At the Shamrock Rovers versus Bohemians game at Tolka Park last week, leaflets were handed out by Shamrock Rovers fans with information on how to get bids in to own the shirt of a Rovers player. Under each squad member's name and number was the highest bid and the individual and company prepared to put up sums varying between €70 and €270.
All told there would probably be just a few grand raised for the club while the fans handing out the sheets were here on a winter's Friday night trying to raise money for the club. And for what? Have those remarkable fans ever asked themselves why they do it? After all, no matter how many changes of club ownership and promises of change, things sink further into the mire. Why do these fans go through the effort when it is so badly received.
Brian Lomax, a former probation officer at Strangeways Prison, a man who described that job as the best education for working in football, asked himself the same thing when his beloved Northampton Town were in financial difficulties in the 1990s.
As the rest of the fans were raising money, he asked himself why they were getting all this money to just hand over to the men in suits who would most likely squander it on empty promises. Why, instead, couldn't they have a say since they were, after all, the ones raising the money.
Soon Lomax ensured their money got them shares in the club and with a say in how things were run and for the first time fans were actually involved centrally in a club's business. Thus, Supporter Trusts were born and since 1993 have spread across the UK helping to save many clubs from extinction and actually create a new one in the Milton Keynes Dons.
And now, the simple idea that has spawned a movement (although it is a term they would not like to use themselves) and gets government funding, is establishing itself in Ireland.
Alan Kearins is a die-hard Sligo Rovers fan and has grown up with the club in his family all his life; his grandfather was a founding member of the club while his father served on management committees throughout the years. Now it is time for Alan to get involved but instead of becoming one of the suits and looking to influence things from the inside, he is choosing to bring the fans to the club and hopefully let their voices finally be heard within the corridors of power at Sligo Rovers.
Taking inspiration from Supporters Direct, the association of Supporters Trusts in the UK, Kearins is looking to set up something similar for the National League. Although fans at Galway United had looked to establish their own Trust in recent years it is Kearins and a few others like him at Sligo that have taken the idea on board the most.
"The last few years have just gotten so bad and disillusioned for so many fans that we either had the option of folding up the supporters club or else trying something different and that's when I came across the Supporters Trusts in England," explained Kearins.
From getting crowds of 5,000 just 10 years ago to now barely 300, Sligo is a case in point of just how far clubs and the league have sunk in the last decade. Irish sport may have marched bravely on with the GAA, rugby and the international soccer team, but in grounds across the country, domestic soccer fans have been left increasingly isolated. Now it seems, things could just be about to change.
Kearins and his cohorts have organised a meeting in January where they will explain what a Supporters Trust is about and try to win a general mandate from Sligo fans to go ahead and set up a Trust. Also in attendance will be Seán Hamil, who is deputy director of the Football Governance Research Centre at Birkbeck University in London and is founding member and committee member of the Celtic Trust. Explaining what they're all about, Hamil puts it bluntly,
"Supporter trusts put it up to the fans to not put up with crap anymore and get involved with a limited liability protection. It is bringing the key shareholders into the club - after all self help is the answer and the leading principle is, if money is not being made in the business then change must be needed and who better than the fans themselves to try and direct that?"
The notion of giving the fans a say in the running of the club through their buying of shares is so simplistic that many must be forgiven for wondering if that's all there is to it. It is, says Hamil, as simple as that - empowering the people who have the most passion and interest for things to work out - the fans. "Supporter Trusts also give a chance for new capital to be put into ailing businesses and the beauty of it is that most fans don't want anything back for their investments, they just want to see their clubs doing well."
And for Kearins and Sligo, stability and reviving interest in a once-proud club would be a start for them. They're not looking to the Trust as a panacea for their ills and as a means for success. Rather instead, it would be a first step along the road to re-establishing the club on a firm footing and bringing business interests and the fans back into the fold - 9,000 they reckon is the supporter base for their club in the area and if they can get anywhere near that number they know the faith that will be put in them will have been worth it.
It's time for them prove Jim McNally's jibe that "Sligo were more interested in selling lottery tickets than playing football" to be wrong and who knows, it could be the start of a nationwide movement that just might bring the league up off its knees. As Hamil puts it, "The scheme is both workable and cost efficient and after all, how much of a bigger balls of things can be made than already has been?"
ThisWeek
Racing and football could be severely hit following the decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that they can only charge for information on fixture lists, runners and riders where they have made an "investment" in their databases.
The case began four years ago when soccer and horse racing launched court actions against companies they claimed were using their information without paying for it, following a European Commission directive seeking to protect the copyright of databases.
Horse Racing Ireland will be meeting to discuss the implications of the ruling as they are currently in negotiations with the betting exchange, Betfair, seeking a payment from the exchanges for the right to bet on Irish racing.
Meanwhile, the NFL is in the process of concluding its deal for television rights until 2011 and once again the mind boggles at the figures it is managing to receive.
The new deals with Fox for National Football Conference games and with CBS for American Football Conference games will bring in $8 billion over the next six years.
Fox will pay an average of about $712 million a year and CBS an average of about $622 million. Both networks had previously been paying in the range of $500 million each.
The NFL also reached a five-year deal with the DirecTV satellite company for Sunday games that viewers pay for by subscription.
The league will receive $3.5 billion, an average of $700 million a year, up from an average of $400 million a year.
StockWatch
27p - Despite all the managerial upheavals at Spurs, the share price remains relatively unaffected just dropping 1p from last week.
"The leader does not exist in the abstract but rather in terms of what he does in a specific situation."
GoFigure
€150,000 - Estimated cost of Government funding that would be needed to develop and run Supporters Trust programmes in Ireland.
€350,000 - Government funding for Supporters Direct each year
ListentoLombardi: "The leader does not exist in the abstract but rather in terms of what he does in a specific situation."
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