THERE’S AN AISLE in my local Eason’s at which I always pause.
Art & Photography books vie for attention with Cookbooks and Memoirs from YouTube Vloggers.
Business books from ego maniacs sit next to guides promoting meditation and mindfulness. There’s a general sense of ‘you could be so much better’ when you walk down these aisles and see the smiling faces of vegan fitness models with a huge Instagram following.
Did I mention the adult colouring books? You can get Game of Thrones-themed ones now.
Scattered in between are those books on how to live a happier life by adopting the Hygge system of living in Denmark, or maybe the Lagom system in Sweden or even the Ikigai way if you’d prefer to live as the Japanese do. The Lykke attitude lets you know why all Danes are happy.
When people want change, we usually look outside ourselves and all we know for the silver bullet that will cure bad habits, sadness and general apathy. There are literally thousands of books telling you how to live better, be more successful, fulfil your potential and be happy. There’s an understandable desire to want to improve your lot and investing €15 in a 200-page book that offers you hope seems a small investment in money and time.
Of course, within every advice book will be that little nugget that what you get out of the book, diet plan, fitness regime or meditation practice is down to your own commitment; and even then ‘results may vary’.
Football fans in Ireland want change, to cut our bad habits, be more successful and be happier. The self-help shelves of Eason’s are matched by the reports and plans gathering dust in Abbotstown.
We’re read reports, opinions and manuals on how we could be better, how our league could be something if only we adopted the Dutch model, Icelandic infrastructure, Croatian techniques, US franchising or German development. Like the pause that I get in Eason’s, I’m weary of our collective desire to look outside at foreign associations with completely different challenges or former internationals with vague commentary. Looking at best practices isn’t an issue; what is an issue is looking at them without context of our own reality.
In ourselves and our football we look at others through rose tinted glasses, see something we want to emulate — or we are sold a vision — and then we argue about what we need to do to get there.
We need to look at what we have and figure out how we can make it better. You might see a beautiful rose bush on the cover of a gardening book, but if you only have access to daffodil seeds, then your ambition needs to be checked.
One of the better business books you’ll find is Jim Collins’ ‘Good to Great’ on why some companies make significant leaps that their competitors don’t. What makes the book better is the approach; Collins looked at data first. He assembled a team of 23 researchers who worked a cumulative 15,000 hours, work which drive the outcomes. The team did not go in with assumptions about what they would – or wanted – to find, they looked at the facts and reported on them.
Collins’ book resonates with the mistakes of Irish football in many ways, highlighting the fact that celebrity CEOs were bad for a company in the long-term. He found it was far more important that strong disciplined people were present at every level before direction was decided — having a single leader dictating to a nodding upper management inevitably led to long-term failure.
Organisations that accepted the truth and confronted the brutal facts of their situation made the most positive lasting change.
18 months ago, I reviewed an initial outline of Kieran Lucid’s plan for the League of Ireland, which made the news last week when he was prematurely revealed by Noel Mooney as a man with a plan. Like Jim Collins, Lucid is a data guy. He’s looking at the facts and letting the data he’s generating drive a view of where the League of Ireland should go.
A startling alternative to previous offerings where we’ve decided some far-off hill is green, held it up as a target and then tried to shoehorn our reality around it.
The League of Ireland has unique challenges and unique positives that need to be understood and embraced respectively and looking at data – reflecting our reality – is vital to our collective future.
Lucid grew up a short cycle from me in rural North Kerry. Our respective villages, Ballyheigue and Abbeydorney, are hurling strongholds in a region that – despite the presumed weakness of Kerry hurling – is a hotbed of club rivalries and fierce competition. I’ve never met him, but when he asked for feedback on his plan in 2018, I was glad to give it.
The fact that, 18 months later, he has continued to seek feedback from people, grow his expertise and build a plan — while remaining in the background without pomp or ceremony — gives him a credibility that other proposals lack. However, that’s not to say his plan is the panacea for Irish football either, and it would be impossible and irresponsible for those involved in the game to commit anything along the August timeline Lucid alluded to last week.
Since I gave feedback, Brexit has cast a massive shadow around the possibility of an All-Ireland league. It would simply be foolhardy to jump into an All-Ireland League before we know how the border will look in the coming years. The assumption that UEFA would be happy to leave seven European places in the hands of a combined FAI/IFA competition is unrealistic – it would be to put the new league on an immediate sporting level with the EPL, La Liga and Bundesliga.
That said, Lucid’s proposal is the most competent offering on the table right now on which to form a discussion among competent, driven individuals. An All-Ireland League might not be to everyone’s taste – I’m not a big fan of the concept myself – but the work behind the scenes quietly put in to produce a thoughtful process is far more credible than flashy but empty reports jumbled together in a couple of months which has been the standard since Genesis II.
Like the self-help section in that aisle at Eason’s, the value of any document will depend on how much someone is willing to put into the process and how committed they truly are to change. We have numerous people around the League sitting on the fence waiting for something to happen, waiting for the other.
You need to look within to change, and if the will is there, great things can happen.