Plodding along with only a cursory glance from RTE

The FAI's unrequited love for RTE was on display again last Friday night in Dublin when the draw for this year's first round of the Harp Lager Senior Cup was made.

A year ago several of the clubs made it clear that having the draw on a night when there were games on didn't really suit, while representations were made by the papers, too, to the effect that an earlier day in the week would facilitate their attempts to cover the event. The national broadcaster, however, rather fancied something novel to slot into their main television news bulletin and so, of course, Merrion Square were only too happy to oblige.

If RTE were only so dedicated to furthering the cause of the association then this sort of thing would be far easier to understand, but clearly they're not.

The FAI can force them to give some exposure to the National League by tying the rights to the national team's home games up with the club scene, but where does RTE's heart really lie? Why, with the English Premiership of course.

This would have been been more understandable 20 years ago when large parts of this country couldn't receive the BBC. RTE is, just like this newspaper, a commercial entity and the Premiership is undoubtedly a bigger seller than the local game. But these days just about everybody can switch from RTE to BBC without the slightest difficulty and, though it seems to have escaped the attention of anybody out in Donnybrook, Des Lynam and the boys over in Shepherds Bush have built up a bit of reputation over the years for doing just this sort of late Saturday night thing rather well.

Undeterred, RTE are believed to have committed themselves to spending between £3 and £4 million over the course of their three-year deal.

The result, so far, is that despite advertising on a scale rarely seen for a television programme in this country, The Premiership show is attracting audiences of between 150,000 and 175,000 (between around 10 and 15 per cent of the available audience) to their Saturday night slot.

Officials at the station have admitted that they are disappointed by these figures. The station claims to be beating its BBC rival, Match Of The Day, by three viewers to one. This is viewed within the industry with a certain amount of scepticism, but even if it is true it would suggest that the total audience for English football in Ireland on a Saturday night is under a quarter of a million.

If that's the case, and getting three quarters of the audience is considered to be a disappointment, then surely we're entitled to ask what is the point of this whole, extremely expensive exercise. Did they, by some chance, really think that Johnny Giles and Eamon Dunphy were such a draw that they were going to grow the market for the English game in Ireland? Meanwhile, the domestic game continues to plod along while receiving, what is by comparison, little more than the odd cursory glance from Montrose. That it should do better out of a broadcaster which, unlike this paper, is also extensively funded by a subscription from just about every household in the country seems obvious but let's set that aside for a moment.

The fact is that, with none of the billboard advertising and precious few of the on-air promos that The Premiership has received in recent months, most of last season's live National League games achieved larger audiences than the Bill O'Herlihy fronted programme at a time when less people are generally watching television.

This season the figures have been, relatively speaking, disappointing. Aside from the St Patrick's Athletic versus Cork City game which attracted 158,000 viewers, the other live games have averaged just about 100,000. The Soccer Show, meanwhile, has fared less well with, for instance, 93,000 tuning in on October 16th, but just 52,000 watching three weeks later.

Setting aside the genuinely bizarre scheduling of the Soccer Show, its failure to make a greater impact can in part be put down to the fact that it is still under-funded and obliged to pander to the whims of its co-producers, the (er, you guessed it) FAI.

Picking 10 games a year to cover live is, of course, a lottery and a decent highlights programme would seem like a more obvious route to take. The bottom line is that if Sky Sports covered the English Premiership the way RTE covers our game you can be sure that there would a lot less people obsessed with the English game.

The current rumour is that RTE are planning to extend their football coverage all right. The new show, however, is to be a Saturday lunchtime preview of the day's games across the water. Now, where oh where could they have stumbled upon an outstanding idea like that?