Dan McDonnell dropped into The Football Show on Off The Ball on Tuesday to talk about the latest developments in the All-Island league saga.
As it stands, 20 of the 22 top-tier football clubs on the island of Ireland are in favour of exploring the next stage of the All-Island League, where approaches are to be made to UEFA to ascertain its viability.
"The people driving this plan are hopeful UEFA are amenable to two leagues merging," Dan said, "and secondly they are hoping that the structure ie a split season where the split season nature of the competition, how many European places for the two jurisdictions will be maintained.
"So you're hoping UEFA give the green light on that, and then you can go to the market for sponsors and commercial people on the basis that actually saying 'we have permission to do this, will you put money behind it?'
As with any unification in a politically-charged territory, invocation of that political history will be cited as reasons for this project to fail. However, McDonnell suggests that is not the case.
'There are valid points being raised," says McDonnell, "like a small club like Dungannon. Their view would be that the smaller sides in an All-Island League structure would be swallowed up.
"They are only coming around to some type of full-time football in Northern Ireland now, and even then it's baby steps. Their fear would be that they are blown out of the water completely.
McDonnell says that fear is not as relevant in the newly-proposed structure where the season is split and a competition in both jurisdictions is maintained.
"At the start of every season," says McDonnell, "there will still be a top-flight league in Northern Ireland and the top six sides still have a chance to participate in the 'King of the Island' series.
"But when you get back to the start of the next season they are still a top Irish League club again, you're not disappearing.
"Another concern would be travel," said McDonnell, but again the new format will alleviate that.
"In that series of games, it's not that each team plays each other home and away, it's just one round of games, so it's possible that you may only have four to five trips in a year, you may not even have to go to Cork.
"The organisers have done their homework and assured people there will be no Monday night trips, so for me, that's gone. The cost of travel should be offset by the extra sponsorship and prize money that will be generated."
"A lot of the concern comes down to identity, it comes down to independence. It is a small football community in Northern Ireland but it's quite proud. Cliftonville is a nationalist club so it's not like it falls along sectarian lines in some way.
"Linfield and Glentoran, the two biggest clubs, are very open to considering this because they believe financially it's worth having a look at.
"Now they still have to win over their fans because there will always be a suspicion that people are trying to lead us towards an all-island national team here.
"This is not about that at all, this is about club football on the island, and what can be best for both.
There is no doubt that when this topic is discussed it always moves towards 'what does this mean for the All-Ireland national team?' I don't think that it would and that's why it's significant.
I thought the biggest step in this happening would be if two other leagues in Europe merged, there was talk about Belgium and Holland doing it, but that's not suggesting we unite Belgium and Holland under one flag.
"Generally smaller leagues need to come together to strengthen themselves for when the big leagues in Europe are so dominant.
"Naturally with the history of this island and other sports are 32-county, of course, that question will always be there. My personal opinion on that would be, that would follow a border poll.
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