Kelleher makes a play for more State funding for Irish soccer

Garrett Kelleher, the developer who just won't give up on his plan to build a 2,000ft spire in the middle of Chicago, had a few interesting points to make yesterday at the Federation of Irish Sports conference in the Guinness Storehouse.

Kelleher is also the owner of St Patrick’s Athletic football club, the reigning League of Ireland champions.

He took part in a panel debate yesterday alongside Hugo MacNeill, the gilded former rugby international who is now Goldman Sachs' papal nuncio in Ireland. The sports minister Leo Varadkar and Bernard Allen, a previous Fine Gael sports minister and chairman of the Irish Sports Council, were there too.

Talk turned to sports funding and how the State funnels taxpayers’ cash towards the various sporting organisations, and on what criteria.

Kelleher has propped up St Pat’s with millions of his own cash. He asserted there is a bias in State funding towards rugby and also the GAA, which owns nine of the 10 stadiums in Ireland with a capacity above 30,000 and retains exclusive use of them.

Kelleher argued that the Government should invest more money in soccer infrastructure.

Winning the league was worth about €475,000 to Pat’s in prize money and European payouts, Kelleher has calculated, but it still has bills to pay. The club will also be in the qualifying rounds of the Champions league next season.

That – more’s the pity – is more than can be said for Manchester United, whose old name of Newton Heath also happens to be the name of Kelleher’s holding company for Pat’s.