…especially in September when the cricket season was drawing to a close and the dual sportsmen had to commit to rigorous training in preparation for the winter season. The numbers involved were sometimes exaggerated, and over the years they have got less and less. There are probably relatively few at present.
Nevertheless many clubs were affected and worse still, the threat of the Irish Football Association switching to summer football hung like a dark cloud over cricket, and the doomsayers often told us it would be the death-knell of cricket if it happened. I was reminded of the ‘threat’ in the past two weeks when the weather inUlster was dreadful and a number of football games were postponed. Inevitably out of the demise came the predictable call to switch to summer football, with some administrators going as far as to say local football will only survive if the IFA move with the times and take this major decision. It begs the question, is local football so vulnerable that a few weeks of bad weather could rock its foundations and cause its collapse?
Switching to a summer format won’t save local football as it has been on a steady decline for years. Poor crowds, poor facilities and bad business management have all combined to make it the laughing stock of local sport. Coleraine FC has gone in and out of liquidation like a yoyo, Derry City is reputed to be 600,000 in debt, Distillery is reputed to be 300,000 ‘in the red,’ and Ards FC sold their ground over five years ago and have been nomads ever since. Amateur football clubs are in better shape and have no ambitions to move up the ladder. The bigger clubs carry the Irish League, and it remains to be seen what action will be taken against Larne and Newry after their match was abandoned last Saturday because of fighting on the field! What a shameful advertisement for local football.
No, cricket has nothing to fear from local football as it is a shambles and it remains a mystery why so many columns of newspaper space are devoted to it, and why any sponsor would want to be associated with the game until it cleans up its act.
This is a great pity as football and cricket have enjoyed a good relationship down the years, mainly because some of the leading players in both codes have attracted a lot of attention. Unfortunately that has all but disappeared in the last 25 years and today there aren’t many cricketing footballers of the calibre of the Dennison brothers, Johnny Black, Neil Fullerton and Ricky Adair. It all seems a far cry from the Twenties and Thirties when most cricket clubs had a top footballer in their ranks and sometimes more. Lisburn’s Tom McCloy played for the Blues and North Down’s Raymond Crosby played for the Glens in the Fifties and a decade later big Roy Torrens and wee Archie McQuilken were not only good club players but NI Amateur internationals in an era when the amateurs were as good as the professionals.
At the height of their sporting prowess, the legendary EDR Shearer and Jimmy Kelly were major attractions at Derry Cityfootball matches and City of Derry cricket matches in the North-West, while in Belfast, the equally legendary Billy McCleery’s presence in the Woodvale team guaranteed a few hundred Linfield supporters on theBallygomartin Roadboundary benches. In those days hundreds, sometimes thousands, of spectators attended the big football matches and to a lesser extent the top cricket games. But that has long since disappeared, and while the top football teams like Linfield and Glentoran still attract good support, all of the other clubs are in decline. The same could be said for cricket, where attendances at even the top senior games are unlikely to pass the hundred mark, and outside the premier division the numbers barely exceed twenty people.
Summer football may be the answer to its winter woes, but it won’t damage local cricket, and unless the football business model is carefully assessed, it may be even add to its demise.
Clarence Hiles
Editor
