I think there was an event on Saturday at the RDS & there were more there for that
With Quinner as third choice keeper we were able to bring some army of strikers - Quinn, Cas, Aldo, Kelly, Byrne, Slaven and a pity invite for Stapleton
Itâs 7 years to the day since this video got leaked onto the internetâŠ
â Second Tier podcast (@secondtierpod) March 19, 2025
Former Cardiff captain Sean Morrison with a message for then Derby defender Richard KeoghâŠ
đ€Łđ€Łpic.twitter.com/iYFdcmax3O
Mason Melia, Michael Noonan, Christopher Atherton: Is something happening with Irish boys?
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March 20, 2025Updated 10:24 pm GMT+11
In the space of 10 days at the beginning of February, Tottenham Hotspur announced the future signing of Irish striker Mason Melia for a League of Ireland record fee of âŹ1.9million (ÂŁ1.6m; $2.1m), Michael Noonan of Shamrock Rovers scored the winner in the UEFA Conference League tie against Molde, Trent Kone-Doherty made his debut for Liverpool and Ike Orazi his debut for Reims in Ligue 1 in France.
Noonan is 16. Melia and Orazi are 17. Kone-Doherty is 18.
Also in early February, Newcastle United announced they had signed Kyle Fitzgerald from Galway United days after he turned 18.
Six months before Meliaâs move to Tottenham, the same Premier League club signed George Feeney, then 16, from Irish League club Glentoran. That transfer came as Ceadach OâNeill, also 16, moved from Linfield to Arsenal and Braiden Graham â who in March 2023, at 15, became Linfieldâs youngest-ever player â left for Everton.
There is no official confirmation from Chelsea, but they are signing Christopher Atherton of Glenavon in the Irish League. Atherton was 16 in October; he made his senior debut aged 13 years and 329 days to become the youngest-ever player in UK senior football.
The island of Ireland has two domestic league systems: the Irish League in Northern Ireland and the League of Ireland in the Republic of Ireland. It has two international teams playing this week, but neither has qualified for a major tournament since both appeared at Euro 2016. The Republic were beaten 5-0 by England at Wembley in November.
So it will therefore seem odd to some to be asking: is there something happening with Irish boys?
Over the past week, the answer from managers, recruitment staff, sporting and Academy directors has been mixed â critical, reticent and quietly hopeful.
The picture is complex, but there are two of several notable themes: the boys mentioned have all been given first-team experience and exposure at an unusually young age (it is not just happening in the United States); and in the post-Brexit landscape inhabited by Irish and British football, there is opportunity.
âI think overall, there definitely is something happening,â Will Clarke tells The Athletic at the Football Association of Irelandâs headquarters in Dublin. âWithin that, there is nuance.â
Clarke is the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) Academy development manager. He has worked in youth football in Dublin with long-established boysâ club St Josephâs, then senior club Bray Wanderers. Melia played for both before his current club St Patrickâs Athletic.
Melia paying for St Patrickâs Athletic against Drogheda United last month (Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
âA doorâs been opened by Brexit,â David Healy says after his club Linfield defeated Glenavon at Windsor Park last Saturday. âAnd we have noticed the numbers have risen and the calibre of the clubs has changed back again â weâve had players going to Everton, Arsenal, Leeds.
âYouâre never going to know fully until you see the fruits of what is being put into the players, so you err on the side of caution. Cautiously, Iâm optimistic.â
But it is not a settled issue and, when The Athletic puts the idea of a seam of talent to Irish footballâs most high-profile figure, Damien Duff, on Friday night at Tolka Park, his professional opinion is blunt: âIâm not fooled by young Noonan doing well at Rovers or Mason going for ÂŁ1.5million. I donât get carried away.
âMason Melia going to Spurs â âUnbelievable move, great money, life-changing for the boy, world-class club, oh, everythingâs rosyâ.
âItâs not.â
On January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom formally withdrew from the European Union. It was an enormous political, economic and cultural act with consequences that are still washing through five years later.
