Rovers have a lot done, but there is more to do

National League: After waiting so long to hit upon a strategy capable of getting them into their new home in Tallaght, it's hardly surprising to see that Shamrock Rovers are moving quickly to build on the tremendous progress made since club representatives first met with Ben Dunne a little over three weeks ago.

Dunne's technical people were out on the site yesterday, sizing up a site that should be the subject of a planning application within a matter of months, and club officials will sit down with representatives of South Dublin County Council by the end of the week in order to discuss their proposal to put a 40,000 square foot leisure centre on what was, until a few years ago, part of a council owned park.

That Rovers have suddenly started to unlock the commercial potential of the site is, of course, good news for a club that has struggled for several years now to generate anything like the money they needed to build even a modest facility on the land they were handed by the council.

On the face of it, though, it is not necessarily a cause for celebration amongst SDCC officials who, had they really wanted a commercial developer to come in and build a major leisure centre or, for that matter, a publican to run a couple of new bars, probably could have come up with a more profitable way to do it than by using Rovers as middlemen.

At last week's press conference, where the €2 million Ben Dunne deal was announced, mention was made of the potential for further partnerships. But the development of a cluster of business enterprises - all with a leisure aspect to them, of course, so as to avoid any zoning difficulties - around a small football stadium could presumably become a bit of an embarrassment for the people who handed over the prized piece of land in question for use as a sports facility with almost no strings attached.

Rovers officials make the point that the overall package will be a good one both for the local authority and for the people of the local area. They believe that as long as the money from the commercial side of the development continues to be reinvested in the club's facilities there should not be a problem and so any future money making projects are likely to be specifically linked to particular investments in the club's infrastructure.

Nevertheless there is, within the club, an awareness that care must be taken over the months ahead not to antagonise either the council or the locals, some of whom put considerable energy into opposing the original planning application.

Before the end of the year Rovers would be in a position to reapply for planning permission, something that would potentially pave the way for more than the six midweek games that are presently allowed for and an increase in the number of seats beyond the 6,000 currently envisaged.

Club officials, however, want to avoid the perception by outsiders that they are being greedy and it is possible that with the funding required to get them on site, possibly within six months, they will put any further development on hold until, as Rovers chairman Tony Maguire has put it, "we can show people that we can be good neighbours".

They will, of course, need all the goodwill they can generate for, while considerable work has been done in terms of establishing a Tallaght identity for the club since the mid-90s, the senior team's links with the area are still rather vague.

Acquiring a locally based schoolboy section by effectively taking over Tallaght Town has gone well and the upshot is that a substantial number of locals now identify with the club to one degree or another. But for all of the confident predictions that the move to a permanent new home will mark the return of the good times for the Hoops there is still no guarantee that the crowds will turn out to see eircom League in an area that has a proud tradition of producing quality footballers but very little of getting along to watch games. The locals might have protested for a shopping centre and a hospital over the years but League of Ireland football was conspicuously absent from their list of demands.

Few doubt the potential, though. What is clear is that a huge amount of work remains to be done if the Rovers relocation really is to prove a long-term success.