Reforming the League of Ireland
A 20-Team Model for Sustainable Growth
Sean McSweeney | Independent Contributor
Irish football is growing. Attendances are rising, clubs are becoming more ambitious, and public interest in the domestic game is stronger than it has been in a generation. The launch of the FAI National League later this year and the emergence of regional clubs like Kerry FC in recent years – demonstrates there is a genuine appetite for top-level football far beyond the traditional heartlands. That momentum is real – and it deserves a structure capable of sustaining it.
This proposal sets out a practical, achievable reform of the League of Ireland built around one simple idea: reorganising the 20 clubs that already exist within the league of Ireland system into a single 20-team Premier Division with a season structure designed to keep every club, every competition and every supporter invested from the opening weekend to the final day.
No new clubs. No artificial expansion. No switch to a winter calendar. Just a better framework for the game that is already here.
The proposal is presented in full below — the season structure, the competitions, the European qualification pathway and the relegation framework. The case for why it represents a significant improvement on the current model follows once the reader has a complete picture of what is being proposed.
Phase One: The Shield
The proposal consolidates the existing Premier Division and First Division clubs into a single 20-team league, with each club playing every other club once across 19 matches. The team finishing top is awarded the Shield trophy and guarantees themselves a place in the European playoff, more on this later.
At the conclusion of the Shield the league splits. The top 10 teams enter the Championship Phase. The bottom 10 enter the Challenge Phase with all points accumilated in the Shield phase carrying forward — the split is a continuation, not a reset.
Below is an illustration of how the Shield phase could look.
Phase Two: The Split
The Championship Phase
The top 10 clubs play each other home and away across 18 matches. The League Championship, Champions League qualification, automatic and playoff European places are all decided here. Points carried forward mean the title race reflects the full season — a strong Shield performance carries real weight, but form across both phases ultimately decides the standings.
The top 6 clubs in the Championship Phase secure home advantage in the additional Shield fixture the following season.
Below is an illustration of how the Championship Phase could look.
The Challenge Phase
The bottom 10 clubs play each other home and away across 18 matches. The Challenge Trophy, a European playoff place and the relegation battle to the national league are all decided here. Points carried forward mean no club arrives at the Challenge Phase on a clean slate.
The top 4 clubs in the Challenge Phase secure home advantage in the additional Shield fixture the following season.
Below is an illustration of how the Challenge Phase could look.
The Home Advantage Incentive
The Shield phase consists of 19 matches per club, which creates an unavoidable imbalance — half the clubs will play 10 home games, the other half 9. A straightforward solution would be to simply rotate those fixtures year to year so that over the course of two seasons the balance evens out. This proposal instead argues for a merit-based allocation, giving the top 6 clubs in the Championship Phase and the top 4 in the Challenge Phase the reward of the additional home fixture. This keeps both phases genuinely competitive by attaching a tangible incentive to every position in the table — one with real commercial value for clubs and real meaning for supporters.
While every effort will be made to ensure the vast majority of fixtures are reversed in the following season, the merit-based system means some cannot always be rotated immediately. A set of guiding principles governs the allocation to ensure fairness is maintained over time.
First, no club can host the same Shield fixture for three consecutive seasons — any match played at the same home venue for two seasons in a row must be reversed the following year. Second, clubs that ended up in opposite phases the previous season — and therefore only met once — are prioritised for a reversal to restore variety. Third, where possible, fixtures between local derbies and direct rivals are rotated to ensure both clubs benefit from hosting the occasion over time.
The League Cup
The proposal also advocates for the return of the League Cup which runs alongside the Shield. The format being 20 clubs drawn into four groups of five, pots seeded by previous seasons league positions. The reigning League Cup winner is automatically placed in Pot 1. Each club is guaranteed two home group matches. The top two from each group advance to the quarter-finals. The League cup final takes place following the conculsion of the Shield final round acting as the mid season show piece.
The League Cup winner gets the first reserve spot for the European playoff. In practice the winner will secure a playoff place in the majority of seasons
Below is an illustration of how the League Cup could look.
The FAI Cup
The FAI Cup remains unchanged as the premier domestic knockout competition — open to all clubs across the pyramid, concluded with a season showpiece final. The winner receives an automatic European place. If they have already qualified through the league, that place passes to the next highest ranked club in the Championship Phase. The FAI Cup final is the last major occasion of the domestic season before attention turns to the European playoff that opens the next one.
