Finding the formula to better amalgamate the Premier Intermediate League with the top two tiers of the NI Football League has proved somewhat challenging.
Progression into the senior-status ranks is, of course, the golden ticket, and the third-tier is the gateway to that.
If you win the PIL, then from the following season, you will be only one level below the Premiership and can mix it in a wildly competitive, open-ended Championship that’s impossible to predict on a week-by-week basis.
Being a senior club has other perks, too. You’re guaranteed a last-32 place in the Irish Cup, for instance, and are certain to avoid the preliminary stages of the BetMcLean Cup by also starting straight from the First Round Proper.
Perhaps most significantly, though, is guaranteed competitive action every single weekend; a 38-match league season where all but a few Saturdays are occupied from the start of August to the end of April.
That’s less so the case in the PIL which, as of the 2023/24 campaign, is a 26-game crusade.
It also doesn’t have a post-split any more, abolished after the division’s expansion from 12 representatives to 14 during the summer, meaning each outfit plays each other twice – at home and away – and no more in a league context.
Compare that to the Premiership and Championship, which remain 12-team set-ups and comprise three rounds of fixtures amounting to 33 outings before the top-six, bottom-six divide comes into effect for the final five matchdays.
At intermediate level, much of the schedule – particularly in the first half of the campaign – is cup-related, be it the Intermediate Cup and regional knock-outs or Rounds One to Four of the Irish Cup.
Elimination from said competitions can prove costly, literally and figuratively; if you advance, that’s a weekend filled but, if you don’t, the club still has running costs to meet and a free Saturday will hardly help the case. After all, no games mean that supporters must make alternative plans, and the team they support will suffer from the lack of gate receipts and matchday income.
That is a very real problem and, given the cost of living crisis that has happened over the past couple of years, is in increasingly urgent need of addressing.
What’s more, the Sunday Life have reported that PIL clubs could perhaps be dealt a further blow come 2025.
Namely, as part of a planned Irish FA restructure of intermediate football, talks are under way that could see a ‘Conference League’ of sorts established below the top two divisions – and the Association are searching out a third party to run the set-up with the Northern Amateur Football League and Mid Ulster League among the interested parties.
That would see the third division removed from NIFL’s jurisdiction – a real bold step.
However, nothing’s been rubber-stamped as yet, and could the PIL yet be closer aligned to the two leagues above? Well, there’s an innovative way that could lay some building blocks.
Could a competition involving the 26 teams in the Championship and third-tier be devised? It may involve PIL clubs dropping out of the Intermediate Cup and regional knock-outs and, in the view of some, it might devalue those tournaments should no teams from above the fourth rung be in the fold, but if the third division is to preserve its future within the Irish League, it seems the need to find solutions is becoming more pressing given the clock is ticking.
Besides, ever since the Championship became a senior division alongside the top-tier in 2016 and, therefore, could no longer partake in regional intermediate competitions like the Steel and Sons Cup as well as the Intermediate Cup, the chances of a second-tier outfit clinching a trophy in a cup context have been significantly reduced since then. One suspects they’d hardly sniff at the chance of silverware and take part in a tournament where the possibilities could be endless.
Allow that tournament to accompany a reinvention of the league structure to bring it more in line with the two flights above, and maybe, just maybe, it might give the PIL a new lease of life within the Irish League.
Featured image from David Hunter/Lisburn Distillery media.
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