GETTING THE FAI and IFA in Northern Ireland on board is the next step if proposals for an All-Island football league are to progress further. 

Plans for a cross-border domestic league were unveiled by a group led by tech entrepreneur Kieran Lucid last year, and the group appointed Dutch consultancy firm Hypercube to engage with clubs to draw up a favoured format for the competition. 

The results of that survey were made known over the weekend.  

The majority of clubs favoured what the group titled ‘Scenario 4′, which involves a split season in which domestic leagues are played separately and then come together in a league-and-knockout format to crown an overall winner, currently beneath the working titile of “King of the Island.”

The format would see a 12-team League of Ireland Premier Division stage 22 rounds of games, at the end of which the top eight teams join the top six teams from Northern Ireland in a 14-team, “Golden Round” cross-border competition. 

Under the proposals, teams would play one round of games, with points also added to the domestic season table in order to keep existing places in European competition. This mitigates against one of the main reasons for opposition to the cross-border league thus far: the prospect of fewer European qualification spots and a reduction in relatively lucrative prize money from Uefa. 

Meanwhile, the bottom six in the Northern Irish League, the bottom four in the League of Ireland and the top two in the League of Ireland First Division would enter a ‘Silver Round’, which would settle relegation issues.

The top four teams in the ‘King of the Island’ standings would go straight into the quarter-finals of all the overall competition, where they would be joined by four teams to emerge from clashes between the next six clubs down and the top two ‘Silver Round’ performers.

The league’s advocacy group say it’s possible to alternate the staging of a one-legged final between Windsor Park and the Aviva Stadium, and while nothing is set in stone, the most popular schedule for the season involves a late spring/early summer kick-off and a culmination around New Year’s Day. 

The group forecast that, were this competition to be played for 10 years, total annual revenue for clubs would increase from €21.4 million to €99.5 million. 

This modelling was done prior to the Covid-19 shutdown, however, and the group concede that the crisis will have an impact on potential revenue. 

“There can be no doubt that the financial projections made in the study will be negatively impacted, at least in the near term. As the situation is still evolving daily, what is more difficult to estimate is the scale of the impact.

It is reasonable to expect that match day income, which forms a higher percentage of clubs’ income here than in the larger leagues around Europe, will be depressed for some time, and it is likely to have a dampening effect on sponsorship opportunities over the coming six to 12 months.”

If clubs wish to pursue this format, it must now be sanctioned by both national associations and then by Uefa. If all three parties agree, the competition would then be brought to market to secure broadcasting partners and sponsors. 

The IFA last year said they would not sanction their clubs to participate in a cross-border league, although Lucid and his group met the IFA earlier this year and told a fans’ stakeholder meeting that talks were positive around the possibility of a cross-border competition of some kind. 

Lucid’s group said they do not know whether Uefa would sanction the competition, but believes the door is open to a cross-border compeititon. 

“Uefa will not respond to half ideas or conjecture – only to a detailed proposal via the two associations”, said the group in a statement.

The study has shown that there is large upward potential for the game on the island, and this format would give the game a significant lift. What we do know for a fact is that Uefa’s Executive Committee decided in its meeting in March 2012 in Istanbul to “offer to interested associations upon request to study supra-national possibilities” and to allow test pilots on a case-by-case basis. In other words: the door is open.”