers second in the table and odds on for the title after accumulating 19 points from a possible 24 since September.
“The bigger the occasion and game, the bigger the crowd, these players love it and rise to it,” said Bradley, “so I’ve no doubt [the game against Waterford] will be no different,”
Whatever happens, it pales in comparison to the drama surrounding Dundalk’s relegation. Since 2014, the Louth club won five league titles and twice reached the Europa League group stages but crippling debts at Oriel Park only came to light after the Brian Ainscough takeover in December 2023.
The inability to cover player wages almost led to the club’s liquidation and automatic relegation, which could have altered the title race as points gained against them would have been erased.
Local barrister John Temple made a timely intervention to keep the club afloat despite previous owners Andy Connolly and Stats Sport founders Sean O’Connor and Alan Clarke denying his initial attempt to buy the club last year, opting to hand the reins to Ainscough instead.
“It is six years since we had any pay issues, so it is disappointing what happened at Dundalk,” PFAI chairman Stephen McGuinness told the LOI Central podcast. “We have to make sure it does not happen again.
“I am due to meet the FAI to discuss the ownership test to make it is better. There needs to be better oversight from the finance side of the FAI regarding clubs, whether we send that out to an external company for licensing or it’s done internally by the FAI.
“But, for sure, that is not being done,” said McGuinness. “The 65 per cent salary [guarantee to be covered by ownership] should have picked up [the Ainscough and Dundalk situation] at some stage and it didn’t.”
For Dundalk, the nightmare season of 2024 will never be erased. For neighbours Drogheda United, under the Trivela Group that also owns Walsall, a poor campaign can be salvaged by beating Derry in the FAI Cup final next Sunday and surviving a relegation play-off against Athlone Town or Bray Wanderers on November 16th.
It is possible that Drogheda could compete next season in Europe and the first division.
For Bohemians, the appointment of Alan Reynolds as manager in March, before bringing former players Dawson Devoy and Ross Tierney back from England in their prime, proved barely enough to steer the club away from relegation.
Galway United, funded by billionaire property developers Luke and Brian Comer, and Waterford, owned by Englishman Jamie Pilley after his father Andrew Pilley was imprisoned for fraud, both require renewed investment to qualify for Europe and make successes of their business plans.
“Unless you have a wealthy benefactor to write cheques, without expecting much if anything in return, it does not make sense to own a League of Ireland club,” said Tommy Higgins, the Sligo chairman who revealed that it requires at least €2 million to run a competitive League of Ireland squad.
“It will not get any easier for Sligo to compete. Garrett Kelleher has brought US investors into St Patrick’s Athletic, Cork City are back up and Waterford are funded by the Fleetwood owners. European football is going to be very difficult to reach.”
