ON SOCCER/Emmet Malone: The majority of the Eircom league's players may finally have a decent break after what seemed like little more than a long weekend of a close season but for the administrators the next few months are sure to be hectic.
On Friday week the last meeting of the FAI's current larger board may well be the occasion on which the €3 million in Government funding intended to help bring grounds up to the standards required by the UEFA licensing project is allocated. If so, it will be a lively afternoon.
With the 22 clubs requiring an estimated €17 million between them in order to meet the requirements of the programme there has been a good deal of jostling in recent months over how the available money should be distributed. UEFA has indicated, informally at least, that with clubs here having apparently bitten off more than they can chew on the home improvements front, it will be flexible when it comes to a programme that was supposed to be completed by the start of the new campaign in March but may now be completed over the next three or four years.
Those clubs intending to compete in Europe, however, will have to meet the required standards if they want to play their home games at their own grounds and so the case has been made that Shelbourne, Bohemians, Cork and Longford should get priority when it comes to slicing up the pie. Others, not surprisingly, favour a different approach.
The scale of the work needed even at what would be regarded at the league's better grounds is considerable. Derry City anticipate spending around €400,000 and even that would leave the Northerners, still not guaranteed Premier Division football next season, with just their new stand in use and their capacity reduced from around 8,500 to just 2,380. Longford, after putting huge amounts of effort and money into their ground, estimated the cost of the improvements at about €300,000 while Cork City's bill is set to be more. And even Dublin's supposedly showpiece venues, Tolka Park and Dalymount Park, require renovations costing hundreds of thousands of euro.
Within the league there is a sense of optimism the project will, in the end, bear fruit and that clubs will, in a relatively short space of time, take a huge leap forward. In the other areas affected by the scheme - youth development and financial, administrative and legal regulation - it is claimed all of the clubs will be in a position to comply with the new regulations when the new season starts. The infrastructural targets, it is admitted, have been set too high given the time available for the work required but even here it is hoped if the Government can be persuaded to fund the improvements on an ongoing basis then everybody will get the help they need.
The difficulty is that the €3 million available now is part of the old Eircom Park deal and after this year nothing is guaranteed, a fact that will play on the mind of administrators whose clubs are asked to take their place down the queue.
Some clubs, of course, have more obvious difficulties although Ronan Seery of promoted Dublin City admits to having seen his own club's lack of a home as something of an advantage as he prepared the club's license application for submission last week.
Though Seery won't confirm it, the expectation is City, who are about to launch a youth section to comply with their obligations in that area, will be playing at Tolka Park next season. Where that leaves Shamrock Rovers is unclear and their chairman, Tony Maguire, said yesterday he hopes to reach agreement with Shelbourne on his club remaining there for at least part of the season while work is completed on the stadium at Tallaght.
Maguire is hoping a deal that will open the way to work resuming on the club's own ground will be done this month and a club seeking money to improve its facilities could do worse than point to the fact that it is catering for two of its rivals but it is very hard to see how three premier division clubs could play out of the one ground for any length of time.
Even if Shelbourne show them the door, however, Rovers would have more options than Limerick if the Munster side come through the promotion play-offs. With their current home at Pike Rovers falling hopelessly short of what is required the only realistic course of action that would seem to be available to the club in the event that they do go up would be to seek permission to play at Thomond Park.
But then the reality is Derry is the only one of the four clubs in the play-offs that will meet the minimum standards and there is an expectation if they fail to stay up they will contest any relaxation in the original timeframe that would allow their place to be taken by a club that falls short of standards Derry have met.
In Merrion Square there may well be a collective sigh of relief if Gavin Dykes's men minimise the controversy by securing their top-flight status on the pitch but with the cash still to be carved up that won't go even close to buying the likes of Fran Rooney and Brendan Dillon a quiet life between now and Christmas.
