Keith Andrews

He's a Dutchman who's been trying to bring in systems for some time.

It's been difficult politically, but we've decided to give him as much assistance as we can on that.

And what falls into place as a result?

is, I believe, a better connection between, you know, international schoolboy football and the senior team, that we're all trying to do the one thing and get to place and create that identity.

What the next bit is, is to try and connect grassroots into that so that we have the best systems to bring our top young talent into emerging talent programmes, into our League of Ireland clubs as young sort of semi-pro almost, if you like, at that point to get education as well.

Because we're going to have our players for a lot longer.

We're going to have players for two years

extra now because of Brexit.

That's pretty much certain, I think, at this stage.

So the onus is on our League of Ireland clubs to perform more work in the academy space and we've got to help that as well.

But it's very important that the journey in from grassroots is a smooth one because it hasn't been.

We've inherited...

a broken, fractured structure there and we're working really hard because it'd be best for Irish football if we can find common ground that our best players go into the League of Ireland, that our League of Ireland gets strong, our clubs have big aims over the next five years, our government help us because of the good that football does, we're the most popular sport in the country, the most active, the most players registered and we feel as helpful as they've been to now to keep us going

at a difficult time there around January, that the future, if they get in behind us, that we can do great things.

And I think the grassroots is so important in that connection because if that whole link isn't right, it's always going to remain fractured.

But we believe that most people are seeing the light on that.

Yeah, I think the power of football is incredible because we've been on the front pages and the back pages for about 12 months now.

And everybody is interested in the game.

And when the senior team do well, you know, when they go on trips like the last couple of Euro Championships that we qualified for.

And back in my day, in the glory days when we were at World Cups, the country comes to a standstill.