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Who Stole Our Game?
Based on interviews with players, managers, fans, club owners and officials, Daire Whelan looks at the fall of Irish soccer, showing what went wrong: lousy administration, English soccer on TV, financial mismanagement and lack of foresight, involving FAI officials and club owners alike.
- GenresFootball
256 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2006
12 people want to read
About the author
Daire Whelan
8 books2 followersDaire Whelan is an award-winning writer, journalist and producer. He has written for Ireland's biggest media organisations and newspapers and his work has appeared in the Irish Times (as a former Business of Sport columnist), the Irish Independent, Irish Examiner, Sunday Tribune, Sunday Times, Village and Magill magazines.
Writing about society, culture and sport, he is the author of (at present) six non-fiction books:
- Haunted by Waters: A Journey into the Irish Countryside (Hachette Ireland 2021)
- The Art of Hurling, (Mercier Press 2017)
- Donal Lenihan, My Life in Rugby (Ghost-written and nominated for the Irish Sports Book of the Year; published by Transworld Ireland 2016)
- The Managers (Hachette 2013)
- A Year with the Dubs (Gill 2008)
- Who Stole Our Game? (Gill 2006)
Writing about society, culture and sport, he is the author of (at present) six non-fiction books:
- Haunted by Waters: A Journey into the Irish Countryside (Hachette Ireland 2021)
- The Art of Hurling, (Mercier Press 2017)
- Donal Lenihan, My Life in Rugby (Ghost-written and nominated for the Irish Sports Book of the Year; published by Transworld Ireland 2016)
- The Managers (Hachette 2013)
- A Year with the Dubs (Gill 2008)
- Who Stole Our Game? (Gill 2006)
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 19, 2023
Who Stole Our Game is effectively a history of the League of Ireland from the 1950s to the book's publication in 2006. It's an interesting read, and although it’s good to have it together in one place, in truth there's little enough in it that a regular LoI won't already be aware of. So for example, the main reasons put forward for the leagues decline are English football on TV and no real forward planning from clubs, who reckoned full houses would continue unabated from the 1950s. This isn’t really a huge surprise.
There’s an impressive list of interviewees in the book – Johnny Giles, John Delaney, Éamon Dunphy, Roy Dooney, Andy O’Callaghan, Des Casey, Brian Kerr and many others close to the coal face, though at times the quotes could do with being edited a bit tighter – they read like verbatim interview quotes and nothing would have been lost by tidying up of the phrasing or removing the repetition – and also with being challenged a bit more. The discussion on the Dublin Dons saga loses something in the telling when Éamon Dunphy is allowed to bemoan the millions he would have made operating a Premier League club from Ireland, when the reality is most people running such clubs put money into them, not take it out. Dunphy is similarly suspect when talking about how his grand plan to turn Shamrock Rovers into European champions was spoiled by bitterness at other clubs without really giving any sort of examples how. Another contributor suggests Giles was too much of a football purist to adapt to the awful LoI pitches of the day, and that seems much more likely a reason.
Some of the author’s comments, particularly closer the date of publication, really don’t stand the test of time – Shels are described as a strong club just months before going into financial meltdown having, it turned out, agreed a sale of their ground and pumped the proceeds into the first team, while Bohs’ (subsequently cancelled) deal to sell their ground is rather unfairly compared to the Kilcoynes selling Milltown – but at least Bohs had a plan to replace their ground, while the Kilcoynes were wilfully entering into homelessness.
Some bits, of course, are more interesting than others. Roy Dooney is very forthright on the Paul Marney saga (“Of all the places I have worked in my life, I have never met so many unpleasant and stupid people in the same place all at once. They might say the same about me, but there was a meanness and nastiness there that I have never come across before”), and saying that one of the reasons Pat’s were docked points is because the other clubs – this being when the clubs ran the league – were pissed off at Pat Dolan pontificating about how they should operate. On the flip side, when Dooney fined Shamrock Rovers for not having the eircom flash on their kit, the clubs vetoed it, knowing they could easily be the next ones fined.