One of them, unexpectedly, concerned Irish football.
Brexit arrived at a moment when internal and external perceptions of the domestic Irish game were beginning to shift. The financial power of Englandâs Premier League and its clubsâ expansion in infrastructure, physical and bureaucratic over 20 years had chimed with globalisation.
English clubsâ player recruitment became multinational and even as academy intake numbers rose, gradually a traditional source of teenage talent â Ireland â withered.
But Brexit brought an end to under-18 international recruitment. British clubs had to pivot and, in many cases, their view returned to Ireland, north and south. (The League of Ireland is under EU jurisdiction so boys cannot leave until they are 18. The Irish League is in the UK; boys can leave at 16.)
Post-Covid in Ireland, there was fan-fuelled growth. Dundalk reached the group phase of the Europa League in 2020-21 and faced Arsenal. In August 2022, Evan Ferguson, 17, scored his first goal for Brighton and, in 2023, 44,000 watched the FAI Cup final in Dublin between Bohemians and St Patrickâs.
Ferguson celebrates scoring Brightonâs third at Forest Green in August 2022 (Alex Burstow/Getty Images)
Irish football, particularly in the League of Ireland, began to look at itself afresh. âPerceptionâ can feel vague as an explanation of development, but it counts and it can feed change.
Clubs which had essentially been semi-professional started a process of professionalisation. Having previously fielded a menâs first team and a reserve team for generations, academies were opened and girlsâ and womenâs football was introduced. All teams in the League of Ireland Premier Division are now full time. There was some individual investment in clubs such as Cork City, Shamrock Rovers, Galway and current champions Shelbourne.
This season, Rovers finished 10th in the new UEFA Conference League format and lost in the knockout round only on penalties to Molde. Noonanâs goal â making him the second-youngest ever scorer in Europe behind Nii Lamptey (âthe next Peleâ) â brought a new rush of interest. At 16, Noonan is still at school.
When the FAI launched national under-19 and under-15 leagues in 2015 and 2017 respectively, it took talent away from historic and influential boysâ clubs in cities like Dublin. In terms of sports politics, it caused problems locally.
But the greater problem was and is funding.
FAI negligence and mismanagement has been so ingrained that books have been written about it. The Irish government, in whatever version, grew wary of the Association and, while monies have been pledged for League of Ireland club academies, the new Irish government said last month it is ânot imminentâ.
The FAI want the funding to increase staff â there are only 10 full-time academy staff across the League compared to, say, almost 200 in Croatia â and to increase boysâ and girlsâ contact hours. They need around âŹ10million per annum to facilitate this.
It is money the FAI do not possess and, as Clarke acknowledges, clubs have quickly outgrown physical infrastructure. It is a week-to-week problem.
âOur Academy system is very much in its infancy but weâre trying to create full-time models that you would recognise in a modern-day football ecosystem,â he says. âItâs a massive cultural shift.
âThis is a medium to long-term plan. Weâre a relatively small country with a limited player pool. But overall I would say that the ability level has increased, thereâs a better environment. An issue is that everyone else is progressing. And our starting point was later.
âIn the past, we basically relied on UK clubs to develop our players.â
Were Irish academies sufficiently strong and numerous, these boys being given first-team debuts in menâs football would be playing for their clubâs academy instead. Boys are thus being provided with a platform they would not receive in England and that can create unrealistic expectation. A few names can also mask broad deficiencies.
But profile matters. As Clarke says: âForty per cent of clubs in the League of Ireland play in Europe every year. Thatâs a platform for young players to showcase ability. If you look at Michael (Noonan), there would not be many 16-year-olds across Europe who get the opportunity to play at that level.â
Noonan scores for Shamrock Rovers in the shootout against Molde (David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
Fitzgerald has four goals in three games for Newcastleâs under-18s. It is noticed only by a few fans and inside the club. Were those goals scored for Galway, the attention would be significantly greater.
