It's Really a Pity About The Saints

Pete Mahon 

Donall Farmer / Inpho

For most Airtricity League teams the opportunity to make €270,000 in two matches should have been enough to focus the minds of all involved at the club in order to ensure that no effort was spared in achieving that goal – by players, coaching staff, officials and owners alike. With the post match reports from Tallaght Stadium suggesting that the owner of St Patrick's Athletic, Garret Kelleher, is perhaps seeking to pin the pre-match player unrest on one or two individuals – it does not bode well. Especially when the sum that triggered the argument is only somewhere between ten and thirty thousand Euro. 

The irony being that during the heyday of the Celtic Tiger the chance of reaching beyond the third round qualifying round of the UEFA Europa League would have been on the modest side of the clubs ambitions. In these more testing financial times that modest ambition is now the difference between ongoing financial struggle and making a breakthrough.. To see it become embroiled in an in-house row in the build up to the second leg match with Karpaty on Thursday in Dublin, was disheartening. 

Whatever the rights and wrongs the fallout will prove enduring, no doubt. Particularly now that St. Pats were knocked out 1-5 on aggregate. All so tragic for a club with such history and heritage. 

It was only in very recent memory that the club’s cheque book was being flashed about in haste to hire the biggest and best on the field, as well as off the field with a Director of Football, a number of Chief Executive’s, along with high profile board members, a sports marketing agency to boot, and an extensive development plan for Inchicore that would have seen the ground moved slightly from the current access on Emmett Road. 

Sadly, all that over ambition, fuelled by the national developer led Celtic Tiger, is now in tatters - as in the nation is in general – and the remnants of the football club and its loyal fans are left worse off than ever trying to sustain the club’s survival. As each one of the high fliers went on to pastures new, the embers of the club and the players burn ever so weakly with each passing day. It was the dreams characterised by the Europa League chance that kept many of the players and coaches feeling positive that this season may be different. 

It now seems that optimism was misplaced. 

But like all the other football clubs around the Airtricity League the financial conundrum of managing a club's finances day-to-day within income budgets were all magically made vanish when the imagination of property developers was captured by the inner city land banks – all legacies inherited over the years by the clubs. Suddenly the plans to unlock this prime real estate became urban goldmines with plans hatched to develop them into shopping centres or residential areas. Given the Walt Disney like projected rates of return, paying clubs a few million annually in expenses, whilst the planning permissions and approvals were sought, seemed like petty cash in the larger scheme of things 

Few clubs escaped the frenzy that came with the Irish economic mirage and so high were the projected returns that clubs allowed their wage structures evaporate, stood back from the normal fans fundraising activities and developed bloated organisations that only added cost - that were more appropriate to the likes of Real Madrid, Chelsea or Manchester United. The fever took hold of St. Patrick's Athletic, Bohemians, Drogheda United and Sporting Fingal to name just a few. 

Five years on all these clubs are now afflicted with the financial vacuum created once the music stopped, and Nama took over the developer loans and the ongoing operations had to be funded by the old style fan fundraising efforts. With the Professional Football Association of Ireland [PFAI] simultaneously trying to enforce player contracts, clubs started running out of money, leaving the beauty of the game tarnished. 

At Bohemians the pre-season was marred with players seeking a winding up order for outstanding wages and with the financial landscape darkened at the Dalymount club further with the loss of support from Liam Carroll who was no longer able to fulfil the land deal once coveted by a number of parties. At Drogheda United the fans were forced to launch a share option scheme to fill the void left when the new stadium plans fell apart once the associated housing development failed to get through the required planning. Indeed, over the years other clubs were not so lucky and their names now just entries into the record books, Kilkenny City, Dublin City and more recently Sporting Fingal. 

The fact that the business model of the League of Ireland is flawed and clubs live on hopes and dreams, rather than solid cash flow has only postponed the inevitable. 

The pressure of increase players wages, not assisted by a myopic PFAI, added to the day to day costs, especially when all the clubs embarked on the professional road. This all required bigger backroom teams, more professional training facilities, improved medical support and added travel costs, as clubs chose to overnight before most big games. All of which had to be achieved with gate receipts and sponsorship – and with no significant addition to TV revenue. 

Clearly if the financial conundrum could not be unravelled during the boom years it is hardly gong to be resolved now, unless players return to amateurs status, as the managers would have to, and every club is run by professional volunteers. Whether that is feasible or not remains to be seen in time. But it may very well be the only hope of survival. The likelihood that any Airtricity League side is to become the next Rosenberg of Norway is now a moot point. 

With murmurings that the league should revert to the normal winter dates in order to facilitate the part time players and their family holiday needs, is an added pressure. Not least given there has been no major breakthrough to the Champions League over the past half a decade, even playing the European ties when the domestic players are at their peak. 

As a keen observer of the league for many years and part of the financial conundrum at too many clubs for one’s heath, the considered view of the past decade is more negative about the future. In addition, the legacy of overspending during the golden era of cheap money has left his club in no better place than where it was on his arrival. Maybe even worse. 

In fact, there are few visible signs of those heady boom years throughout any part of St. Patrick's Athletic these days. A bit like the Irish banking system, one is left wondering where all the money actually went as ten or thirty thousand euro may have been at one point only the weekly running costs at St. Patrick's Athletic - during those heady days. 

Although it would be tragic to see another Airtricity League club bite the dust, the alternative looks bleaker should there be further in-house fallout at Richmond Park . 

In the meantime what a noble effort by Pete Mahon and the players over the past three weeks. 

Just a pity about Thursday’s build up.