The answer to getting League of Ireland players into Ireland senior camps might be simpler than anyone wants to admit — just move some fixtures around. FAI director of football John Martin floated the idea of tweaking the domestic calendar in May, creating a window where Heimir Hallgrimsson's squad could blend LOI talent with League One players and youth prospects without wrecking anyone's season.
This week's Murcia camp underlines exactly why it matters. Twenty-one players called up, nine of them uncapped, and not one from the League of Ireland. Hallgrimsson acknowledged the problem but said bringing LOI players in would mean "interrupting the league." Which is true — and it's a problem the FAI has kicked down the road long enough.
The January Idea Has Holes
Hallgrimsson has previously pushed for a January camp dedicated to League of Ireland players. The logic is sound on paper — the domestic season hasn't started, players are available. But January falls outside FIFA match windows, it drops mid-pre-season, and clubs like Shamrock Rovers and Shelbourne were still active until Christmas last year, which rules out several of their players entirely. A commitment from clubs to release players in January is far from guaranteed.
Martin's May solution is more practical. Rearrange a handful of fixtures — throw in an extra Monday night game, clear a weekend — and suddenly there's space for a proper development camp with LOI players who are match-fit and in rhythm. "Players will be in season, they'd have games under their belt, you wouldn't have to disrupt the domestic so they can give the best of themselves," he said. That's a better version of this than any January experiment.
The specific case of Dawson Devoy, flagged by Martin himself, shows the kind of talent being left out. A ten-day absence is a real ask of any club — but it's the kind of ask that gets made routinely for players in other leagues. The LOI deserves the same infrastructure around international integration, not a permanent workaround.
What Else Is Moving at the FAI
John O'Shea's contract extension as assistant manager is "imminent" with paperwork close to finalised. Paddy McCarthy, who doubles as a first-team coach at Crystal Palace, remains in Hallgrimsson's setup for now — Martin's phrasing was pointed: "We will hold onto Paddy until the day that we can't." That's not a ringing endorsement of permanence.
At underage level, the remaining coaching vacancies are expected to be filled before the end of the month. The structure is shifting too — coaches will no longer be pinned to specific age groups but will rotate across setups as needed. For the under-17s, who head to a second consecutive World Cup in Qatar later this year, a lead coach has yet to be named following Colin O'Brien's departure. Martin says someone will be appointed to oversee three camps: June, September, and the tournament itself.
"By the end of the month we should have announced all of those appointments," he said. Given the tournament timeline, that's not a long runway.
