TV , radio and magazines all do their bit to under promote the National League .Lets see who I think underpromotes it the worst
RTE the National Station for my views on them see RTE Guide
RTE Radio is ok. They give live matches most of the time and follow the clubs most places. However it must be remembered that they employ people like Des Scahill who relates with the average Premiership fan in the pub. Basically he's overweight, a know it all and you always want to smack him in the face.
The teletext service on RTE it is absolutely terrible compared to the text on ITV and BBC for their local league. Aertel is littered with English soccer news straight out of the paper and amazingly when Damien Richardson resigned it was fifth headline behind four Premiership stories which were so irrevelant you didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Basically Aertel is complete rubbish .
2fm the two Dublin channels 98Fm and 104 's sport updates vary from good one day to bad the next. In all fairness when there is some important news the National League is put first but some of the English coverage it gives is so pointless.
The station that employs Eamonn Dunphy. Enough said. Should be called Yesterday FM.
The local channel of County Louth LMFM gives so much Gaelic results it is so annyoing. At least 15 minutes of GAA results they rarely have time for Dundalk and they give no live radio on their games . I remember two years ago against Bray away they sent a guy who had never seen Dundalk before to the match. He gave the team news that Mick Doohan was on the right wing and that David Crawley was partnering Tom McNulty in central defence. He then said that Peter Withnell was playing on the 40.
The people who write this deserve one. You would not know this was an irish magazine at all. In their awards section Irish Premiership player of year , Irish Nationwide Player of the year were put before National League player of the year. Their website reviews are of English soccer sites and John Owens of Inchicore Saints had to write in and tell there are Irish websites. In each two editions of it so far the fans have wrote in complaining about the lack of National League coverage but they don't listen. Kickin is the worst thing yet to hit the soccer shelves of newsagents and I can't wait to mail them and inform them of that. Maybe this magazine is more suited to the Irish areas of London and Manchester. It must be noted that the people who write it are from Wexford. Should we be suprised.
This could be quite a good magazine but has two things missing [1] It is only released once every two months and it should be made more regular and [2] It is far too small . Apart from that this is a good magazine and is a must for all National League fans.
I don't think any clubs have these but the programmes should be something like it. As far as I can see the only programme like this is the Pats programme and while it is official and therefore a lot of advertising it is a good read and always seems to have interesting things in it. You might say there is no market for fanzines but surely outside the matches you could sell quite a few. Only a suggestion.