Villa glory brings league gatecrash

November 2, 2009 in General
Tags: bohs, Irish Times, football, media, Sunday Times, galway

Galway United sneaked into the Irish edition of the Sunday Times at the weekend.

The sports section runs a nostalgia interview with Eamonn Deacy, who won an English league title with Aston Villa in 1981, and who received an honorary degree from Galway University last week.

Asked ‘What is the worst thing about football today?’, Deacy mentions money, sort of, but turns the answer to a positive: ‘I’m more interested in entertainment value than the money side of it. I love football, whether it be on television or watching Galway United.’

And that’s it. Except in the football results listings, Galway United, whose out-of-the-blue draw away to Shamrock Rovers on Friday finally decided the destination of the league trophy, are nowhere to be found in this newspaper, other than by accident.

This when the weekend witnessed the finale of one of the most exciting league run-ins, top and bottom, in memory.

Over 20 pages of  sport, the Sunday Times brings us the usual mishmash of boys in green news (game v France still weeks away)  English first and second divisions, rugby, GAA previews, and F1.

There is no match report of that game from Tallaght, just as there is no report of any League of Ireland game, including that of the soon-to-be crowned back-to-back national champions, Bohemians, against their 2009 bogey team, Sligo.

There isn’t even a league table.

Why, one wonders, does the Sunday Times then bother to provide the bare bones League of Ireland LoI  results taking up less than a single column inch, and coming in under the FA Carsberg Trophy, The Ryman, Unibond, Zamaretto, Southern Amateur, and Scot Ad Highland leagues, as well as the Active Nation Scottish Cup, the Welsh Cup, and the Co-operative Insurance (Northern) Irish Cup? Are they trying to tell us something?

Closer to home, the Sunday Tribune online Soccer section is devoid of mention of Irish domestic football, though precious space is found for the Carling Cup, the Championship, and the Scottish league. Pretty clear where the Tribune stands on live football.

The Irish Times sports section on Saturday gave over its main front page image to the Bohs win (it was also televised by RTÉ), and, well inside, ran decent match reports from Dalymount and Tallaght, and even rose to a round-up comment piece.

In all, the space given to the national league climax on its less-prominent left-hand page slot was a shade over that given to local hurling clubs, the ‘famed Thurles Sarsfields’ and Newtownshandrum.  Really no mistaking the message there either.

There’s nothing new here in the pattern of coverage, and FP isn’t up for repeating the arid exercise of counting column inches to arrive at the same conclusion every week. But this was, by any measure, an extraordinary week in Irish football, met with business-as-usual indifference by leading sports media outlets.

League in crisis? What league? As far as some of our broadsheets are concerned, we might as well not have one, and people who share Eamonn Deacy’s love of the live game might as well not exist.