Calls growing for WNL to begin moving towards pro’ status

CALLS for the Women’s National League to go, at least, semi-professional are growing louder as the top sides struggle to maintain hold of their most talented players.

Over the past nine months, both defending WNL champions Peamount United and their closest challengers Shelbourne have each lost three top competitors to clubs in England and Scotland, in some cases without even any official notification of the transfer being made.

Indeed, Peamount insist they never even received a call or email from Birmingham City when the English side swooped in for their top striker Eleanor Ryan-Doyle last month and Shelbourne made similar complaints of the FA Women’s Super League outfit when they came in for their midfielder Jamie Finn and forward Emily Whelan.

What’s more, the problem of losing these top players has been exacerbated by the fact that the signings have been made towards the end of the transfer window in Ireland, leaving little or no time for the teams to try and bring in replacements.

With Peamount, Shels and Wexford Youths currently locked in an enthralling race for this season’s National League crown, and with it, a UEFA Champions League berth, the loss of any player, let alone those of the calibre of Ryan-Doyle, Finn and Whelan, can prove very costly.

“The transfer window for us to get a player from our Women’s National League is July only, but if we want to sign either a free agent or an unattached player, we have only until the 31st of August. After that we can get nobody even if they’re free agents” explained Peamount club secretary, Elaine Harrington.

“Birmingham have now taken three players from Ireland and they’ve a load of Irish in their camp now.

“You’d never stop the players moving and getting that chance to go professional, but it really affects us and Shelbourne because we’re going for the league along with Wexford. How do you replace someone when the transfer window is shut?

“In the last couple of years we’ve lost four top players. We lost Amber Barrett to Köln in the Bundesliga.

Izzy Atkinson moved to Celtic from Shelbourne

“We lost Niamh Farrelly to Glasgow City at Christmas and then after that Claire Walsh to the same team and Eleanor Ryan-Doyle to Birmingham, both of those in the transfer window between July and August.

“We’re just blessed that a lot of our girls have great jobs. They’re doctors and dentists, but any of the younger ones coming through who are going to college, they’re just hand-picked from elsewhere” she said.

For Shelbourne secretary Gordon Ewing, the ease with which top players can be lost to the Women’s National League is very concerning.

“It’s a big issue, a massive problem for us” he insisted.

“As a club, you still must try and develop players and we’re delighted to see players get the opportunity to go and play professional football.

“But the difficulty here is that the British clubs can come in and just cherry pick the players because of Brexit.

“They can’t really do that with players from mainland Europe. There are different rules there that are to do with work permits. They don’t require them coming from Ireland.

“We lost two players there three or four weeks ago [Finn and Whelan] and Birmingham City, who signed them, did not contact us.

“We would have had no formal contact if I hadn’t picked up the phone to the general manager of Birmingham and asked her what was going on?

“It’s bananas. It would never happen in the men’s game.

“They just come in, sign the players and we just find out after it’s happened because obviously there’s no transfer fee.

“They’re moving from amateur to professional and that allows this behaviour.

“When Birmingham signed Jamie Finn, they had put an international clearance request through in the middle of the week.

“We had a match on the Saturday and if we had played Jamie in that match we’d have lost the points. The thing is, we didn’t know. It could have cost us.

“But I have to say Celtic, who signed one of our players Izzy Atkinson last year, could not have behaved more honourably. They were brilliant.

“They contacted us, spoke to us and said ‘we want to sign this player’. They did it all properly and it’s not a big job. It’s just courtesy really” he said.

While the lack of contact regarding some transfers to professional teams is understandably exasperating for WNL clubs, the absence of compensation is perhaps an even more pressing issue.

Steps have been taken towards establishing parity between the men and women’s game over recent years, but it is plain to see there is still a very long way to go to fulfilling that objective.

As part of underscoring that, clubs in the Women’s National League can point to the fact that while schoolboy clubs in Ireland can potentially benefit from UEFA rules regarding training compensation if they lose a player to a professional team after the age of 12, no such regulation exists for the women’s game.

Given that situation, amateur clubs who have invested so much in the development of young female players are left empty-handed when the professional outfits come knocking.

And the very clubs who may be struggling to make ends meet in running underage or senior women’s sides, are left shorn of the possibility of some valuable income that is available to their male counterparts.

“There’s two answers to this” Ewing told The Echo.

“There’s asking UEFA to review why there’s no compensation.

“But in reality, for the long term, Irish football needs to stand on its own two feet.

“For women, we need a semi-professional league at least. That would help us to retain players.

“The league going semi-professional would be a big change because you can sign an amateur player only for a year. Every player we sign, we have to sign them every year.

“If you sign someone up to a professional contract you can sign somebody up for a two or three year deal.

“And if a club came in, it would mean they would have to negotiate with us to move the player on.

“In fairness to the FAI, [Airtricity League Director] Mark [Scanlon] and his team are looking at many different avenues to bring finance in.

“They have done a magnificent job in the last year in terms of getting funding for the Women’s National League. Really it’s a massive improvement, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

“We’ll always lose players to college football in the States. That’s just part of what happens, but we shouldn’t be losing players to England who are Under 21.

“Even if you look at the players who have gone over. Leanne Kiernan left our club to go to West Ham a few years ago and she’s now back playing in the Championship with Liverpool.

Rhianna Jarrett went to Brighton and is now back playing in the Championship with London. It’s a huge step-up and it gets bigger every year.

“Until we can get our players playing semi-professional, it’s going to be a huge challenge to step up to that level” he insisted.