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Time for sexy marketing from sexy thing Mooney  SOME
people arrive with tremendous fanfare. Others, well, you don’t know
they’ve arrived until it’s about time they grabbed their jacket
and left.
Were the Eircom League of Ireland a person they would be…. ok let’s
stop this right now before it descends to the rung of the infuriatingly
obvious. Why is it obligatory to begin newspaper columns with a facile
analogy dressed up as an “intro”?
You know what kind of the person the Eircom League would be: Someone you
barely notice. The League kicks off this week with roughly the same hype
that greeted the All-Ireland camogie final.
In both cases more should be made of what could be great products. And
while we can’t claim to have really done our bit for the camogie
showcase we have stepped up to the plate for the League of Ireland.
Turn the page and you’ll see an in-depth interview with Noel Mooney
the chap whose (tough) job it is to get the League off its knees. Now
Noel talks a decent game. In fact when you’re finished reading his
comments you may well believe there’s a nice little upward curve
happening in the realm of domestic soccer.
Noel paints an alluring picture but as someone who has stood on the terraces
for over a decade, I have to say that it seems a bit like sleight of hand;
it seems a bit like the illuminated photo of the double-bacon cheeseburger
on the wall, compared to the somewhat dissimilar reality.
I don’t know, perhaps I’m just being cynical.
Perhaps a little of that cynicism stems from Mr Mooney himself. A couple
of the dozen or so seasons I spent standing in the Shed at Turner’s
Cross were behind the great man himself when he was the Cork City goalkeeper.
Mooney was immensely popular with the supporters. He was a decent shot-stopper
but there was more to it than that. He was a country boy from Cappamore
in Co. Limerick and had some amusing idiosyncrasies. Most notable among
these was his bounding running style.
Whenever he had to break into a trot to retrieve one of the many efforts
that had whistled several metres over his crossbar the mirth would begin.
Mooney looked like a man running on the moon. Huge, prodigious, leaping
strides carried his earnest frame towards the ball while all behind chanted
“boing, boing, boing,” in time with his hilarious gait.
Even when he was patrolling his area with play far up the pitch the “boing,
boing” chorus would go up again. This in itself isn’t all
that hilarious but what gave us a laugh out of it was that Mooney seemed
completely and blissfully unaware of the hilarity and did nothing to correct
his moon leaps. Then again perhaps he was just concentrating on the game!
Funnier was the time City’s No. 1 turned up with his black hair
bleached flourescent yellow. Here was a rural lad really getting into
city life and for the rest of the season the chant from the shed was:
“I believe in Mooney, where you from? You sexy thing!”
Again, what made it amusing to the easily-amused behind the goal was that
we were never quite sure if Noel got the irony. Looking back I reckon
he must have although sometimes he would raise his hands above his head
in appreciation with the chant. Yes, damn it, I am a sexy thing.
It’s a similar situation now listening to Mooney bang on. He makes
the right noises about there being much work to do and clubs being the
focal point of their communities but I’m unclear as to whether he
sees the true depth of the shambles that is all around him. Does he really
see what’s going on?
League of Ireland football is something the FAI and we as Irish soccer
fans should be truly ashamed of. Forget everything and just consider one
fact: Soccer in Ireland is bigger than the GAA. It is. More people play
it, more watch it on telly and there is a bigger latent audience for live
soccer than there is for the All-Ireland Championships in Croke Park.
And you have Noel Mooney saying Rome wasn’t build in a day and we
need to get 3,000 to 5,000 as home gates in a couple of years… Where
to start?
Start by saying that is not ambitious enough. Shoot for the stars and
the sky is a realistic target. Mooney talks about making clubs the focal
point of their communities. That’s sound thinking, it also sounds
platitudinous. It is standard practice for local papers at home to put
the tagline “at the heart of the community” under their masthead.
It looks good, it costs nothing to put there but 90 per cent of the time
it means nothing. Unless players are regular, not just occasional, visitors
at schools and they actively want to be there, this is a waste of time.
Connecting with the local community is also only a small part of creating
a thriving sports business. To get the turnstiles clicking you have to
do the stuff which you won’t find in the marketing handbook, the
really important stuff. You must generate crossover appeal. You must engineer
a situation where even people who aren’t actively interested in
League of Ireland know who the protagonists are; you must make the players
famous.
Regardless of whether you even like sport or not who doesn’t know
Seán Óg Ó hAilpín? Who doesn’t know
Ronan O’Gara? Who could name three Eircom League players?
These are young men with stupid-looking haircuts and gold boots. They
are your primary product. Get a tabloid snapper to catch them coming out
of a nightclub or two. Get them a date with a struggling popstar and watch
both their profiles soar. Get people gossiping about domestic soccer players.
The four Ps of marketing have long been product, price, promotion and
place. In the last decade or so packaging has become the fifth P. In many
cases it has even supplanted the original four in terms of importance.
One of those cases is Ireland — a land where people will pay a fiver
for a smoothie containing a quid’s worth of fruit, a land where
people will pay twice as much for half the sandwich just because it’s
called a Panini, a land where people will pay a tenner for a five-mile
return bus journey because it’s ‘park and ride’.
It’s time to take off the tattered old paper and put a couple of
frilly bows on the League of Ireland. With one boing, Mooney could be
free. |
