SHELBOURNE boss Damien Duff believes Mason Melia’s transfer is good for the League of Ireland – but believes there is still too big a gap for those moving abroad.
St Patrick’s Athletic will receive a League of Ireland record fee – understood to be just under €2 million – when Melia, 17, moves to Tottenham Hotspur next January.
His move cannot go through until after he turns 18 under Brexit rules whereas previously an Irish player could move to the UK at 16, as Duff did himself 30 years ago.
Duff acknowledged that the rules that meant Melia had to stay at home, and saw his first top level action with the Saints, have drastically raised his transfer fee.
But he still believes that he will have a huge gap to make up when he first trains with Spurs’ next January.
Duff said: “It looks great, I guess that’s the benefit of having him stay until he’s 18. If he went at 15 of 16 he’s probably going for five or six figures, not seven figures.
“It’s the Catch 22 of this rule, going away to England, he has stayed here and got first team exposure and we have kept the best players here.
“But at the same time, he has missed two or three years at an elite (club), one of the biggest clubs in the world, so there are pros and cons for everything.
“He will be going to Spurs at 18 and I will be supporting him as a League of Ireland fan, as an Irish fan, but if you call a spade a spade, he is playing catch up.
“I’d imagine he’s not going into 18s or 20s, he’s going into the first team so let’s see what you’ve got.
“Here, I was training with Blackburn Rovers first team when I was 16 and he will be training when he’s 18. I have two years on him, so that’s the downside.
“All I can speak of is my experience. I went to England at 16, granted it’s an awful long time ago, and I wouldn’t change it.
“I went and lived at the training ground, literally, for two years until I was 18 and probably touched the football more than any kid in the world – training two or three times a day.
“And a night time I was down at the astro playing. I lived it. There was nothing in my way.
“Life is different now. Looking back at it now, would I have been happy going at 18? No I was happy the way I did it and that’s it. Life is life.”