The European Playoff
The European playoff opens the following season alongside the Presidents Cup. Staging it at the start of the new campaign rather than the end of the old one is a deliberate and important decision.
The FAI Cup final is the showpiece conclusion of the domestic season. It deserves to stand alone — the last great occasion of the year, undiluted by the distraction of an imminent European playoff. A club contesting the FAI Cup final while simultaneously preparing for a playoff semi-final the following week would be doing justice to neither. By separating the two events across seasons, both get the attention they deserve.
It also benefits the playoff clubs directly. Every club that qualifies enters the off-season knowing a European place is within reach. They can recruit, prepare and build specifically for that challenge rather than stumbling into it on the back of a long domestic campaign. Irish football’s representatives in Europe should arrive as well-prepared as possible. This structure ensures they do.
Four clubs compete across two semi-finals hosted by the higher-ranked clubs, and a one-off final at a neutral venue.
Qualification priority order:
- Shield winner
- 3rd place
- 4th place
- Challenge Phase winner
- League Cup winner
- 5th place
- 6th place
Once the four clubs are confirmed they are seeded strictly by final league position — not by the route through which they qualified. A Challenge Phase winner will almost always be 4th seed as a result. In the rare season where both the Challenge Phase and League Cup are won by bottom-half clubs, two Challenge Phase sides could compete for European football — an extraordinary illustration of why no club in this structure is ever truly out of contention. Both would be 3rd and 4th seeds based on league position, meaning they could only meet in the final at a neutral venue.
In practice 5th place will secure a playoff spot in most seasons — they only need two of the three competition winners, (Sheild, League cup, FAI Cup )to finish inside the top 4. 6th place requires all three to finish inside the top 5, as illustrated in our mock season where Waterford FC in 6th picks up the final spot.
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Below is an illustration of how the European playoff could look.
The Case for Reform
The League of Ireland does not need saving. This is not a proposal born of crisis but of opportunity. The domestic game is in better health than it has been in a generation. The argument for reform is not that the current model has failed — it is that it is no longer big enough for the ambitions growing around it.
The 10-team Premier Division is a reasonable structure for a league fighting for relevance. It is not a reasonable structure for a league that is beginning to find it.
The Fixture Problem
In a 10-team league every club plays every other club four times per season. By midseason supporters have already watched the same fixtures play out twice. A 20-team division means 19 different opponents — fixtures with genuine novelty, genuine stakes and genuine occasion from the first weekend to the last. That is not a minor improvement. It is a structural shift in how the league presents itself.
The Volatility Problem
When the margin between title contention and relegation is compressed into a table of 10 clubs, the distance between ambition and disaster is very small. A poor run of five or six results can turn a European campaign into a survival battle.
Cork City are the clearest example. Cork is Ireland’s second city — a one-club market with the population and football culture to support a genuinely professional outfit. By any reasonable measure Cork City should be one of the anchor clubs of the League of Ireland, a permanent top-flight presence investing in infrastructure, developing players and competing for Europe. Instead they have spent the better part of the last decade as a yo-yo club, cycling between promotion and relegation with a frequency that makes sustained investment almost impossible. No sponsor commits to a club that may be in the First Division next season. No academy graduate stays when top-flight football is not guaranteed. No board plans a stadium upgrade when a single bad run can collapse the financial model. Cork City are of course where they are on merit due to the results on the pitch but the structure of the league limits growth and stability, clubs in Limerick, Galway and Waterford face the same ceiling for the same reasons.
A related criticism often raised is that the league has too many Dublin clubs. It is worth examining this honestly. Dublin is the capital city of a country where roughly a third of the population lives in the greater metropolitan area. Five clubs from that catchment in a 20-team division is not over-representation — it is broadly proportionate.
What distorts the perception is the current structure. In a 10-team Premier Division Dublin teams are currently taking up 40% of the league and it is entirely conceivable that eight of the ten clubs could come from the 70-mile stretch between Bray and Dundalk — 80 percent of the top flight concentrated along the east coast. On merit those clubs would be exactly where they deserve to be. But a league with no national reach is a league that struggles to grow beyond its existing base, no matter how well run the individual clubs are.
