Can Galway city sustain two football clubs?

That is the question I ask of you today.

Galway is a city in the largest city in the west of Ireland, her capital of culture and as of 2006 its population was 72,000. I’m not certain but I imagine its around the same now with the emigration of Eastern European workers. Well maybe about 72,001 as yours truly currently resides there when I’m not off searching for treasure or saving damsals in destress, which is a suprisingly frequent occurence.

It has a proud sporting tradition across many fields, the hurling and gaelic football teams are perennial challengers for the All-Ireland titles, the world famous Galway Races are held there every summer, and it is also the home of Connacht rugby, who play in the Celtic League as well as the European Challenge Cup, both international tournaments.

As for soccer, well Galway Utd have always been the cities main club, but havent been all that successful in recent memory and were only promoted to the Eircom Premier Division in 2007 by invitation, a bizarre event that led to a Dundalk fan threatening to light himself on fire at the FAI’s headquarters, as they were the team to be relegated to make way for the tribesmen.

Fast forward two years and Galway Utd have cemented their place in the Premier Division, albeit in the lower half of the table. But all is not looking rosy for the club, they are, like so many Irish soccer clubs in dire straits financially, which has led to the sale of a few star players and is rumoured to be the reason why manager Jeff Kenna walked also. Low attendances at the summer fixtures and the construction of a new 1,500 seater stand are said to be reasons for the financial strife. Call me old-fashioned if you will but when your CEO is Nick Leeson, the man who caused the collapse of Barings Bank, the oldest bank in the UK, you are asking for trouble.

If Galway can barely support one major soccer it can never support two, right? Well the people behind Mervue Utd certainly hope not. Last season they gained promotion from Ireland’s A-League to the first division, which is the lowest (semi) professional league in the country. As part of the deal to play in this division they are required to upgrade their pitch, Fahey’s Field, which will take a few months to complete and in the interim have to groundshare with Galway United.

The people who run the club insist that all players for Mervue Utd are amateur but they have just completed signing 4 new players and call be cynical but I don’t think this players would move just for the love of the game. The construction of the new 500 seater stand as well as a pre-season training camp in Spain are obviously going to take their toll and it remains to be seen how they get on. Obviously we wish them the best.

The last player in the Galway soccer scene is Salthill Devon. They are arguably the best run club in Galway, having built superb state-of-the-art facilities at Drom, and are also the biggest of the three clubs with over 700 members. They are also competing in the A-League, and will be pushing all the way this season to get into the First Division, a situation that looks likely at this stage, given that the league is comprised of 16 teams, 14 of which cant gain promotion due to them being reserves teams of the bigger squads.

So it could be that there will be three national soccer clubs in Galway before the end of the year. Can the city sustain this amount? In my opinion no, but I wish them all the best. Cities with smaller populations have ran successful clubs, Chievo and Villareal come to mind but of course these are based in countries with a much larger soccer tradition. At any rate it will be interesting to see how these clubs get on as they strive for success.