THE TURBULENT past few weeks at Dundalk FC have been a reminder of the bad old days in the League of Ireland.
Throughout the competition’s history, several teams have come and gone.
However, there was a period in the 2000s and into the early 2010s when the situation became especially grim.
Many clubs struggled, including those with the richest history and most successes.
One of the archetypal examples was Sporting Fingal.
The Irish club lasted for just three seasons. They were owned by property developer Gerry Gannon and formed following a chance encounter between John O’Brien of Fingal County Council and ex-Ireland international Niall Quinn, who was Sunderland chairman at the time.
Fingal was a rapidly growing part of Dublin with close to 300,000 inhabitants and it was felt the area would benefit from this community project.
Plans were swiftly approved and the team had a sizeable impact on Irish football during their short-lived existence.
Coach Liam Buckley guided the side to promotion in their first season and an FAI Cup triumph the following year.
Even in their last year of existence, on the pitch, it went better than expected. In 2010 they challenged for the title, ending the season in fourth place but just five points behind champions Shamrock Rovers.
They would have been competing in Europe had they managed to stay afloat the following year.
While the club may not have achieved all they hoped, Fingal’s squad was impressive — even more so with the benefit of hindsight.
UCD’s Ronan Finn made his 500th League of Ireland appearance on Friday and is one of Irish football’s most decorated players, winning countless accolades with the likes of Dundalk and Shamrock Rovers.
Shaun Williams subsequently enjoyed a successful stint across the water and became a senior Ireland international in 2018.
Several others went on to have long and distinguished football careers elsewhere.
Home games were played at Morton Stadium (though they were due to move to Dalymount Park in 2011), while the squad trained at the ALSAA Sports Complex, near Dublin Airport.
Ger O’Brien had joined Sporting Fingal in the 2010 season because of financial difficulties elsewhere.
The full-back signed a three-year contract with Derry City in 2009 but the club’s off-the-field troubles prompted his departure after just one campaign.
Derry were expelled from the League of Ireland by the Football Association of Ireland owing to their problems and went out of existence, although a separate entity using the “Derry City” moniker re-joined in 2010.
“Very similar story to Dundalk recently,” O’Brien recalls. “They saved themselves to the end of the season. We got paid. And then Derry folded at the end of the year.”
O’Brien was joining a club where similar issues would arise. While Sporting Fingal’s death ultimately felt swift, it was clear there were major issues by the end of the 2010 campaign. With the country in the throes of economic crisis, Gannon stepped away.
“He couldn’t be seen pumping [money] into a north side of Dublin football club. So, unfortunately, he had to withdraw his services.”
Manager/Director of Football Buckley and general manager John O’Brien spent the off-season seeking investment.
“I remember Liam telling me he flew out to other parts of Europe to meet investors, trying to bring in some investment to keep the club going.”
So what goes through players’ heads when it becomes apparent a club could be no more?
“When you’re actually in the building, the training ground, it never feels as bad, because everyone is going through the same as you,” says O’Brien
“So you know exactly what’s going on, and you know you’re no different than someone else. And then your release is going out onto the pitch and training.”
Like O’Brien, Eamon Zayed joined Sporting Fingal directly from a team that suffered significant financial problems.
The striker had won a Premier Division title with Drogheda United in 2007 but the club were struggling badly off the field the following year and he left to join Fingal.
Zayed is also the current manager of a team in America — North Colorado Hailstorm — whose owners have endured their own financial problems this year.
Drogheda went into administration shortly before the end of the 2008 season and Zayed says it had a “massive impact” on the players’ performances as the reigning champions narrowly avoided relegation by finishing eighth.
“All we talked about in training was: ‘What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen?’ And that’s what we were focused on.
“And then it becomes: ‘What can I do to look after myself as an individual for next year?’
“As a player, as a team, mentally, you’re going: ‘Shit, what’s going to happen? What will we do? Will I have a job next year?’”
Zayed left Sporting Fingal after the club opted not to renew his contract, two months before they officially went bust.
Having been a prolific goalscorer at previous clubs, the former Libya international had a poor season in 2010 and was left in a difficult situation.
“It was not a good time in the League of Ireland, there were other teams that were feeling the pinch of the financial crisis and the recession.
“I was applying for jobs outside of football. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
“Some of the guys who had had a good season, like Shaun Williams, Ronan Finn, they were going to be okay and they always knew they were going to be okay.
“You take maybe a handful of players out of that equation, then you’re left with the rest of the squad who are like: ‘Fuck, what’s going to happen here?’
“And I guarantee that, if you ask most of them, I would say 90%, or maybe even more, took pay cuts the following year.”
Zayed was one of those earning less but ultimately felt grateful to still be in full-time football.
He was left underwhelmed by subsequent offers that came his way before Derry finally came to his rescue following two months without a club.
“After Fingal, wages in the league dropped significantly,” he says. “I’ll give you my example: I was on 900 quid a week at Sporting Fingal; the best offer I had after was 250 quid a week.
“Salaries significantly dropped around that stage because teams were trying to manage it and trying to manage budgets, and some tried to manage it but didn’t, and struggled again financially.
“In late January, Derry City came in and Stephen Kenny saved my career in 2011 — I went to 600 quid a week.
“I was about to drop out of full-time football and get a full-time job elsewhere, and I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”
While Zayed left at the end of 2010, many squad members stayed until February of the following year when the club officially went out of existence.
