Overhaul of season still on the league's agenda

Despite league officials appearing to have drawn back on their original plans to overhaul the season here, representatives from the 22 clubs will hear what Merrion Square sees as the way forward at next Monday's management committee meeting.

Instead of the original idea of starting the season in spring and ending in late autumn, a much reduced summer close season with a second break introduced in mid-winter is proposed to keep the length of the overall campaign more or less the same.

Both of the breaks would be around five weeks which would allow the league to steer their schedule around the worse of the weather in winter. It would also, of course, cut back considerably on the length of the summer layoff which, it is hoped, will have some benefit when it comes to the various European competitions.

The climbdown appears to have been prompted by a feeling that there would be too much opposition to such a move. How well these proposals will go down with the players or referees remains to be seen, for the plan, at this stage, is to talk to clubs next week and everybody else after that.

Other proposals up for discussion at the meeting include those based on the league's recent study of the game in Norway. At the time the study was carried out, the game there was being widely held up as a glowing example. But some of the shine may have dulled by recent reports concerning the financial well-being of clubs there.

According to Michael Hyland and Brendan Menton, they were assured when they visited the country earlier this year that only one club in the league's top flight was actually insolvent while the rest were reasonably well off. But an article by Ole P Pedersen in the November issue of When Saturday Comes paints a very different picture, with most big clubs said to be struggling as a result, in no small part, of the spiralling wages paid to players.

In the circumstances then, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that talk of the National League remodelling itself on the Norweigan set-up is being talked down now.

Instead, certain "positive aspects" of the way in which the game is run there are being emphasised, for example, a more centralised management style and more pro-active approach to bringing through young players.

Already there has been considerable movement here, with the executive officers increasingly taking the decisions which determine the way in which the league is run and then having those decisions ratified by subsequent meetings of either the board of control or the management committee.

It is hoped that this process can be developed further and formalised to give considerably more power to the elected officials and less to the individual clubs.

In relation to the more effective development of younger players, it is also hoped that a number of measures aimed at encouraging clubs to be more positive will be adopted. But for the moment at least the idea of dual registration, whereby youngsters could be actually signed by the association and then registered with a particular club, looks to be out of the question.

The hope is that after next week's presentation the representatives will have two months up to the next meeting of the management committee to figure out where their club stands on the various issues.

If there is general acceptance that the proposals are worth implementing the hope is that work can start early in the New Year on the required rule changes with next year's championship the target.

This week's edition of the Soccer Show (Network 2, Wednesday at 7 p.m.) takes a look at the role of the various talent scouts operating in Ireland on behalf of overseas clubs. Featured in the report will be a profile of Noel McCabe, who works for Liverpool here and who, during his days with Nottingham Forest, was credited with discovering Roy Keane.