Soccer union eager to help Irish players returning from UK

PFAI general secretary Stephen McGuinness says the organisation’s efforts to help players returning from Britain are being hampered by a lack of available information about those players.

The players’ union is hoping to place a greater emphasis on helping those whose career has stalled as it puts together a squad for this year’s Fifpro winter tournament in Oslo

The event was established to showcase the talents of players who are free agents in northern Europe’s various summer leagues.

Questions had been raised about the Irish union’s participation in the tournament, with few players from here securing a move to a Scandinavian side.

However, they have been granted a reprieve in part because of the success participants have subsequently enjoyed here at home.

The PFAI's's former chairman, Aidan Price, who coaches the Shamrock Rovers under-17 side, was named yesterday as manager of this year's team.

A handful of experienced professionals and a handful of well-known faces from around the league – Gavin Peers, Tim Clancy and Keith Ward – are among those training with the squad.

Safety net

But with clubs here in better shape and more players set to have been signed up by the time the 2016 tournament takes place in mid-January, McGuinness says that the union wants to use it as part of an effort to provide more of a safety net to returning young players.

The problem is, they don’t know who they are.

“It’s a huge issue for us, it’s quite difficult,” he says. “It’s one of the big issues we have in Ireland – that there is nobody tracking players in England. Nobody is reporting, nobody is checking on how they are getting on.

“It’s sad that this is not looked at more by the federation.

“If you ask somebody in the FAI ‘how many players do we have in England?’ I’d say that they would struggle to tell you. For sure, nobody knows how they are getting on, that’s for definite. The ones that are involved in the international teams, possibly; but outside of that, nobody knows.”

Cody Mulhall, who returned in January after 18 months at Hibernian, and recently released Derby County defender Jack Tuite are among those who are training with the squad, but McGuinness and Price feel that the pair are lucky enough to have retained strong contacts within the game here.

Others, however, have slipped through the cracks.

“It’s a sad indictment of the game here that we do not have that [a comprehensive database] at this stage,” says McGuinness.

Elite footballers

“We are talking about elite footballers; the absolute elite are the ones who normally go away.

“But nobody seems to know what is going on with them. How long is their contract? Who is tracking them and, when they come back, who is making contact with them?”