Lessons to learn from cup success

After all the talk towards the end of last week about the desirability of a mid-season break it turned out to be quite a weekend for the FAI. Against all the odds every one of their first-round cup matches was played and it actually looks at this stage as if the whole round may be out of the way by the end of this week.

There is more than a hint of luck about all of this. It was touch and go on Saturday as even the smallest amount of rain would have meant around half of the games would probably have had to have been re-fixed for over the coming week or two. The fact that one or two of the games went ahead despite decidedly unfavourable conditions, the pictures on Sunday night from Gortakeegan were particularly remarkable, had the effect of devaluing the entire competition with ground conditions introducing an unacceptable level of chance into many games.

The fact that the only balls available for the Monaghan fixture, where the fog was thick and the pitch covered in frost, were white was also disappointing. There are a great many challenges facing the game here, but the need to have orange footballs available for conditions like these was yet another example of something that should have been foreseen. It wasn't and the footage of the game shown on Sunday evening took a bit of the gloss off things for the association.

For the league, too, it's gone well so far, with a couple of matches with non-league outfits going to replays over the next couple of days, but not one ending in an embarrassing defeat as yet.

It's a little sad to have to be so hard nosed about it, but it is important to the league as a whole that its clubs perform well against teams from intermediate football. In a way the fact that one of the biggest clubs goes out to a minnow once in a blue moon isn't all that important, it happens in every competition of this sort in the world. But the reputations of the senior clubs suffer when games between sides in the lower half of the first division and, say, the Leinster Senior League appear to be toss-ups and, with this in mind, Home Farm Everton's performance at Workman's/Dunleary as well as Kilkenny's fightback after going 2-0 down at home to Swilly Rovers were especially impressive.

The level of media attention must have pleasing for everyone too. I say must have been for it's not always easy to gauge what everybody expects up there in the offices of the league and association and I've often been surprised by some of the comments, favourable or otherwise, made about how particular events have been covered by the various newspapers and broadcasters.

The first round of the cup, though, and the final remain the two things each year that there can be surely no complaints about.

Over the course of last week the competition had a good profile just about everywhere. Over the weekend most of the papers, the Sunday Times was one exception, RTE and a variety of radio stations - though outstandingly Radio 1, whose coverage of the game here rarely gets the credit it deserves (particularly given the lack of enthusiasm for it outside the sports department in Montrose's radio centre) and who pushed the boat out again on Sunday - churned out the sort of coverage that must have cheered up everybody up at Harp HQ.

The timing of the whole thing was, of course, important. There wasn't actually a great deal else on over the weekend or, for that matter, last week. And so, for once, the country's best clubs weren't forced into the shadows by British football or other sports, whether at home or abroad.

Unfortunately the same is unlikely to be said in the week after the second round. That takes place during the first weekend of February and already it looks grim for Shelbourne, St Patrick's Athletic and the rest. Grimmer, it seems, than it really had to be.

Some of the events that threaten to impinge of the cup's coverage that week could hardly have been foreseen by the FAI when they decided on the dates for the various rounds of the cup.

A lot of coverage will inevitably be devoted to the Michelle de Bruin hearing in the Court of Arbitration for Sport which has been tentatively scheduled for February 5th.

While even the timing of IOC's international conference on combating the use of drugs in sports (February 2nd-4th) was probably decided upon well after Merrion Square made its mark on the calendar.

But lining up the second round of the cup against the first of Ireland's Five Nations games, the visit of France to Lansdowne Road on February 6th, as well as the running of the Hennessy Gold Cup at Leopardstown the following day will not do much to enhance the competition's profile in the media here.

This is something that will doubtless be taken into account by the association's officials the next time they weigh up the coverage that the game here gets in the various media.