Clarke is realistic about it all and he, like everyone involved in youth football, recognises âearly developersâ, of which Melia is one and Ferguson before him another. These are mid-teenagers who can cope with menâs football. It does not mean they will have the same impact at 21 or 25.
The reluctance to shout is understandable, but it does feel as if Brexit has helped initiate these first steps on the path to professionalism. Clarke says an impact can be seen in the fee generated for Melia.
âIn my experience, clubs in the UK placed a valuation on the environment around a player rather than the potential of the player,â he says.
âIf you look at Mason â if heâs still playing for St Josephâs and Spurs are coming over to do a deal, theyâre looking at a boysâ club with one full-time employee, playing on council pitches, training two nights a week with a coach who may or not be qualified. They put a valuation on that environment.
âNow Mason is at this facility every day, playing and training with other senior players, competing in Europe, heâs surrounded by full-time staff. So for Spurs, looking at that, itâs completely different.
âYou go back to Seamus Coleman and itâs â60 grandâ because of where heâs come from. Then you look at his career.â
The undervaluation of Coleman, who was with Sligo Rovers before joining Everton in 2009, where he has played over 400 games, remains an embarrassment for Irish football. It was 16 years ago yet, in 2023, Mark OâMahony left Cork City for Brighton & Hove Albion on his 18th birthday for ÂŁ50,000.
But Cork were supporter-owned when OâMahony signed his contract. The club had few resources and low revenues. It was a small business, and still is by comparison to English clubs. But a takeover by businessman Dermot Usher, allied to a general shift, has altered attitudes.
OâMahony is congratulated by Cameron Peupion and Carlos Baleba during the Carabao Cup win at Crawley in August (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
It means, for example, the current player exciting interest, Cathal OâSullivan, 18 a fortnight ago and with 30 senior appearances already, will not be leaving Cork for â50 grandâ.
In the competitive and sometimes deliberately opaque world of teenage recruitment, Nottingham Forest and Celtic are said to be at the head of a lengthening queue for OâSullivanâs signature.
Cork City are developing a reputation. In the past three years, the club has sold players to Milan, Benfica, Crystal Palace and Hoffenheim. They are building club-to-club relationships; their youth team travelled to Spain to play Sevilla and Real Betis last year.
It breeds confidence in Cork as a club and creates a new awareness as to where they are on professional footballâs food chain. Clubs such as Genk, Borussia Dortmund or Brighton are saluted for their savvy recruitment and sales. Why not Cork City?
In the Irish League, the same applies to Linfield. Healyâs club won the title for the 57th time on Monday night but only turned full time in season 2021-22. They have sold several teenagers to English clubs and right-back Matty Orr might be next.
He is 17 and has played over 20 first-team games. Newcastle and Sunderland have been linked. The latter signed Trai Hume three years ago when he was 19. The cost was ÂŁ140,000; Hume is now worth 10 times that. Linfield will not be selling Orr for ÂŁ140,000.
âIrish clubs were probably too keen to accept derogatory amounts in the past,â Glenavon manager Paddy McLaughlin tells The Athletic. âThey saw the money rather than the potential. Thatâs a fault in the system.â
Funding has also been a question for the Irish League. As far back as 2011, ÂŁ36million of government funding was set aside for the Sub-Regional Stadia Programme â for infrastructure improvements. In January 2025, the local government said it was accepting applications for grants. At this governmental level, Irish football north and south has been so poorly addressed.
Hume, now of Sunderland, challenges Prestonâs Kaine Kesler Hayden (Ben Roberts Photo/Getty Images)
Linfield-Glenavon was a patchy match. It makes player assessment even harder. McLaughlin sent on Atherton in the second half, along with Paul McGovern. It was a 16-year-old accompanied by a boy who turned 17 in January.
âWe believe in them,â McLaughlin says. âWe took off our top scorer to put Chris Atherton on. Weâre already losing Chris. We donât want to lose another.â
Does McLaughlin have any hesitation about placing young boys like Atherton in a menâs environment?
