It was criticised for lacking ‘meat on the bones’ but the plans of Kieran Lucid to bring forward an All-Island League for domestic football are beginning to come into clearer focus.

30 clubs attended a briefing session last week in Dundalk where the reaction was more favourable than it has been to date but with still a long way to go to convince.

TV rights fees of €1 million would be well ahead of what is currently paid though whether it would be streaming behind a paywall on more accessible, more mainstream, channels has not yet been clarified.

There is talk of prize money for the winning team of €800,000, as opposed to €100,000 in the SSE Airtricity League and less than half that for the Northern Ireland Football League.

We know already that next year’s League will be run along the same lines as this years with two Leagues of ten teams in each of the Premier League and First Division. Drogheda United took a step towards regaining a place in the top flight yesterday with a 1-0 win over Finn Harps in the two-leg play-off to determine who goes up and who goes into the second tier.

An alternative plan worked on by representatives of the League is at a more advanced stage of planning and acceptance by clubs in the Republic and a meeting is scheduled for next month at which the long term future is supposed to be finalised.

Will Lucid’s meeting in Dundalk have done enough to buy time and cause the clubs to pause before ruling it out. Probably. He asked for them to work with consultants from the Netherlands over the coming weeks to see what will be possible.

Then over the weekend, the group began to seed out research and material on social media aimed at attracting fans and others outside the inner circle towards at least taking a second look.

There is so much by way of change taking place at the FAI over the next two months that it is possible this will fall for now, but there is more of a chance now than might have appeared to be the case a week ago and that in itself is progress.

Read More: Explore our Coverage of the FAI Governance Story