When asked why I support Liverpool, and not a league of Ireland team, my answer is simple, I already have a local team, it's just that they're a junior club that no-one has heard of. What Conman said about most towns not having a 'soccer' team isn't strictly true. However they wont be very big, and their existence means that your 'local' itch for football is scratched. League of Ireland teams have a very small local catchment area.
Take for instance the city of Galway. It has a population of 75,000. You'd think that would be enough to support one professional club, Galway Utd, in the north part of the city. The problem is that instead of getting behind one professional club, instead the western part of the city has Salthill Devon, and the east side of the city has Mervue United, and these three clubs are semi professional clubs in the second tier. Galway United couldn't attract people from across the city, because they weren't local enough. There are also a couple of junior teams that are close enough in size to these bigger three, but they don't want leave junior football. In the city they're also competing for attendance, and participation with I think six or seven GAA clubs, that play Hurling and football, then the galway county teams play out of salthill, and there is also the Connaught Rugby team based in Galway city as well.
The point is that this localism, combined with other clubs providing more meaningful competitions at a local level (If you're on the county hurling or football team, everyone knows who you are, and you're a minor celebrity, whereas a league of Ireland footballer would pass unnoticed) means that the League of Ireland is going to always struggle, even before you take into account the overwhelming dominance of the Premiership on TV.
The way ahead for the League of Ireland, is as a collection of fan run trusts, run with rigid breakeven requirements. If that means more clubs becoming semi-professional in the short run, then so be it. Any excess money should be shovelled into infrastructure and youth development. If the FAI have to buy the stadia from the clubs, as in the case of Cork City, then well and good.
Probably the best approach for the FAI is to start getting the people already participating in coaching in the existing club structures qualified to the UEFA standard. If the FAI can get a higher quality of coaching at the league of Ireland, and the existing junior and schoolboy clubs, then you would start to see the impact start to filter down to the children currently playing throughout the country.
Essentially the future for the league of Ireland depends on the FAI sufficiently raising the level of footballing education offered, to the point that the players who filter into the league, will all have had the benefits of a high level of underage coaching. This combined with financial stability will raise the quality of the football on the pitch, and hopefully they can build from there. It will provide a better secondary path for players into the premiership, for players like long, coleman, houlahan, Doyle, meyler etc, and transfer fees for players like these can be reinvested in stadia, training facilities and coaching.
The major problem is that the FAI or the league don't have a pot to piss in, and there's no money from the government. You'd have to wonder what exactly they spent the boom years doing.