âNot with Chrisâs ability or his temperament. My only hesitation is that referees in our league donât protect him enough. I wouldnât play a player unless he was good enough. I wouldnât put a player in at an early age to make it look good.â
As others note, McLaughlin feels there is an educational element to teenage experience in an adult match and says English clubs âdo mentionâ it. âThey look at more than ability, thereâs mentality, thereâs a lot of boxes to be ticked.
âI think a lot of the learning here would be physical and mental, as well as tactical. In England, theyâll have better day-to-day facilities than we can provide, but for the mentality, playing in front of 3,000 people, against players whoâve played in Europe, the level can toughen them up. Theyâll be away from home when they go over. They need a strong mentality.
âThereâs a level of development in playing here and down south thatâs invaluable.â
âDown southâ in Dublin the night before, Shelbourne 1-1 Cork City was better, but a notably bumpy surface can undermine a lot of training and it did.
The performance contributed to Duffâs mood but his views on the FAI are well known. Duff has been as important as anyone in lifting the status of the League of Ireland since agreeing to manage Shelbourne in November 2021. Last season, Shelbourne were league champions for the first time since 2006.
Attendances are up â 33,000 watched this seasonâs opening match between Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers at Lansdowne Road â and there is a new TV broadcast deal. Shelbourne are just one of the clubs making off-the-field appointments.
Duff before Shelbourneâs game against Cork City at Tolka Park (Sam Barnes/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
But all involved professionally on a daily basis know Irish football is playing catch-up and there is a long way to go. Bristling at the mention of Irish teenage talent, Duff says: âYou can go down to contact hours, what have you â âtil the day I die, footballers are built on the street and nobody plays football any more on the street.
âSo you get four nights a week here? Great. But we still wonât produce footballers like we used to. Thatâs just the way of the world.
âBut to go back to Mason Melia, itâs great, all the very best of luck; but Iâm not fooled by the system just because Masonâs going.â
Duff was an outstanding teenage footballer (and later of course) who was signed by Kenny Dalglish when Blackburn Rovers were Premier League champions â âThe most exciting place, believe it or not, in England.â
His frustration is with the FAI in general and with a childhood environment that rarely involves street football, but Duffsâ reference to contact hours is interesting. It is different to Wrexhamâs James McClean, who said in a recent interview with the Irish Independent that his son Junior gets more practice hours in fourth-tier Crewe Alexandraâs academy than Irish boys.
âMy upbringing was street football,â McClean, who grew up in Derry, said. âI did end up missing certain attributes in my own make-up as a player because of that.
âNow I look at Junior and the hours they get each week and the training they go through. Thereâs a plan in place and they are given the opportunity and itâs up to them. Back home, they donât have that opportunity and that puts us miles behind.â
The FAI are seeking to hold centralised camps for elite teenagers, as the Irish Football Associationâs Club NI programme introduced in the north over a decade ago.
Jim Magilton and Michael OâNeill initiated it â Magilton said the numbers showed a boy in an English academy had five times as many hours of practice as a boy at a part-time Irish League club. The best Irish footballer around, Liverpoolâs Conor Bradley, 21, came through that programme.
Of his contemporaries, Duff asks: âHow did Robbie Keane, Richard Dunne, Shay Given⊠how did they all (thrive)? It wasnât from an academy system. I know I fight for academy systems, but that wasnât what got me to England.
âI had no distractions, absolutely no distractions. I just lived for the ball. I loved the ball as much as my family. And I played football on my own or with my friends more than any footballer in the League of Ireland system now. Itâs not rocket science.â
He looked towards a slogan on the wall and read it back: âIf you put your mind to anything, you work hard, you dedicate your life to it, you can do anything you want. Aligning that with banging out 20-25 hours a week with a football, I had a good bloody chance.
âBut I might not be good enough now. I would have had an iPhone and PlayStation for the last 10 years and Iâd be brutal. Iâd be s***. Itâs a different animal from 20-30 years ago.â
It was no rallying cry.
