It is estimated that over 400,000 Irish sports fans travel to Britain each year. Nearly 275,000 of them are soccer fans who support British teams who have a strong Irish connection such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Scottish club Celtic.
Nearly 10,000 Irish supporters travel to Britain each week to watch these clubs, while in the domestic League in Ireland the Airtricity League struggle to average 2,000 per League game.
League of Ireland veteran Theo Dunne believes that “Tradition” plays a big part in Irish people electing to support British clubs. He added: “Many Irish people tend to follow teams with a strong Irish connection and Premier League teams have had that in abundance over the years.
But I myself beg to differ, I think the FAI could play a bigger part in getting fans in Ireland to support their home clubs and getting fans to follow the Airtricity League.
The FAI should be visiting schools and amateur clubs outside of Dublin more often and handing the kids tickets to the Airtricity games, they will then go home pester their parents to go watch these matches and presto you have the parents having to buy their adult ticket to the game the attendance goes up and the clubs revenue goes up because of the adult having to pay for his or hers ticket.
They should also educate our youngsters of the part these home grown teams have played in getting our star players into the Premier League, such as the Roy Keanes, Kevin Doyles, and Robbie Keanes.
When I was grown up the only soccer magazines you bought was about the English and Foreign Leagues there was no magazine out there for the League of Ireland as it was known then. There was also the Panini sticker albums which I spent a fortune on oh sorry I should have said my parents spent a fortune on which were also about the English teams, maybe it would be a good idea for the FAI to try and publish those albums for the Airtricity League teams which would not only help teams out financially but also educate our kids about our game back home.
After all if they want to change the trend they will have to get the younger people interested in the game at home. And they may stop this complaining about people traveling abroad for the Premier League games and do something about it.
If you have a different opinion on this subject I would love to here from you whether it good or bad, I recently was sent a comment that this web-site was ignorant to the Airtricity League and I must say maybe we are but people don’t seem to want to know about the League and I can’t force them to either.
