Sense of drift everywhere as Ireland look to Amsterdam
Nine years since John Delaney labelled the League of Ireland as the FAI's “difficult child”, and how things have changed.
Not just for the former CEO. The domestic game remains wedded to an upward swing with the record attendance of 43,881 for last Sunday’s FAI Cup final between St Patrick’s Athletic and Bohemians yet another stage in the resurgence.
And if the parent body itself remains mired in bad vibes, and buried beneath more bad press, then the fortunes of the men’s national football team may have taken over the mantle of most troubled offspring after a concerted period of underachievement.
The side’s last Euro 2024 qualifier - what should be a glamour tie away to the Netherlands in Amsterdam - is just days away and yet the media presence at the FAI’s HQ yesterday was little more than perfunctory.
No swell of cameras or sense of urgency here. When the interviews were done one woman wandered into the press conference room asking how to gain entrance to the main building, which seemed to be locked and unresponsive. Fitting?
The sense of a team, and a sport, being left behind was overwhelming given Irish football’s central nerve centre is surrounded by a smorgasbord of other sporting bodies and facilities in Abbotstown’s Sports Campus.
Most of them are already abuzz with preparations for the Paris Olympics next summer, but the men’s side won’t play another competitive game after this for ten more months. There will be no Joxers in Stuttgart, or anywhere else, this time.
“The mood is good,” said Dara O’Shea. No-one was fooled.
The sense of drift sits suffocatingly across this team like a layer of Saharan sand.
Stephen Kenny’s time in charge will effectively end once Tuesday’s friendly with New Zealand is over and
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