Reply With QuoteAnd Adam Matthews playing for the away team.Originally Posted by Moodybluebird
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I was shocked when I saw the attendance for this fixture in the Irish Premier League today......33,208 !!
Yes it was a Dublin derby game which was played at the Aviva but fair play that's a great turnout.
And Adam Matthews playing for the away team.
Yeah I saw this earlier.
The League of Ireland has made massive strides for. It used to be a very minor league. Not quite level with the Welsh Premier but not far off. Clubs are now regularly getting 5-8000 and Shamrock Rovers are doing well in Europe.
No reason at all that the League of Ireland shouldn't be comparable with those in Denmark, Norway and the like.
Interestingly, the Irish Premiership in Northern Ireland is also doing pretty well.
I find it really interesting how leagues can rise and fall in status
Football in Ireland has been on the up for years. A bit like in Wales, it lives in the shadows of sports considered more traditional to the country.
Imagine a 10 team League of Wales that was made up of
Cardiff City
Swansea City
Wrexham
Newport County
Merthyr
TNS
Penybont
Connah's Quay
Barry
Haverfordwest
It would be a hell of a lot stronger than it currently is. The League of Ireland certainly benefits by having all of its teams playing in it.
And everyone supports Man Utd or Liverpool, so similar to South Wales
Yeah I have often wondered what the Welsh League would have been like if the top Welsh teams had always been in it. Based on population and location, I always concluded it would lie somewhere between the Scottish league and the League of Ireland. But who knows. Maybe we would have been the Rangers or Celtic of Wales?
It's an interesting hypothetical question. Would football have generated as much interest in Wales if all our teams played in its own league?
The whole Celtic/Rangers rivalry has, I reckon, played a part in the growth of Scottish football. Hearts/Hibs, Dundee/Dundee Utd, St Mirren/Morton (perhaps not those two) have had their rivalries for years. England has had its same city derbies. None of that could ever have happened in Wales. Cardiff was a far smaller place at the turn of the 20th century, Swansea was a town (still is in terms of size) and so on. Cardiff vs Swansea wasn't even much of a rivalry until somewhere in the 70s or 80s by all accounts. Nowhere in Wales could have supported two big football clubs like Glasgow has; even Dublin in the Republic offers more potential than Cardiff based solely on size.
That's just one aspect. There would be loads more and makes for a fascinating debate.
Ive oftened wondered as well had the history of Welsh football been different during those founding years/decades, with a trajectory more like Scotland/Ireland (that is completely Welsh, without offers or interest from the Southern League etc).
Appreciating Erics point about Cardiff at the turn of the century but I dont think multiple (say two) half decent teams (within the context of what standard that league would end up being) would be totally out of the question and then sustainable as the city grew.
I think the Welsh experience would be closer to both Irish leagues, rather than Scotland where I do think Erics onto something with the Glasgow experience (second city of the empire etc).
In Belfast there are a few teams at a similar level for example, ditto Dublin. So I guess just imagine in an alt universe Riverside FC staying as that and maybe one more club somewhere else in the city sprouting up to challenge perhaps (another one to ponder on - where?). Then most other places in Wales end up with one main representative team as is the case now.
Another alt history or counter factual for football in Wales is a similar one to this but where rugby hadnt existed / taken root in (south) Wales.
Ninian Park was about a mile from the city centre so another club could have been a mile out east or north? So Tremorfa or Gabalfa perhaps. I'm not sure how much of the city today was there in the early 20th century.
It's a shame Cardiff doesn't have a proper club in the Welsh Prem (I mean a football club in and of itself, not a module on a BTEC course*). If a wealthy entrepreneur decided to have a TNS of the south here I'm not sure he'd get planning permission for another stadium.
*Yeah I know it's more than that but I don't like students.
Shame inter Cardiff didn't last
And Stephen McPhail is their sporting director
Its an interesting counterfactual. Does 1 unified Cardiff team emerge or are there 2 or 3? You look at the LOI and Irish Premiership and there are several Dublin/Belfast clubs
What impact does it have on valleys clubs too if there's no Cardiff City? Are they stronger for not losing fans to us?
On the other hand, re. The Valleys, what if Aberdare Athletic & Merthyr Town had kicked on when they were Football League outfits? Some clubs in Northern England in smaller town survived & thrived despite having a lot more attractive neighbours. Another poster mentioned rugby, perhaps that diluted the support and player pool. Although rugby league still remained popular in Lancs & Yorks.
A quick Google shows the difference in populations: -
Cardiff 492,000
Belfast 647,000
Dublin 1,285,000
Aberdare and Merthyr haven't been among the stronger rugby areas traditionally. The Rhondda has generally had bigger football than rugby teams. The valleys were hit massively in the 1920s and that put an end to the possibility of having valleys sides in the football league. It's difficult to make a case for either club surviving and thriving - they were perennial strugglers in the football league. What if they had survived? I think it would have had an impact in those areas and Wales might have enjoyed a little more success on the international stage
They are the metropolitan populations not the population of the cities themselves. Cardiff has a population larger than that of Belfast, making it the 11th largest city in the UK.
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