NOTHING TESTS RELATIONSHIPS between clubs like a cup weekend.
Supporters of the larger clubs discuss potential banana skins; supporters of the smaller clubs dream of giant killing as we get swept up in the ‘Magic of the Cup’. Little do we know that the off-field battle between club officials can be just as fierce as that on the pitch. There are scores to be settled and mutterings of revenge because tonight is the night clubs split the gate receipts.
When you pay your 10 or 15 euro into a cup-tie, that money will be split between the home and away sides. If the total gate receipts are above a certain level, the FAI will also take a small percentage of the total gate. A poorly attended cup-tie can spell disaster for the home side, who have to pay all the costs associated with the match, but without receiving all of the income for it. If an away team can cover their costs out of their cut of the gate receipts, the officials will go home happier.
It should be straightforward, with so many clubs using automated ticket scanning it’s easy to work out how many tickets were sold and what money is due, but there’s an undercurrent of mistrust that in some cases goes back decades.
Some away clubs still send officials to stand inside the home turnstile as soon as the gates open. They’re armed with handheld counters to tally the numbers coming through the gate, just in case an attendance might be claimed to be smaller than it is, thereby robbing the away team of proceeds. Clubs will sit in the counting rooms as gate receipts are counted, eagle eyed for any indication that money is hidden somewhere.
Down through the years, some of the league’s biggest arguments and grandest gestures have taken place in ticket huts and meeting rooms. The arguments often arise when an away team feels that they’ve been short-changed. In many cases, they’ll be right to question it.
It starts in the week leading up to the game. If a small attendance is expected, the clubs will get in contact to discuss dropping the admission price, if they agree, they’ll inform the FAI. Then comes agreement about the number of free tickets allowed, if the home team wants to hand out 20 free tickets, in theory, the away side should be handed 20 free tickets also. I myself had an argument once over my club’s decision to leave the ball-boys in for free without ‘permission’ from the away side.
The sad thing is that with some clubs, you do have to keep an eye on it. I remember one fantastic argument at a Cup game when it was revealed — late in the day — that a club had been selling tickets from their club shop all week but that these hadn’t yet been reconciled and returned to the ground, a stand-off ensued, mediated by an FAI official.
The most frequent concerns and mutterings occur when the away side believe the attendance had been under declared, that somehow the home club has squeezed a few hundred additional people into the ground and hidden the money, which is why the counters are allocated to the different gates.
Cup games can be a time of great generosity too; I was lucky enough to be in a counting room as a club waived their cut of a small gate to allow a club in financial difficulty to claim the full gate receipts.
My favourite memory of those half-time discussions where we’d split the money was in Cork City after FORAS took over in 2010. We were playing Monaghan United in Turner’s cross. As we used an automated ticket scanning system we had run through this with the Monaghan officials, agreed the amount owed to Monaghan and the FAI and wrote two cheques. The Monaghan officials didn’t even blink.
After years of financial uncertainty at the club, the FAI official couldn’t help but joke “Jesus lads, things in Cork have changed alright, no club would have taken that cheque last year”.
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