The Gown Student Newspaper at Queen's University Belfast

COMMENT: CAS decision spells uncertain future for Northern Ireland football team

This week The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) turned down a plea from the Irish FA to amend current laws stipulating player eligibility. Whilst this was not an unexpected outcome, the decision has cast a major cloud of uncertainty over the very future of the Northern Ireland international squad. Hard to believe, you might imagine, given the current on-field success of the Northern Ireland team, beating the Englands and Spains of this world in recent years.

BY RYAN SIMPSON

Many already knew the IFA’s case was likely doomed to failure given FIFA’s very firm stance on the situation. However officials within the association saw it as an absolutely necessary step to take in order to protect the future of the national game in Northern Ireland. Many may look on the situation and think that the IFA are simply denying a player’s right to represent the Republic of Ireland under the current laws of the Good Friday Agreement. However, this is a dispute that runs much deeper than this and has indeed developed into a very complex dilemma.

The Good Friday Agreement allows citizens living within Northern Ireland who consider themselves ‘Irish’ to apply for a southern passport. Many young footballers living in the North have exploited this law to its full potential; however the IFA would argue that this directly contravenes FIFA’s own laws which stipulate player eligibility. FIFA states that to represent a footballing association, you must satisfy one of the following requirements:

-          You were born on the territory of the relevant association;

-          Your biological mother or biological father was born on the territory of the relevant association;

-          Your grandmother or grandfather was born on the territory of the relevant association;

-          You have lived continuously on the territory of the relevant association for two years.

In the case of Daniel Kearns and more notably Darron Gibson (now playing for the Republic), neither of them satisfy any of the FIFA requirements to represent another association other than Northern Ireland. Still, this argument runs even deeper. The Irish FA has successfully run its ‘Football for all’ campaign for several years now, encouraging people of all religious and political backgrounds to become involved in football at international and grassroots level. They have also invested a sizeable amount of money in the development of young players in Northern Ireland only to see scouts from the Republic regularly come to inspect the quality of players the IFA is grooming, and in some cases actively encourage players to switch allegiances.

This situation throws up a major dilemma for the Irish FA as with CAS latest ruling, it means they no longer have any authority to stop a player from changing sides. Indeed, the IFA would argue that this puts them at a direct disadvantage to any other European footballing nation and damages their chances of continuing to challenge on the international stage. At the very least it appears that the IFA should be entitled to some form of compensation when a player decides to defect after having been developed by IFA coaches. Inevitably, many people will question the validity of an international team that isn’t the sole representative of players from this country.

The power of football to bring people together in this country should never be under-estimated, but CAS’s decision is no doubt a setback for the IFA in its bid to create a ‘team for all’. As for player eligibility, it’s an issue that supporters and fans alike will have to continue to agree to disagree on for quite some time.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Opinion, Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.