Five Dublin clubs representing 25 percent of a 20-team division is a completely different picture. The league retains its best clubs while opening its doors to the rest of the country. The problem was never the number of Dublin clubs — it was the size of the division around them.
Addressing the Derby Question
A legitimate concern worth confronting honestly is the reduction of guaranteed big-club home fixtures. Under the current model a Premier Division club is guaranteed two home games against each of the big sides every season. Under this proposal, if clubs end up in different split phases, they meet only once in the Shield.
That is a real trade-off and it deserves a direct response rather than a deflection.
The first point is that the current model offers 18 home league games with a highly repetitive fixture list — the same opponents four times a season. This proposal offers 18 or 19 home league games plus two guaranteed home League Cup group matches, a floor that already matches or exceeds the current model before any cup runs are factored in. The volume of home football does not decrease.
The second point is about ambition. The big clubs are the big clubs right now. But if this proposal achieves what it sets out to achieve — a stronger, more commercially attractive league with growing attendances and rising investment — then the aspiration should be for every home fixture to sell out, not just the derbies. A league that has outgrown its current structure should be building toward a future where Shamrock Rovers v Drogheda United is a compelling occasion, not just Shamrock Rovers v Bohemians. That is what growth looks like.
The third point is scarcity. A fixture that happens once in a season carries a weight that the same fixture played four times simply cannot replicate. Clubs have already shown appetite for staging high-profile fixtures at the Aviva Stadium — under this model, a once-a-season Bohemians v Shamrock Rovers derby becomes exactly the kind of occasion that justifies that ambition. Staged at the Aviva in front of a full house once a year, it is a fundamentally different commercial proposition than four routine league meetings. The same logic applies in Cork — Páirc Uí Chaoimh hosting a top-of-the-table league fixture becomes achievable when the occasion demands it. That is a cultural shift for Irish football as much as a commercial one.
The Challenge Phase — Every Position Has Meaning
A concern sometimes raised about split-phase models is whether the bottom clubs in the lower phase become demoralised with half a season still to play. In this model that concern is addressed directly by the incentive structure running through every position in the Challenge Phase table.
The clubs at the bottom are fighting relegation — the highest possible jeopardy and a powerful motivator right to the final day. The clubs in the middle are safe but chasing top 4 to secure home advantage in the shield next season.
The clubs at the top of the challenge phase are competing for a trophy and an opportunity for European qualification.
Why Gradual Expansion Doesn’t Work
Some will argue for a more cautious approach — expanding the Premier Division to 12, 14 or 16 teams as an interim step. The instinct is understandable but the logic is flawed.
Any expansion short of 20 teams would require promoting clubs from the First Division into an enlarged Premier Division — which weakens the First Division at exactly the moment the FAI is building the National League beneath it. The clubs that would anchor a strong second tier get absorbed upward, leaving the new pyramid with a hollowed-out middle. You pull the floor out from under the structure just as you are trying to construct it.
This proposal avoids that entirely. The 20 clubs are already within the national league system. No promotion is required. The First Division transitions naturally into the National League structure, becoming the proper second tier of a complete pyramid rather than a limbo competition with no clear identity.
There is also a quality argument. A 12 or 14-team division still produces repetitive fixtures — clubs still play each other three times. You would need to reach 18 or 20 before the variety argument properly kicks in. The halfway measures do not solve the core structural problem.
Most importantly — the reward for earning promotion from the National League under a 12/14/16 model is entry into a weakened intermediate tier stripped of its best clubs. Less commercial appeal, smaller crowds, weaker opponents. The financial uplift barely covers the cost of competing at the higher level. Why would a community club in Mayo or Kildare invest seriously in infrastructure and development for that destination?
Under this model, promotion from the National League means entry into the 20-team Premier Division — the top flight of Irish football, with guaranteed home fixtures against Shamrock Rovers, Bohemians, Shelbourne ect. The financial uplift is immediate. The community profile transforms overnight. That is a destination worth building toward, and the ambition of clubs like CK United in Carlow and Kilkenny — who are already investing in grounds and training facilities before playing a single national league game — shows that ambition exists right now at the base of the pyramid. It simply needs a reward worth the effort.
