Helping to show there's still all to play for

Anybody who still thinks that the recent vote by England's footballers to strike rather than allow their union to accept a diminished share of the game's television revenue is simply another manifestation of their collective greed could do worse than to keep an eye on how a four-man delegation from Merrion Square gets on in Manchester today.

Roy Dooney, John Byrne and Eoin Hand form three quarters of the travelling party with Galway United's Darragh Sheridan completing the line-up. The purpose of their trip is to meet representatives of the PFA, the footballer's union that is organising the proposed strike.

And their hope is to secure backing - financial and organisational - for a unique initiative which it is hoped will benefit many of our young players as well as our senior league.

Sheridan, a student of Sports Science at Dublin City University, came up with the idea, a course aimed at re-integrating young players who arrive back in Ireland after a few years in England without ever making it beyond the junior ranks.

Before returning to full-time study and Eircom League football, he had first-hand experience of the phenomenon, a spell at Aston Villa followed by a thanks but no thanks and the short journey home. It then occurred to him that there was nothing here to help those returning to recover from the experience, pick themselves up again and get on with their lives.

Cue REAP (Reinvention, Education, Appraisal and Preparation), provisionally planned as a six-week residential course to be run for 12 or 15 teenagers each summer at DCU.

They will get as much help as can be provided, maximising what - to youngsters who often feel that they've let themselves and those around them down - often look like rather limited options.

To the FAI's credit, it has seized upon the idea enthusiastically. Hand, the association's career guidance officer has used his extensive contacts to enlist support for the scheme while Sheridan has been helped by his department at DCU in developing the bones of next year's prototype course.

The PFA, an organisation that already provides extensive financial support to youngsters in just these sorts of circumstances who seek to re-enter full-time education, has signalled its support for the scheme. But how much they will weigh in behind next summer's course, which it is estimated will cost £45,000, should be a lot clearer after today.

Dooney's presence on the plane this morning gives an indication of the potential value the league sees in the project. For years, the senior clubs here have seen the country's most promising players sucked up by their counterparts across the water and then, two or three years later, spat out again.

Trying to convince those teenagers subsequently that they and football still have something worthwhile to offer each other has been one of the great challenges facing Irish clubs in recent years and it's not always one that they have adequately lived up to.

Now, Dooney hopes, players will be caught in their early days back home and persuaded that they still possess an asset that is highly marketable here.

With the help of the PFAI, human resources managers from the commercial sectors and educators, the intention is that teenagers will be helped to play their hand in the most advantageous way possible.

There are, of course, some major obstacles to be overcome. Many of the teenagers may have effectively given up on their education at the age of 12 or 13 when they first began to believe that stardom awaited in the Premiership.

And a surprising number, says Hand, are so demoralised by their experience that they find it hard to believe on their return home, that they have even been improved as footballers during two, three or even four years of full-time training with well-qualified coaches in England.

Ultimately, this all falls well short of what most supporters here would really like to see - a club structure capable of offering 16-year-olds a genuine alternative to gambling a chunk of their youth away in an environment that produces a higher percentage of losers than Las Vegas does.

Undoubtedly, though, it's an admirable step in the right direction.

emalone@irish-times.ie