Council yes gives Fingal a sporting chance

Local authority backing has given one club a fighting chance of succeeding where other Dublin clubs have failed, aiming to make it a club of the people for the people.

IN A LEAGUE where the high number of Dublin clubs has long been an issue it was a little hard for most of us to get excited last year about the prospect of a start-up outfit in the city's northern suburbs.

After all, the recent experience of others has been less than encouraging. In the not so distant past one club with ambitions to make the area its heartland, Dublin City, went entirely out of business because of a lack of public support while another, Shelbourne, followed a period of spectacular property boom-funded success by narrowly avoiding going completely bust.

When a veteran of the local game like Liam Buckley revealed last year that Sporting Fingal was about to be born the most obvious question was: "Why?" On the day plans were made public there were already some early indications that what was being envisaged was a little different to what had gone before, with some of the most obvious lessons having been learned.

For a start, the press conference was attended by a senior executive officer from the Fingal County Council's community, culture and sports department, John O'Brien, whose expression of council backing for the enterprise probably exceeded any previously given by a significant public body for a League of Ireland club.

In fact, the local authority had been a key player in the new club's birth. When deciding what it might do to develop the game in its rapidly developing catchment area, O'Brien recalls, the establishment of a league club was one of the key objectives identified.

Buckley was brought in to advise on how this and other goals, primarily the development of new facilities and the achievement of greater participation levels in the game, might be achieved and it didn't take long for everyone to agree that the club could provide a focus for all of the plan's other elements.

The former international striker, who had at one stage hoped to do something similar with Shamrock Rovers, found himself being handed the key building blocks required to establish what he reckoned could be a new type of club.

Club and council representatives travelled to England and Norway to look at how other people - at Rosenborg, IK Start and Stoke City among others - have put in place the sort of infrastructure required to make something like this work. There was an enthusiasm on both sides for what they saw and the basis of a long-term strategy was agreed.

The council would build an €11 million training centre at Turvey near Donabate to be used by the club and the rest of the community. The project is to be voted on by councillors next month and while there is some local opposition to the scheme on environmental grounds, it is still hoped that, if approved by councillors, it could be completed within a year.

Over the longer term - five years or so is mentioned - there are also plans for a stadium in Swords which would operate on the same basis, providing a home for Sporting and an amenity for a population that, in just that one part of Fingal, is set to more than double to around 100,000 within the next 10 years.

Other elements of the scheme include a scholarship scheme with DCU which is at an advanced stage of discussion.

Buckley, meanwhile, would be expected to deliver a club that would, on the one hand, field a team capable of achieving success and, on the other, a structure that would be able to engage with the local community in a way that, say, Dublin City, could never have even envisaged.

With a team of well qualified coaches and facilities as good as anything in the country at their disposal, the idea is that Sporting will provide technical support and guidance to the 60 or so clubs in the area. A particular emphasis is to be placed on working with the local schoolboy outfits and a good relationship has already developed with the North Dublin Schoolboy League.

Buckley, who insists Sporting will not be competing with these clubs for players (the intention is to field senior men's and women's teams as well as under-20 and under-18 men's teams only) sees other possibilities, with the new outfit potentially helping to provide a link between the local game's grassroots and the council or FAI, or co-ordinating centralised purchasing from kit and other equipment suppliers. The ideas simply pour out of him as he talks about what can be achieved in the future.

What he asks in return, he says, is that those involved in the clubs - fellow football people, as he sees it - support Sporting in the most obvious way, by getting along to games and helping them to achieve success.

This is perhaps the most uncertain part of the entire project because at a time that clubs who already have a core support are finding it desperately hard to attract new supporters, there is simply no guarantee that they will be able to put bums on seats. Fingal may have a population of 250,000 which, at least until Bohemians complete their planned move to Harristown, has no other club playing at this level to support but the reality is they are not competing against other clubs for support - they are up against just about everything else people choose to do with their lives.

Key to their success then, is ensuring that local people come to identify sufficiently strongly with a club attempting to represent a administrative area only established a little more than a decade ago that they actually go and see games.

The grassroots work to be done when the planned infrastructure is in place will be central to this but, with things having moved a little more quickly than had been envisaged thus far, having a team worth going to see is an important first step.

With financial backing from Gerry Gannon of Gannon Homes and Malahide United's Gannon Park fame, as well as substantial sponsorship from companies like fruit wholesalers Keeling's, they have already achieved that.

The side that started the club's first home game at Morton Stadium was liberally sprinkled with league winners and other prominent former top-flight players and while they still looked at times like a group getting to know each other, there was little doubt that there was the quality required to at least mount a challenge for promotion at the first attempt.

Admission to the game was free but the attendance, officially put at more than 1,200, was still impressive, while the sense on the day that the crowd comprised a large number of those "football people" Buckley is chasing was unmistakable.

Friday's turnout for the visit of Limerick 37 was smaller, at just short of 500, but still highly respectable in what are clearly very, very early days.

What's important is there is evidence on every front of firm foundations being laid after which, Buckley observes, "if they come, we can build it".