Numbers not adding up for FAI

Brendan O'Brien

YOU know the numbers aren't adding up when you can walk up to one of those food counters in a sports stadium five minutes before kick-off, make your purchase and return to your seat in little more than 60 seconds flat.

Not for the first time the crowd at the Aviva Stadium was more akin to a collection for Uruguay's visit on Tuesday night with the concourses behind the stands at half-time resembling a subway station at midnight rather than Grand Central at rush hour.

Bad enough that the fans who do turn up feel shortchanged by the eerie emptiness but Stephen Kelly's assertion that the falling attendance figures is a regular source of conversation among the squad just serves to underline how big an issue it has become.

There has been too much rubbish written and spoken about the legendary 'Lansdowne Roar', which only ever made an intermittent presence in the old relic's latter years, but the falloff in support for the boys in green is genuinely alarming.

Football may be one of the 'big three' sports in this country but it only truly grasped the wider public's imagination with the success of Jack Charlton's sides and the game needs the oxygen of regular appearances at the major competitions to maintain such a healthy position.

As we are seeing in recent months, punters won't splash the cash blindly. They certainly won't in a recession and those of us who frequented a half-empty Lansdowne Road or Dalymount Park time and again in the 1980s or earlier can attest to that.

The fact is that, attendances aside, there is a discernible apathy about the national squad out there and one hopes it does not increase to approach the disdain felt for England's national selection by a significant number of club fans in cities like Manchester and Liverpool.

Nine years have now passed now since Spain pipped us to a quarter-final spot after a penalty shootout in Suwon which makes it the longest stretch without an appearance at a World Cup or European Championships since we first qualified for one in 1988.

Making the games more accessible to floating voters would be a start.

The good news is that the FAI finally seems to be getting the message and has just announced that tickets for the upcoming Northern Ireland, Scotland, Slovakia and Armenia games will be sold on a game-by-game basis and not bundled into packages as before.

That follows on from the recent decision to reduce ticket prices by 25% and 14% for competitive and friendly fixtures respectively and which was an echo of the good news forced on the their fellow Aviva tennants, the IRFU, not so long ago.

The oval brigade had been struck by the same peculiar epidemic of general apathy mixed with fury over the costs involved and had to commit to a highly embarrassing climbdown over the price and manner in which their tickets were packaged for the November internationals.

The GAA, too, have already reduced ticket costs for the Allianz Leagues and it seems certain that similar drops will come into play for the All-Ireland hurling and football championships. Now if they could all do something about the price of a bloody burger in their stadiums we could concentrate on the games again.

Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/N2EWwCHxdrc/post.aspx

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