Fans draw no comfort from Euro campaigns

On Soccer: After last week's UEFA Cup results, eircom League supporters attending Saturday's Lansdowne Road game should be in better heart as it could be one of the best periods in quite some time for Irish football, writes Emmet Malone.

With the European campaigns of the league's clubs coming to a ignominious end last week there's certainly very little for your average fan to cheer about at this level.

Despite a more co-ordinated approach among the clubs, growing flexibility on the part of the league itself, more full-time professionals than ever before and, of course, the fact that the whole season has been moved in a way that should have proven hugely beneficial to competing teams, the returns on this year's collective efforts by Shamrock Rovers, Bohemians, Derry City and Shelbourne have, in the end, been modest.

Rovers started rather brightly in the Inter-Toto cup, a competition that might have been viewed as something of a curse before the advent of summer soccer. When Liam Buckley's side beat Odra of Poland away, it was tempting to believe that it might be the beginning of something significant.

What it showed, however, was the extent of the difference that being "in season" makes to a club and even Buckley conceded after the home leg win that their opponents would probably have been the better team if their season had been on a par with Rovers'.

In the next round Rovers came up against a Liberec team that was better than the Odra one and, almost as importantly, less out of season. Both differences told as the Czechs fairly much cruised past the Hoops and into the competition's third round.

If BATE's record is to be taken at face value then Bohemians' defeat of the Belarussians in the Champions League first qualifying round represents one of the greater achievements in Europe of recent seasons. Like Poland, though to a lesser extent, the country is higher on UEFA's ranking list than Ireland, but in this case there were no seasonal factors to be taken into account.

Stephen Kenny's side certainly performed respectably over the two games but on the strength of BATE's showing - at Dalymount in particular - one suspects that they too had benefited from playing league football at home through the summer when they had done well against biggish names from Germany, Denmark and Italy over the previous couple of seasons.

It could certainly be argued that in the next round the Dubliners were unfortunate to be drawn against Rosenborg who felt themselves, with some justification it seemed, that they shouldn't even have been involved at that stage of the competition.

The ease with which the Norwegians beat the Irish champions, however, suggested that the eircom League outfit could have been a good deal less unfortunate in terms of who they were paired with but still gone crashing out of the competition.

UEFA's ranking list of countries usually provides a fairly reliable indication of how strong foreign clubs are going to be and so when Shelbourne and Derry were drawn against clubs from Slovenia and Cyprus, rated 28th and 29th in Europe as compared with Ireland's 37th, it was fair to assume that Olimpija and Apoel Nicosia were going to be tough opponents.

Still, coming up against teams from leagues with that sort of ranking is simply unavoidable for Irish clubs and they are the kind of opponents that must eventually be beaten if teams from this country are to build on the modest progress of recent years.

As it turned out, the outcome of the two ties was especially disheartening with both Irish sides being beaten without, it seemed, ever managing to make their opponents even play flat out.

The cost of the defeats in terms of revenue missed out on became clearer the following day when Olimpija were handed a first-round tie with Liverpool that could have earned Shelbourne comfortably more than €500,000 and Apoel were paired with a team, Real Mallorca, from a country whose television stations are known to pay that sort of money for the rights to a single game.

Overall, then, it is difficult to draw any real encouragement from the clubs' various efforts this summer. Last year was a peculiar one in that the country's best side played in Inter-Toto Cup because of being docked 15 points over administrative failings, Shelbourne were beaten in the Champions League by a clearly inferior Maltese team and cup winners Dundalk had lost many players before competing in the UEFA Cup as a result of having been relegated. This time there are no special circumstances to explain away what happened.

When Kenny took over at Dalymount he insisted that his long-term ambition was to take the club to the Champions League group stages. It is presumably the level to which several other clubs also aspire.

To be entitled even to a place in the second qualifying round by right, however, the eircom League would have to climb a dozen places on the UEFA ladder and nothing in this year's performances suggests that that is going to happen in the near future. A number of clubs here are moving in the right direction but the results in Europe suggest that progress is being made at least as fast elsewhere.