League of Ireland and Scottish Premiership - How do they compare?

For some fans in the League of Ireland they would quite fancy pitting the best teams in this country against their Scottish counterparts and while it would be interesting to see the results it raises a question of how both leagues compare to each other. How well would the highly praised Dundalk team do in the Scottish premiership or how would the likes of Dundee United, Kilmarnock or Hamilton Academical do in the League of Ireland.

The answers to those questions remain hypothetical and a matter of opinion but the debate is interesting all the same. What Scotland has that Ireland doesn't is a massive club in Celtic, it also has the re-emerging Rangers joining the Premiership next season and that is another post in itself. Historically the most successful club in Ireland has been Shamrock Rovers and on the pitch in recent years they haven't been able to keep up with Dundalk. However Rovers are no where near the size of Celtic or Rangers.

Scottish sides in League of Ireland:
Irish sides would not be giving Celtic more of a challenge than they already get in Scotland. In fact Celtic would in all probability be a lot further ahead so that's not even worth considering. I'll go on record and say Aberdeen would win the Premier division here fairly comfortably. Hearts would too. After that you get into more unpredictable territory given the nature of how tight the premiership is below Hearts. Saying that I think all the rest of the sides in the top half split and majority of the bottom split would be at the very least challenging for the title here. The likes of Dundee United, Hamilton Academical and Kilmarnock would surely be challenging for Europa league places.

How well would Dundalk do in Scotland?
source: Morgan Treacy/INPHO 

Irish sides in Scottish Premiership:
How well would our sides do in Scotland?. Well I do think Dundalk would be fairly comfortable. They would be a comfortable bottom split side. With a bit more money in the Scottish game they would be able to keep the likes of Daryl Horgan, Ronan Finn and perhaps Richie Towell that bit longer, enabling them to push a bit up the table, hypothetically of course.
Cork City, well I think in all honesty we would struggle near the bottom with the current squad. However with a bit more finance from the Premiership who knows what caliber of player the club could attract. At a push we might scrap into or even avoid the relegation play-off. Shamrock Rovers and St Pats likewise. Beyond that I think the level of our premier division is in the main Scottish championship standard with the likes of Derry, Bohemians and Galway challenging for the title along with Falkirk, Hibernian and Raith Rovers. The rest would be scrapping with the rest of the championship sides with little between them.

Head-to-Heads
There have been a few European clashes that don't really give us any idea how clubs would fare in a league setting nowadays. Many league of Ireland fans will point to the 7-3 aggregate trashing Derry handed out to Gretna in 2006 as an indication of Irish strength but in reality two months before that UEFA cup tie, Gretna had just won the Scottish second division (3rd tier) and lost the cup final thus being in the UEFA cup. This tie remains the last head-to-head in European competition between the two countries.

Bohemians beat Aberdeen in Pittodrie in 2000
source: ©INPHO/Andrew Paton

The 2000 UEFA cup tie that pitted Aberdeen against Bohemians is one where the Irish side prevailed. This was before the era where Irish sides were improving drastically in Europe and Bohemians' results over these two games are hailed as one of Ireland's greatest European results considering how poor generally our sides had been in Europe previously. However this is an interesting one because Aberdeen had finished the previous season bottom of the SPL and Bohemians had finished 3rd in Ireland. So we had a clash at the time showing the 3rd best Irish side prevailing over the bottom Scottish team.

1998-99 provided not one but two head-to-head ties. Celtic v St Patrick's Athletic in the champions league and Rangers v Shelbourne in the UEFA cup. St Pats actually got a first leg 0-0 draw at Parkhead only to go down 2-0 in Dublin while Shelbourne were 3-0 up at one stage against Rangers but ultimately fell to a 5-3 defeat before losing 2-0 in the second leg.

The previous season pitted Shelbourne against Kilmarnock in the last edition of the Cup winners cup. Shelbourne had finished 3rd the previous campaign and Kilmarnock were 7th in Scotland ahead of this meeting. Kilmarnock won the first leg 2-1 before a 1-1 second leg draw in Dublin saw Shelbourne exit but not much was between the sides.

The overall head-to-head between Irish and Scottish sides reads three Irish wins, seven draws and twenty two Scottish victories from thirty two games, with the majority of those coming from Celtic and Rangers. This summer there is always a possibility of an Irish v Scottish clash in both the Champions and Europa leagues so we might have an up to date clash to add to the debate.