Gavin Cooney

SHANE ROBINSON, ASSISTANT director of football at the FAI, says the game’s politics are “unbelievable”, choosing to remind everyone that the FAI board and specifically president Paul Cooke have endorsed the Association’s new Football Pathways Plan (FPP). 

Robinson joined the FAI six months ago, leaving his role at the head of Shamrock Rovers’ academy. He serves as assistant to Marc Canham, whose signature piece of work is the FPP, which was unveiled in February. Canham and Robinson are now leading its implementation. 

Elements of the plan have proved contentious among sections of the Irish game here, as it seeks to fuse Irish football’s many disparate parts into a single pyramid that runs from underage and grassroots, through adult amateur and to professional and League of Ireland level. 

The plan exposed the lack of a consistent approach to football across the country, with some counties and leagues operating summer seasons and others running winter seasons, while not every league has adopted years-old diktats from the FAI around the number of players per team in a match at each underage level. 

The FPP has been endorsed by the FAI board – which represents all of the game’s constituencies – but its proposal to move everyone to a summer league calendar, aligning with the LOI, has been met with some resistance. To that end, comments made by Paul Cooke at a recent meeting of the FAI’s General Assembly that he told Canham that no section of the game would be forced to do anything they didn’t want to do has caused a stir. 

In his first media engagement since joining the FAI, Robinson brought up the politics of the game and Cooke’s name unprompted. 

“The politics within Irish football is unbelievable at the moment”, said Robinson. “No matter where you sit, if you’re in grassroots and you’re putting a whole gameplan together, someone is going to be affected along the way.

“Likewise in League of Ireland, they’re not going to be happy with everything that’s put into the FPP. I think it’s a really good framework, I think most people would agree lots of it is a common sense approach to many key areas but the one thing we lack in this country is common sense, in terms of when we’re dealing with football and sport and putting the player first.

“It’s about thinking what people who partake in the game need. We’ve let politics get in the way of football here for probably 25 years.” 

Robinson continued by issuing a reminder that the FAI president and board have endorsed the FPP. 

“It’s supported publicly by the board at the moment. That message needs to be really, really clear, that it’s supported by the board. That it’s supported by Paul Cooke. It needs to be drove home.” 

Robinson said it is “imperative” that everyone buys into the FPP and sticks to it, giving an example of the DDSL’s success in implementing Ruud Dokter’s recommendation of playing 5 v 5, 7 v 7, and 9 v 9 at underage level, linking this with the fact that 15 of the players picked in the most recent Irish U15 squad are from Dublin. 

“It doesn’t suit everybody and it’s never going to”, said Robinson. “That’s the hardest bit. Trying to look at it through everybody’s eyes is very difficult. The amateur game is an example. I think that has a part to play in player development.

“I don’t feel they think it does, they feel it’s a league for lads that socially like to play football. I don’t think that should be the case. I think a pyramid system that allows people to participate at their level, is where it needs to go as part of the FPP.A tiered system, allowing people more opportunities. Another tier would open up another 400 opportunities, whether they are taken by Leinster Senior League players, Cork League players, or U19 LOI players.” 

While Robinson assists Canham, he has not been involved in the protracted search for Stephen Kenny’s successor as senior men’s manager. Robinson acknowledges that the manager story is high-profile, but agrees with Damien Duff’s recent comments that the funding of academies and player development is much more important. 

“I know what sells papers”, said Robinson. “The first team coach at the moment dominates, our CEO [Jonathan Hill] is dominating. Other people have spoken about it, Damien has said it doesn’t matter who manages the first team, we could give it to Pep Guardiola and it still doesn’t matter unless we fix the first bit.”