Clarke had pointed to the minutes played by senior Republic of Ireland-eligible players in Europeâs top five leagues â âIn 2023-24, weâd have 13 players in one of the top five leagues getting on average 615 minutes per player. The research suggests you need around 34 players playing on average 1,300-1,400 minutes a season.
Clarke, the FAIâs academy development manager (Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
âThatâs where weâre at. So when you ask if thereâs something happening by design or are these isolated incidents, yes, thereâs more players coming through the system and thereâs definitely something happening, just not on the scale we would like.â
Scale is often overlooked in this discussion. The fact is the island of Ireland has a population of approximately 7.3million. Two million more people live in London alone. London does not host two leagues of two divisions, nor does it field two international teams.
But it will soon host Mason Melia.
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The burgeoning tide of underage tyros doesnât appear to be impacting at U21 level. Scotland 2 up after eighty odd minutes
Evan made his first start for West Ham
Evan was hooked at half time for West Ham
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Some smashing action tonight in the wonderfully named Dutch Beaker Final (the Dutch equivalent of the FA Cup) between AZ67 Alkmaar and Go Ahead Eagles at the utterly magnificent De Kuip stadium.
Troy Parrott had an eventful 59 minutes. He had a beautiful curler of a shot tipped onto the post in the first half. Then he had a penalty saved after 50 minutes. That penalty was ordered to be retaken in what seemed very âsoftâ circumstances and this time Parrott put it away to give AZ a 1-0 lead. Then shortly afterwards, Parrott had to limp off with what looked like some class of a groin strain.
AZ proceeded to miss several gilt edged chances to clinch the game. Then, eight minutes into injury time, the referee did what referees should do and evened things up by awarding Go Ahead Eagles a dodgy penalty where it looked like the forward was fouling the defender. But the defender deserved it for a frankly bizarre raising of his arms. That penalty was scored and there were no more goals.
Go Ahead Eagles won on the penalty competition and Parrott misses out on winning the Beaker.
PowerPoint man gone.
https://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2025/0422/1508852-canham-departs-position-from-fai/
Bonner will save us. 
So after all that shit with TFK, Canham is gone?
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Clearly resigning because he canât defend what happened with Colin Healy.
Bradley chased him out
His aul fella is from Galway, the aul wan Cameroonian I think. Think he said before he spent his holidays in Mayo with his grandparents. A Madrid academy product.
Shur weâll take a look at him anyway.
Killian Phillips is a new one to me actually. A Yank no less.
Heâs 21.
Was playing (on the bench) for Getafe for the first half of the season and Reims signed him in January for just over âŹ1m.
Got a few starts for them, seems to have featured in most games, mainly from the bench.
Big strong young fella
There is much worth discussing in that squad announcement. Especially how itâs not really that bad a squad.
Raised in Kilbarrack from a young age. Was a very tidy Gaelic footballer in his early teens
The soccer should be no bother to him so @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy
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Killian Phillips has been on loan in the SPL for the last 2 or 3 seasons. Iâve never been that impressed with him when heâs featured against Celtic but itâs usually in a team starved of possession, although he did score against Celtic if I recall correctly (see below). He seems to be strong & athletic rather than technically gifted & itâs the latter weâre completely lacking in midfield unfortunately. Itâs worth taking a look at him, I guess. St Mirren beat the huns a couple of times this season & heâs given it big licks. He missed the decisive penalty in the cup semi final shoot out for Aberdeen against Celtic last season but I think it was he/him that scored from the edge of the box against Celtic for St Mirren back in the spring.
So Ryan Manning is now listed as a forward which is interesting.
No Cullen, Azaz, Molumby, Johnston, Sykes, Vata who were all in the last squad. Not sure if itâs injuries or whether he just wants to look at different players.
He said last week that for the most part championship players would be excluded as they wouldnât have played in five weeks and were already on their holidays
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