Trust, funding and social class: has Irish football finally learned how to play politics?

“There’s more trust in the air from the politicians and there’s a great case being made for deeper investment into football in all parts of this country,” says Niall Quinn. Speaking outside Leinster House last Thursday, Ireland’s 92-cap striker was attending a Dáil debate on Government funding in Irish football.

The motion was brought by Labour TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, and it followed an announcement earlier this year from the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) of an infrastructure plan that would require €517 million of Government investment.

Many in the Irish football community are cautiously optimistic that the plans and accompanying political discourse are welcome steps forward. Despite its high participation numbers and the popularity of the national teams, Irish football is engulfed in a narrative of disarray and neglect where opportunities for women and girls and adequate facilities are badly lacking.

With its infrastructure plan, the FAI has “turned a corner”, according to Quinn, who served as interim deputy chief executive in the aftermath of John Delaney’s departure from the association. Delaney resigned from the FAI in 2019 amidst a number of administrative controversies that many believe wore down the trust of Government in the governing body.

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“I think the John Delaney era was particularly damaging,” says Ó Ríordáin. “Now we’re at a point where they [the FAI] have repaired to a large degree their reputation. They have overseen a women’s side that has gone to the World Cup, there’s a lot happening that’s very positive.”

The FAI did not respond to questions on its record of promoting football interests to Government in recent years.

Despite recent image improvements, many clubs remain in a difficult position. “Grassroots clubs are on their knees,” says John Hayden, chairman of Belvedere Football Club in Dublin.

“We’ve been here 53 years, we’ve 350 kids in the club, in that there are 43 different nationalities, but we don’t have anything. We have a nest egg of a few quid built up, but the way we’re operating at the moment, paying a rent of €51,500 a year, I’d say we have about six years left and then the doors will be closed.”

Since Belvedere does not have its own premises which it can secure, Hayden describes a difficult pre-match routine made necessary by intruders on the pitch. “We’re walking the pitches before training with seven- and eight-year-olds, picking up syringes, making sure there are no broken bottles,” he says.

“We had one glass bottle broken in half and the bottle was dug in the ground, you wouldn’t see it and it could rip a kid to bits.”

Daniel Ennis is vice-chairman of East Wall Bessborough FC, another Dublin club. He is also a former League of Ireland footballer having lined out for Shelbourne, Bohemians and Bray Wanderers. “I always felt the neglect as a League of Ireland player but only when I went back to grassroots did I really see the neglect,” he says.

“One day our U9s were about to come on, I got a tap on the shoulder. One of our members in a wheelchair couldn’t access the ground. We had to call off the game four or five minutes before kick-off. We’re going to have to get some sort of disability access to the complex. I started to engage local politicians and that’s when I saw that we’re not going to get anything here. Not unless we get a massive push.”

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Alongside the lack of trust between key stakeholders above them, Ó Ríordáin believes history and socio-economics from well before the Delaney era have played a key role in the neglect of football clubs. “For 50 years there was a ban,” he explains.

“If you wanted to promote yourself being a good nationalist and GAA person, football couldn’t be something you promoted. The ethos and culture around the ban has stayed. Until the Jack Charlton era there was very little reason politically to support football.

“Football is traditionally a working-class issue. No more so than anything else which is traditionally a working-class issue, it tends to be overlooked. ”

The experience of the grassroots administrators sheds further light on the class dynamic. “We’re in the Dublin 1, 3 area,” says Hayden. “A lot of children’s parents aren’t around, because of prison, drink, things like that. Kids turn up to us without football boots. We’re not going to turn those kids away, we buy them football boots.

“If we fold, there’s 350 kids back on the street in the north inner city. What happens? They end up in devastating circumstances in a lot of situations.”

During last week’s Dáil debate, Chris Andrews of Sinn Féin called for the sports capital grant programme to be reformed. He said it disadvantaged football clubs who don’t own their own facilities, often a requirement for funding for long-term projects. According to Andrews, 73 per cent of football clubs in Dublin do not own their ground.

Ennis, who is involved in the planning of a new complex that will serve the East Wall/Belvedere merger and the wider community, agrees. “I’ve a great model, business plan and architectural team behind us. We can go down these funding avenues but all the knockdowns are, if you don’t have a long-term lease or ownership of land, no one will look at you.”

The timing of the Labour motion coincides with Ireland’s upcoming first outing at a women’s World Cup. Yet many clubs lack the infrastructure to deal with the expected swell of participation from young girls. East Wall Bessborough and Belvedere are among a number of clubs that have limited opportunities for girls’ sides because of a lack of changing facilities.

“Clubs are going to have to get their heads around the fact that if they don’t have a girl’s team, they’re not getting money,” warns Ó Ríordáin.

At times in recent months when funding and football have been discussed, many political figures have broadened the conversation to include sport as a whole. In April, when the betting levy that sees a percentage of gambling taxes ring-fenced for the horse and greyhound industry was discussed in the Dáil, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he “wouldn’t pit sport against the equestrian industry in Ireland”.

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During Thursday’s debate, Minister for Sport Catherine Martin expressed support for funding all sport, mentioning American football as well as football itself. “If I agreed with that we would have done a motion on sport, but we didn’t, we deliberately did a motion on football,” says Ó Ríordáin.

“We believe this game deserves special attention because it is the game beloved by the more disadvantaged communities in our culture. I don’t really want to pit one sport against another but I don’t remember any other sporting occasion lifting the country like Italia ‘90 did.”

Despite the ongoing issues, optimism remains that these gaps will be dealt with by the FAI’s plan, should funding be secured. “There’s cross-party support for this, which is a great positive first sign,” says Quinn.

“I’m very hopeful that there will be recognition of what’s needed and insight into how that’s achieved. I want to see the game developed in a way that makes us a leader as opposed to the bit-part that we’ve played over the last number of years.”