The conclusion – discussing the new FAI CEO, John Delaney – is also surprisingly prescient. One or two contributors praise him, but others – behind anonymity – describe him as “the most Machevellian character I have ever met in my life […] exactly what the FAI don’t need”, as a failed businessman (“His other interestes in operations, such as a coffee-vending machine, furniture business and a bakery, have all shown accumulated losses over time - €200,000, €36,000 and €460,000 respectively”) and come very close to calling what we now know he was actually doing (“He won’t be able to hide behind in the shadows, which he was able to do as Treasurer. I believe his stewardship as Treasurer was appalling as well. […] I have no doubt that rules were being breached. I am not saying that he has been feathering his own nest. […] Delaney, you see, is not a detailed man. He is careless and he does leave trails behind him and I think he will get careless. But the problem is that means there will be another fucking shaft and we are back to square one again. He shouldn’t be CEO […] I don’t think he has a passion for football. I think he has a passion for power and this is the only way he will get power.”)
One wonders if, given the sudden resurgence of the LoI in the last couple of years, an updated version is now called for?
There’s an impressive list of interviewees in the book – Johnny Giles, John Delaney, Éamon Dunphy, Roy Dooney, Andy O’Callaghan, Des Casey, Brian Kerr and many others close to the coal face, though at times the quotes could do with being edited a bit tighter – they read like verbatim interview quotes and nothing would have been lost by tidying up of the phrasing or removing the repetition – and also with being challenged a bit more. The discussion on the Dublin Dons saga loses something in the telling when Éamon Dunphy is allowed to bemoan the millions he would have made operating a Premier League club from Ireland, when the reality is most people running such clubs put money into them, not take it out. Dunphy is similarly suspect when talking about how his grand plan to turn Shamrock Rovers into European champions was spoiled by bitterness at other clubs without really giving any sort of examples how. Another contributor suggests Giles was too much of a football purist to adapt to the awful LoI pitches of the day, and that seems much more likely a reason.
Some of the author’s comments, particularly closer the date of publication, really don’t stand the test of time – Shels are described as a strong club just months before going into financial meltdown having, it turned out, agreed a sale of their ground and pumped the proceeds into the first team, while Bohs’ (subsequently cancelled) deal to sell their ground is rather unfairly compared to the Kilcoynes selling Milltown – but at least Bohs had a plan to replace their ground, while the Kilcoynes were wilfully entering into homelessness.
Some bits, of course, are more interesting than others. Roy Dooney is very forthright on the Paul Marney saga (“Of all the places I have worked in my life, I have never met so many unpleasant and stupid people in the same place all at once. They might say the same about me, but there was a meanness and nastiness there that I have never come across before”), and saying that one of the reasons Pat’s were docked points is because the other clubs – this being when the clubs ran the league – were pissed off at Pat Dolan pontificating about how they should operate. On the flip side, when Dooney fined Shamrock Rovers for not having the eircom flash on their kit, the clubs vetoed it, knowing they could easily be the next ones fined.
The conclusion – discussing the new FAI CEO, John Delaney – is also surprisingly prescient. One or two contributors praise him, but others – behind anonymity – describe him as “the most Machevellian character I have ever met in my life […] exactly what the FAI don’t need”, as a failed businessman (“His other interestes in operations, such as a coffee-vending machine, furniture business and a bakery, have all shown accumulated losses over time - €200,000, €36,000 and €460,000 respectively”) and come very close to calling what we now know he was actually doing (“He won’t be able to hide behind in the shadows, which he was able to do as Treasurer. I believe his stewardship as Treasurer was appalling as well. […] I have no doubt that rules were being breached. I am not saying that he has been feathering his own nest. […] Delaney, you see, is not a detailed man. He is careless and he does leave trails behind him and I think he will get careless. But the problem is that means there will be another fucking shaft and we are back to square one again. He shouldn’t be CEO […] I don’t think he has a passion for football. I think he has a passion for power and this is the only way he will get power.”)
One wonders if, given the sudden resurgence of the LoI in the last couple of years, an updated version is now called for?
October 13, 2021
This book charts the rise and fall of the League of Ireland. The author knows his stuff, but the book isn't particularly well edited. Large tracts of quotations from a limited range of interviewees detract from what could be a much more compelling read. Unfortunately, only League of Ireland diehards will really enjoy this one.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews