Do you think a one city Dublin team could compete in the EPL?

dd972

Purely hypothetical as if you needed telling, but supposing Wimbledon had relocated here 10-15 years ago, changed their colours to something Dublinesque like Sky-Navy-Navy as rechristened themselves Dublin City do you think it would have taken off?

After all, we've all sort of gotten used to MK Dons as a viable entity.

Say if such a thing happened and they started in League one then worked their way up to the EPL would we have a one club one city situation akin to Newcastle with 50-60000 fans passionately following the team and a subsequent fall off in support for the likes of Celtic, L'pool & Man Utd.

Or would it have been a dead rubber unable to attract fans or even maybe muddling along with a new fanbase but still not shifting the traditional allegiances to teams across the water?

No offence to LOI fans btw I'm a Shels follower myself.

dreamers75

LOI fan.....assuming its the Aviva.

Would fill more of the stadium maybe twice a year with Pool and United fans.

Every other week would be carnage with English fans getting the best away trip ever.

Irish fans would flock to it at the start then die off att would be 10k maybe for average game.

Idea in the 90s outraged me, but irish football fans proved to me since they aint in it for the long run just for the "day out". And even then Aviva would be too far from peoples homes etc: Quality of football played by Irish Dons would be **** etc: Would be relegated and disappear into the lower leagues.

The_Kew_Tour

Glad it never happened for about 100 reasons.

CSF

No way. Irish people don't like football half as much as they claim to.

If we had the potential to put together the sort of fanbase you'd need to compete with even the Stokes and Norwichs of the world, you'd see at least signs of it in the football that already exists here.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

No, unless an oil-rich Sheik/Russian was behind the idea.

We'd need a team. And a FAI-allstar-team would not be able to compete in the EPL.

dan1895

Irish people regularly attending matches in large crowds? Don't make me laugh.

Richard Hillman

Depends on how successful the team were and what sort of players they had.

dan1895 wrote: »

Irish people regularly attending matches in large crowds? Don't make me laugh.

They do in rugby in fairness.

Lucan Bohs

Richard Hillman wrote: »

Depends on how successful the team were and what sort of players they had.



They do in rugby in fairness.

And even then it varies greatly. Leinster get 15,000 for a league game at the rds and magically have 40,000 the next week supporting them in the Aviva for a Heineken Cup game

Ferris_Bueller

Think it would be a complete failure to be honest. Fans of Liverpool/Man Utd etc. in the country would feel too loyal to their teams to change to another team in the same league, then LoI fans wouldn't support the team either, anyone left after this could show support but imagine as others have said they wouldn't maintain their support for very long, maybe at the beginning/big games they would get good crowds but can't imagine them being successful long term. Probably one of the very last things I would want to happen in football.

bohsman

Richard Hillman wrote: »

They do in rugby in fairness.

It's also cheaper to spend your way to becoming a top 16 European club in Rugby than in football, if Dublin had a top 16 football club the Aviva would fill most weeks.

It would be jammed for games against well supported teams in Ireland and perhaps not for games against the likes of Wigan etc.

Then what if this team was relegated?

Long term it wouldn't work

dan1895

rarnes1 wrote: »

It would be jammed for games against well supported teams in Ireland and perhaps not for games against the likes of Wigan etc.

Then what if this team was relegated?

Long term it wouldn't work

I think they wouldn't get past league one to begin with to be honest, attendances would plummet (more-so) with the lack of "big" teams visiting and the club would slowly fall down into the conference or just cease being. Anyway not going to happen.

Pudsy33

Lucan Bohs wrote: »

And even then it varies greatly. Leinster get 15,000 for a league game at the rds and magically have 40,000 the next week supporting them in the Aviva for a Heineken Cup game

15,000 is an RDS sellout, they can't fit any more in!

iDave

Imagine the costs of flying the squad, management, officials etc to the UK for every single away match

BOHtox

No. Tallaght Shamrocks need it for their 20 million bangwagon fans for the new season!

BOHtox

iDave wrote: »

Imagine the costs of flying the squad, management, officials etc to the UK for every single away match

It's practically an internal flight. Cost is not an issue. Most English teams fly to their away games. Dublin is closer to a lot of UK cities than the likes of london for instance. Not an issue

Third_Echelon

Lucan Bohs wrote: »

And even then it varies greatly. Leinster get 15,000 for a league game at the rds and magically have 40,000 the next week supporting them in the Aviva for a Heineken Cup game

There is a 17,000 capacity at the RDS. They mostly sell that out.... Can't fit 40,000 into the RDS unfortunately...

Kess73

iDave wrote: »

Imagine the costs of flying the squad, management, officials etc to the UK for every single away match

Why would they have to fly to every away game? For games against many of the Northern clubs they use the ferry and coach across.

Northern clubs in England usually travel by train or coach for games in London or further south, so a Dublin team could travel by coach to a lot of games also.

Alias G

Third_Echelon wrote: »

There is a 17,000 capacity at the RDS. They mostly sell that out.... Can't fit 40,000 into the RDS unfortunately...

What's your point? They would still never get anywhere near 40,000 at a typical league game.

Alias G

BOHtox wrote: »

No. Tallaght Shamrocks need it for their 20 million bangwagon fans for the new season!

Hillarious dude hillarious.

Third_Echelon

Alias G wrote: »

What's your point? They would still never get anywhere near 40,000 at a typical league game.

Point being, they have a fan base which needs a bigger capacity for most games...

Probably wont need 40,000, but there are plans in place to expand the RDS, starting in the next 12 months to expand up to mid to high 20,000 to match thomond park type capacity

dan1895

the comparisons with Leinster Rugby are irrelevant. Chalk and cheese.

ArmaniJeanss

iDave wrote: »

Imagine the costs of flying the squad, management, officials etc to the UK for every single away match

The likes of Calgiari, Palermo and Mallorca overcome the same issue without any hassle.
Its the least of the (many) problems with such a venture imo.

GLaDOS

Even if a Dublin club was to be put into the English league system, they'd never make it close to the PL, support would be pretty poor apart from big cup draws.

Quazzie

It would get a regular crowd if the team were good enough to stay in the EPL. A lot of the reason people don't go to watch LOI games is because the standard is pure muck. Any EPL game, even between two smaller teams, is going to get more of a crowd than any League 2/conference game which is the standard that the LOI is currently

Also the money that came from Ireland towards Sunderland which rejuvenated them would've been potentially used in a Dublin team, so the money was/is there if it went ahead back then.

Zebra3

Kess73 wrote: »

Why would they have to fly to every away game? For games against many of the Northern clubs they use the ferry and coach across.

Northern clubs in England usually travel by train or coach for games in London or further south, so a Dublin team could travel by coach to a lot of games also.

Even Arsenal flew to their away game at Norwich earlier in the season.

The size of the crowd for any Dublin based side competing in the English top flight would depend on the ticket prices. Fairly priced season tickets could make it a success.

dan1895

Quazzie wrote: »

Also the money that came from Ireland towards Sunderland which rejuvenated them would've been potentially used in a Dublin team, so the money was/is there if it went ahead back then.

Remember everyone supported Sunderland? How many of those goons still do? That type of "fan" is (one of) the reason(s) this wouldn't work and also why the LOI isn't improving.

Quazzie

dan1895 wrote: »

Remember everyone supported Sunderland? How many of those goons still do? That type of "fan" is (one of) the reason(s) this wouldn't work and also why the LOI isn't improving.

They stopped going because the Irish connection was lost. It's kind of hard to lose the Irish connection when the team is placed in Dublin.

dan1895

Quazzie wrote: »

They stopped going because the Irish connection was lost. It's kind of hard to lose the Irish connection when the team is placed in Dublin.

Irish connection and media hype. There's a whole league here with every team having an Irish connection that get little support, why would this Dublin team be any different?

Quazzie

dan1895 wrote: »

Irish connection and media hype. There's a whole league here with every team having an Irish connection that get little support, why would this Dublin team be any different?

Because the cost of going to a game in Dublin is significantly less than travelling to the UK for a game. Did that really need to be pointed out to you?

dan1895

Quazzie wrote: »

Because the cost of going to a game in Dublin is significantly less than travelling to the UK for a game. Did that really need to be pointed out to you?

Your overestimating the "football mad" public of this country.

Quazzie

dan1895 wrote: »

Your overestimating the "football mad" public of this country.

We've a population of 5,000,000 of which half of that live within an hour of dublin. I'd be very suprised is 0.1% (25,000) of the population that live within an hour of Dublin wouldn't make the short trip every week.

dan1895

Quazzie wrote: »

We've a population of 5,000,000 of which half of that live within an hour of dublin. I'd be very suprised is 0.1% (25,000) of the population that live within an hour of Dublin wouldn't make the short trip every week.

To see a team with no tradition or history play in league 2?

Quazzie

dan1895 wrote: »

To see a team with no tradition or history play in league 2?

I clearly stated EPL in my original post.

dan1895

Quazzie wrote: »

I clearly stated EPL in my original post.

Sorry but realistically the team would have to start from the bottom and work its way up. Not that realism has been considered in this thread.

Quazzie

dan1895 wrote: »

Sorry but realistically the team would have to start from the bottom and work its way up. Not that realism has been considered in this thread.

Well the OP mentioned if Wimbledon moved over. Unless I'm mistaken they were in the EPL when that suggestion was made.

dan1895

Quazzie wrote: »

Well the OP mentioned if Wimbledon moved over. Unless I'm mistaken they were in the EPL when that suggestion was made.

