This image has been circulating for the past 24 hours or so. Sponsorship and branding at Tallaght Stadium for tonight's Europa League game between Shamrock Rovers and AC Milan.

I don't want to seem like I'm having a go at Shamrock Rovers here.

Every year in the LOI, when your team qualifies for Europe, you're dreaming of getting through those first couple of rounds of opposition of a similar standard, before you reach the potential glamour tie against a giant of European football.

There's been a high standard of opposition playing in Ireland in the last decade, Bate Borisov, Legia Warsaw, Hannover 96, but it's awhile since an Irish side has faced a true global giant in a competitive game.

If this draw was made any other year, you'd hear the Rovers celebrations all the way from Phibsboro. An away leg in the San Siro, a world famous stadium, and an away day that's a lot more accessible than heading off to the back arse of Kazakhstan like has happened in the LOI.

Ask any Shamrock Rovers fan about their 2011 trip to White Hart Lane. They still haven't shut up about it. This would be another one of those trips of a lifetime.
Then there'd be the home leg in Tallaght Stadium. It would be a sellout no question.

An unfortunate circumstance of these glamour ties, is the home leg will often be filled with Irish people who turn up to support a foreign team playing against an Irish one. It's like playing 2 away legs. But you grit your teeth and say think of the money, and support the team.

Shamrock Rovers are already guaranteed €500k in prize money for this European run. They'd have to win the league 5 years in a row to earn the equivalent prize money domestically.

Today is the official release of the brilliant @marktigheST book Champagne Football. Just because John Delaney is in hiding in Spain, doesn't mean the affects of his criminal tenure aren't still rotting the LOI.

So I understand why alternative revenue sources would be explored. How do you make up for what would have been a beyond capacity crowd, and the club's biggest payday in years? But to see the league I love reduced to a vessel for Paddy Power banter merchants just feels so tinpot.

At the beginning of this pandemic there was a very real danger that clubs would fold and the league could not continue. In the last 24 hours we saw Macclesfield Town, a 146 year old club, cease to be over a debt of £500k in England. So it was not just posturing by LOI clubs.

Our TV screens are inundated with Paddy Power ads every day. Premier league, European football, International football, BANTER surrounding Rhodri Giggs. When's the last time you ever saw a Paddy Power ad that promoted the LOI?

Football clubs are no longer allowed to have alcohol or tobacco companies as their sponsors. Iconic partnerships through the years like Newcastle and Brown Ale, and Liverpool and Carlsberg are no longer permitted. Why then is gambling treated so differently?

We all know someone who's drank their life away. You can physically tell when some is ravaged by an alcohol addiction. But gambling is a much more silent demon.

Just look at the feed of @ProblemGamIrl to see its effects.

I know lads who've lost entire weeks wages to bookies in a day. People refused mortgages because of online gambling showing up on bank statements. In a 24/7 globalist world, you can stay up until 2am and bet on the amount of corners in a Chilean 2nd Division game from your phone.

These companies don't play fair. Social media, and traditional media are awash with stories that say the same. Lads who've bet shrewdly and been up, having their accounts limited and frozen, or else the bookmaker refusing to pay out on a winning bet for some nonsensical reason.

But even more sinister is how they keep the losers betting. Assigning people to "look after" their VIP clients. Enticing them with free bets so they keep going. Giving them "tips". Manipulating and extorting addicts until their lives are a complete ruin.

@ProblemGamIrl

If football's governing bodies could recognise the societal damage that having tobacco and alcohol products completely ingrained in the culture of football does, there is no reason they can't do the same with these gambling companies. The only reason they won't is money.

I understand why Shamrock Rovers needed to engage with an alternative revenue stream. Tallaght Stadium is not the home of Shamrock Rovers. It's a municipal stadium. But it's synonymous now with that club. It has also become the home to Ireland's women, and underage national teams

It is now the unofficial second stadium of Irish football. It's sickening on the day of one of the biggest matches it's ever hosted, to see it become a billboard for a bunch of pseudo-controversial, predatory banter merchants who've never cared about our league, and never will.