The Commercial Reality
Under this proposal every club is guaranteed a minimum of 18 or 19 home league games plus two guaranteed home League Cup group matches — a floor of at least 20 competitive home fixtures before FAI Cup runs are factored in. That minimum already exceeds the maximum home fixture count available under the current 10-team Premier Division. Season tickets sell themselves on certainty — this model provides more of it than the current structure ever could.
The clubs most often cited as potential casualties of an expanded division are those currently in the First Division. They are also the clubs who gain the most. Those clubs are currently operating in a commercial environment that offers them very little. Under this proposal they are guaranteed home fixtures every season against the league’s biggest clubs. The gate receipts, sponsorship visibility and community engagement generated by two or three of those fixtures is likely to exceed the additional cost of travel and fixtures across the entire season.
The Challenge Phase reinforces this. A club in the bottom half of the 20-team Premier Division is competing for a trophy, chasing a European playoff place and playing matches with real stakes through the final months of the season. That is a fundamentally different commercial reality from battling irrelevance in the First Division.
The transfer window sitting at the mid-season break also creates a dynamic unique to this structure. A club entering the Challenge Phase at the split knows exactly where they stand. They can invest to chase the trophy and a European playoff place — or, if their star player has showcased himself across 19 Shield games against the full league including the biggest clubs, they can cash in while his value is at its peak and the second phase offers a more manageable level of opposition. That is a genuine sporting and commercial decision that simply does not exist in any other league format. The player has had a completed tournament to prove himself. The club has full information. The window is open at exactly the right moment.
On travel — under the current 10-team model Finn Harps can face Cork City four times in a single season. This proposal reduces that to 1 or 3 times while spreading fixtures across a wider range of opponents. The geographic challenge does not disappear but the commercial upside of permanent top-flight membership makes it considerably more manageable.
An All-Island Future
The idea of an all-island league is compelling and, at some point, unavoidable. But timing matters. Merging the leagues today on equal footing risks concentrating the game around Dublin and Belfast, where the strongest clubs and largest markets already exist, rather than supporting the growth of emerging football regions. The League of Ireland is only beginning to rebuild its presence in places like Galway, Waterford and Kerry ect – markets that represent its long-term future. A premature merger could stall that progress, placing additional pressure on developing clubs while immediately strengthening the most established Northern sides. That is not a criticism of those clubs, but a recognition of the current balance between the leagues.
There are also real structural challenges. Any merger would require agreement between the Football Association of Ireland, the Irish Football Association and UEFA, as well as alignment on calendars, governance and competition design – all of which risk becoming complex and divisive. A more realistic path is already available within this proposal, the League Cup could instead be expanded to include the 12 clubs from the NIFL Premiership which would create a 32-team all-island competition that fits within existing calendars. It allows cross-border football to grow naturally, builds rivalries, tests demand, and creates a platform for future integration – not through negotiation, but through momentum.
Below is an illustration of how a potential all Ireland League Cup could look like.
A Rising Tide
Stability enables ambition, and ambition compounds. A club not fighting for top-flight survival every season can invest in an academy rather than a transfer window, plan a stadium upgrade rather than defer it, and build a commercial strategy around the confidence of having top flight football. Those decisions, made by enough clubs across the country, change the character of the league entirely.
Better academies produce better players. Better players stay longer in the domestic game, generating higher transfer fees and raising the league’s profile. A higher profile league attracts stronger commercial sponsorship, which funds further investment. Players who develop in a more competitive domestic environment arrive at the national team better prepared — which improves Ireland’s results, improves FAI finances and flows back into the game at every level.
None of this happens overnight. But none of it can happen at all without the structural foundation to support it. This proposal is that foundation.
The Moment to Act
Irish football is growing. The attendances are up, the clubs are thinking bigger and the supporters are more engaged than they have been in a generation. The FAI National League launches this year. All of the pieces are in place. The only question is whether the game is willing to put them together seriously at the moment it finally has the momentum to do so.
Twenty Clubs. One Vision.
I welcome all feedback, debate and discussion from supporters, club officials and anyone with an interest in the future of Irish football. Whether you agree, disagree or want to challenge any part of this proposal — the conversation is the point. Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
