RTÉ’S DECISION NOT to pick up Shamrock Rovers’ Europa League play-off against PAOK was up for discussion on the Football Family today, the podcast for subscribers to The 42.

“My first reaction to these games not being on TV was genuinely not of surprise,” David Sneyd of The 42 said.

“This is just another reminder of the League of Ireland’s place. We can talk about its growth, rising attendances and how so many young people are going to games, but it is a reminder that it is still on the fringe and that’s just the truth of it.

“When you’re inside it and involved in it, it’s like, ‘How can it be like that?’ But it’s clear and obvious now that that’s the nature of it.

“It kind of takes away from the fact that there are two monumental matches happening and feeds into the point of where the League of Ireland is still at, that there is no proper plans in place and that the game can only be streamed for a tenner.

“It doesn’t sit right that that is still the case.”

Shamrock Rovers’ statement in response to the national broadcaster not showing their upcoming European encounters included a threat that the club “is considering if it will facilitate any future requests” from RTÉ to show League of Ireland Premier Division fixtures from Tallaght Stadium for the rest of the calendar year.

It is understood that RTÉ’s League of Ireland TV rights deal is with the FAI rather than with the individual clubs and, as such, Shamrock Rovers would be in a breach of their participation agreement if they were to prevent RTÉ from broadcasting live match coverage from Tallaght Stadium.

Committing such a breach is not something that former Cobh Ramblers boss Shane Keegan thinks would be a good idea. 

He said: “If you’re on the RTÉ side here, and Rovers have put up this statement, is the RTE reaction not ‘So what?’ Is the RTE reaction not ‘Grand, you’ve solved a headache for us there, we’re not all that pushed about showing domestic football, you’re telling us you’re not letting us, so we’re all happy!’”

Keegan added: “I feel there’s very little point in complaining about this. We need to get the game to a point whereby it makes commercial sense that the TV stations are clamouring to want to show it.

“Trying to guilt them into showing games that this small slightly mad cohort of us interested in the league want to watch – I don’t think we can go down that route.

“It needs to reach a stage where they’re fighting it out because there’s so many people who want to watch it on TV. It’s changing in the stands but for whatever reason it doesn’t seem to be changing in terms of what they see as commercially viable for TV audiences yet.”

Sneyd can sympathise with the Tallaght club and League of Ireland clubs in general, for the manner in which they are treated even in cases where their matches are selected for broadcast.

“If there was a multi-million euro or even any kind of TV deal in place for clubs, I’d be saying you can’t do that and can’t be throwing your toys out of the pram. But the fact is there isn’t,” he said. 

“Clubs are at the beck and call of deciding when they’re going to be shown. They don’t get proper remuneration for it, and I’d imagine nine times out of ten that their gates are going to be hit over it.

“Something does have to change about how games are shown,” Sneyd said.

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