Tommy Martin: Can we catch a glimpse of being a proper football country?

LAST year a former Republic of Ireland international, a seasoned Premier League player, was taking in a Shamrock Rovers European game at Tallaght Stadium. 

Eyeing the neat and largely full stands, the slick playing surface and the brilliant glow of the floodlights, he had a bittersweet thought: “This is what it feels like to be a proper football country.”

Becoming just that, a proper football country, is what is bothering pretty much anybody with an interest in Irish football right now, and the start of a League of Ireland season always seems to be a time for a progress report.

There’s more to it than just the domestic league, of course. The international team is three months without a manager, with the FAI picking through an uninspiring shortlist commensurate to their reduced means. After a four-year gap, the senior team is nearing the point of getting a new sponsor, expected to be the payments company Revolut. An app that most people use to split the bill is fitting for an association that needed the help of government, banks and Uefa to survive not too long ago.

The Brexit conundrum continues, wherein young players are more likely to stay here before 18 but more likely to leave for the UK after that age. Plans to restructure grassroots football are being workshopped to unimpressed factions within the domestic game, who tend to have the same approach to collegiate compromise as heavily armed Afghan warlords.

But there’s an understanding now that a thriving domestic league underwrites all that stuff. There was a time when you could be an Irish football fan and have little or no interaction with the League of Ireland. You could exclaim that the Irish stars doing their thing in the Premier League and battling for