And had been relegated by the time they eventually moved to Milton Keynes or soon after anyway.

WesternZulu

I would like to see it happen just to witness the annual struggle to get tickets for the away end for United and Liverpool games :P

Seriously, I would hate to see it.
It'd just confirm that the Irish had given up on any sort of chance of a semi-decent domestic league in favour of an easy way out.

dan1895

dan1895 wrote: »

Sorry but realistically the team would have to start from the bottom and work its way up. Not that realism has been considered in this thread.

This isn't actually happring, the OP was just suggesting a what if type question.

Serious business.

Fromthetrees

First off it's never going to happen but...

If the team styled itself as an Irish/Celtic/Keltic team I think you'd get savage crowds all season. You've guaranteed sell outs for all the big games and if you have cheap season tickets I think you'd sell out most/all games. Many Irish soccer fans are quite slutty and have 2/3/4/5 teams and the international team, everyone's got an order of preference but they still actually support those teams. Dublin has enough of a population to sustain a top team but there's soccer fans all over the country that would go. I can get the bus to Dublin for 7 euro, match ticket and food 30, I would spend more in the pub watching a game on the tv so a cheap trip to Dublin to see Swansea play on a Saturday becomes really appealing and I know I wouldn't be the only one.

I think it'd enhance the ePL to have 'us' in it. This new ('United Kelts'?) team would obviously have a top academy blooding new Irish players with the ability to attract top coaches in top facilities and if good enough can go straight into playing top flight action from a young age instead of slogging it out in the LoI or a lower end Championship team.

It'd be great for the Dublin economy to have a big English/Welsh team over every second week. I think by the time the novelty of having EPL games in Ireland wears off you'll be left with a big solid and loyal fan base. **** sake I'd love if it happened.

Anyway, I'll give my rich Arab friend a call that will make it all happen just after I tire out Mila Kunis from sexy time, should be about a day or two.

Nalz

Fromthetrees wrote: »

Anyway, I'll give my rich Arab friend a call that will make it all happen just after I tire out Mila Kunis from sexy time, should be about a day or two.

Any videos?

WesternZulu

Fromthetrees wrote: »

First off it's never going to happen but...

If the team styled itself as an Irish/Celtic/Keltic team I think you'd get savage crowds all season. You've guaranteed sell outs for all the big games and if you have cheap season tickets I think you'd sell out most/all games. Many Irish soccer fans are quite slutty and have 2/3/4/5 teams and the international team, everyone's got an order of preference but they still actually support those teams. Dublin has enough of a population to sustain a top team but there's soccer fans all over the country that would go. I can get the bus to Dublin for 7 euro, match ticket and food 30, I would spend more in the pub watching a game on the tv so a cheap trip to Dublin to see Swansea play on a Saturday becomes really appealing and I know I wouldn't be the only one.

I think it'd enhance the ePL to have 'us' in it. This new ('United Kelts'?) team would obviously have a top academy blooding new Irish players with the ability to attract top coaches in top facilities and if good enough can go straight into playing top flight action from a young age instead of slogging it out in the LoI or a lower end Championship team.

It'd be great for the Dublin economy to have a big English/Welsh team over every second week. I think by the time the novelty of having EPL games in Ireland wears off you'll be left with a big solid and loyal fan base. **** sake I'd love if it happened.

Anyway, I'll give my rich Arab friend a call that will make it all happen just after I tire out Mila Kunis from sexy time, should be about a day or two.

Unless such a team is successful then the support base would decline after the initial novelty would wear off.

It's no coincidence that Irish football fans predominantly support the two most successful teams in English football.

Omackeral

dd972 wrote: »

Purely hypothetical as if you needed telling, but supposing Wimbledon had relocated here 10-15 years ago, changed their colours to something Dublinesque like Sky-Navy-Navy as rechristened themselves Dublin City do you think it would have taken off?

After all, we've all sort of gotten used to MK Dons as a viable entity.

Say if such a thing happened and they started in League one then worked their way up to the EPL would we have a one club one city situation akin to Newcastle with 50-60000 fans passionately following the team and a subsequent fall off in support for the likes of Celtic, L'pool & Man Utd.

Or would it have been a dead rubber unable to attract fans or even maybe muddling along with a new fanbase but still not shifting the traditional allegiances to teams across the water?

No offence to LOI fans btw I'm a Shels follower myself.

This is where the idea falls down.

I would despise any LOI fan that abandoned ship and followed Dublin Franchise Utd. In the same vain, I would think very lowly of any Man United/Liverpool/EPL fan that switched allegiances for a quick fix.

You say there's a market for it. I don't see where that market is.... unless you want to admit that we are a nation of Bandwagoners, which is clearly proposterous

Zebra3

Fromthetrees wrote: »

match ticket and food 30

One can dream......