Fingal even signed a player, Greg Bolger, but the midfielder was never able to play an official game for the club before it collapsed.
The individuals who hung on until the end were in an even worse position than Zayed.
By the time they tried to join new teams, the new season was on the horizon and many clubs had already used up most of their budgets.
The alternative for players was simply to quit football, at least temporarily. So knowing all these free agents who were suddenly without a club were desperate to stay in the game, some Irish sides took advantage of the situation by offering them next to nothing.
One player agreed on a deal with a team and when it came to the day of signing a contract, he realised the paltry offer had been reduced even further simply because they knew he was in such a desperate situation.
On the same day that Fingal officially were no more, O’Brien’s wife went into labour and his daughter Hannah was born.
“That puts everything into significance,” he says. “And that’s the thing, it is our livelihood. People are losing their jobs, up and down the country for different reasons, every day of the week, it’s not just the football club.
“It gets a hell of a lot more attention when it’s in the public domain, in terms of a football club and the supporters and all this type of stuff.
“But it just goes back to you expect businesses to be run properly by people who are in those positions.”
Goalkeeper Brendan Clarke, who had signed a two-year contract at the start of the 2010 campaign, explains: “You learn to grow up pretty quickly, especially if you’re one of the young ones and you’re living with your parents or whatever, it might not be too bad, and you still want your independence, I suppose.
“But it’s when you have a mortgage and you’re out in a big, bad world, and you’ve got bills [that it feels more serious].”
Like Zayed and O’Brien, Sporting Fingal was not Clarke’s only experience in Irish football of having to leave a club owing to their financial woes.
A popular figure at Limerick FC, the goalkeeper won the Supporters Player of the Year award for 2017 but had to leave in the summer of 2018.
Knowing the dire situation the team were in, manager Tommy Barrett had told the players to accept offers that came their way from other clubs.
This predicament paved the way for Clarke’s reunion with Buckley at St Patrick’s Athletic while he felt he was helping Limerick by getting off the wage bill.
“Not that I was on massive money, but it would have been okay money, I suppose,” he says.
Even the manner of his departure was somewhat surreal as it came right after a 2-1 win over fellow relegation candidates Bray Wanderers.
“I came off the pitch, not into the dressing room, but straight into a side room, and signed my termination there and then, still in my kit.
“It was mad the way it happened, but it worked out well. I went back to Pat’s for two and a half years.”
He was able to leave the financially-stricken club without being owed any money.
And these days, all three of Zayed, O’Brien and Clarke are in leadership roles in football.
In addition to Zayed’s coaching job, O’Brien is the St Pat’s Director of Football and Clarke is chairperson of the Professional Footballers’ Association of Ireland while also still lining out regularly for Galway United at 39.
All three have been following the situation at Dundalk with a keen interest.
“I’m hoping that Dundalk is just the outlier,” says Clarke. “There’s a lot of positive things happening and a lot of progress
“I’ve been in the league since 2003. I’ll have this argument with any former player who says that when they played in it, it was better than now.
“With the union, we haven’t had any wages issues since Bray in 2018 so things have been going well.
“And the difference from 2003 and 2010 with Fingal compared to now is night and day. The professionalism is off the charts, compared to what it was.
“We’ve brought in the minimum wage, which gives players something proper to aspire to. They could have signed on really low contracts — and they’re being retained by clubs. Now there are proper professional standards that clubs have to meet.”
Yet there is concern in some quarters that clubs are failing to learn from the mistakes of the 2000s and spending money excessively.
Cork City boss Tim Clancy questioned the sustainability of the “massive wages” on offer in the Premier Division as far back as July.
Zayed, meanwhile, mentions two League of Ireland clubs who would be some way off challenging for Premier Division titles and says he was taken aback by what they were offering players.
His club in Colorado can offer “a grand a week” but that was not enough to tempt players away from one of these two clubs.
“That would have been a no-brainer for a lot of players even four or five years ago,” Zayed says.
“The players deserve whatever they can get, but [clubs are] spending the money on players that maybe they can’t afford.”
O’Brien, meanwhile, believes it would be naive to dismiss what has happened at Dundalk in recent weeks as an anomaly.
“I don’t think a league like Ireland can ever feel secure from this happening,” he says.
“We are thriving as a league, but we’re thriving to where we were 5-10 years ago. We’re not thriving in terms of what other leagues are doing. Our facilities are still poor. Our players are doing really, really well. Our coaches are not full-time. The facilities in the academies aren’t anywhere near good enough. Our stadiums aren’t good enough.
“And we need to understand where we’re at regarding finances. We can’t keep running away. I think we’ve gone above and beyond the wage salary of where we need to be. We are definitely over that a little bit.”
But can there be any obvious solution to this recurring problem?
“Is it a case that we break away and the clubs bring in more to generate our own income and TV revenue and sponsorship and stuff like that?” O’Brien asks.
“Maybe we need to try something different because the FAI have their difficulties in terms of debt.
“We saw the figures released. They are hamstrung in what they need to do and until they bring them down, I don’t think they have the financial support to offer clubs or the league, and not just in the professional game here, but also in grassroots and other things.
So, there might be just something to try a little bit different, outside the box that might work, and that’s something that I think the clubs need to look at a lot more seriously over next number of months, not even years.”
