Dublin miss chance to send out message

HOLD THE BACK PAGEFOR SURE, every die-hard Dublin supporter – and you'd want to be die-hard to get that blue glow of expectation year-on-year only for it to disappear like a prop in a Keith Barry magic show as the summer edges into autumn – will feel a sense of superiority over their country cousins with the announcement of the new sponsorship deal with Vodafone.

IIt’s a financial deal which reaffirms the massive drawing power of the Dubs, and no doubt there has been much back-slapping and high-fiving in the vicinity of Parnell Park these past few days now it’s a done deal.

In this day and age particularly, the six-year sponsorship agreement – worth an estimated €4.6 million – is a shot in the arm for Dublin GAA, both the county teams and the clubs in the capital, even if it doesn’t guarantee Sam or Liam will be back in Dublin hands any time soon.

And, yet, there is also a sense Dublin missed out on a real opportunity to show some goodwill of their own when appearing without any sponsor’s logo in last Sunday’s O’Byrne Cup match.

Surely, in the circumstances, this would have been an ideal occasion for Dublin’s footballers to wear a logo (for free) of a charity – Goal, Unicef, Trócaire . . – take your pick – in highlighting the plight of those victims of the earthquake in Haiti? After all, the game was live on TG4 and photographs of logo-free Dublin players appeared in all of the national papers on Monday morning. It constituted a terrific opportunity to send a message of support.

With the old deal with Arnotts gone and the new one with Vodafone waiting to be rubber-stamped, it would have done Dublin’s image a power of good if a charity, a la Unicef with Barcelona, had occupied the vacant spot on the jerseys.

Goal would have very suitable recipients of such a gesture, given the number of former Dublin footballers who are patrons of the third world charity and the fact the organisation’s founder, John O’Shea, once upon a time played club football in Dublin with Clann na Gael-Fontenoys.

Too late now, and an opportunity lost.

Salary caps a sensible option

Dublin miss chance to send out messageWood's absence awkward for woods launchFinal StrawPHILIP REIDSOME THINGS make the mind boggle, and getting involved in a financial way with a soccer club is one of them. Is it a sense of power that makes men – mainly – invest in clubs? Take the case of businessman David Sullivan, his decision to buy into West Ham Utd, a club struggling to hold its head above water financially and in terms of staying in the English Premiership, beggars belief.

What makes the former Birmingham City owner’s move back into club ownership all the more bizarre in a G-U-B-U sort of way is that less than a week previously Sullivan was warning of the dangers of a Premier League club collapsing. He told the BBC, “We’ve looked at 20 clubs since we left Birmingham. The state of the finance of football is frightening . . . many, many clubs have pre-sold their Premier League income, television money. They’ve borrowed against one and two and three year’s season-ticket money. They’ve borrowed against everything.”

By the middle of the week, Sullivan was sporting a claret jacket at Upton Park having taken a 50 per cent holding (along with business partner David Gold) in a club which has a debt estimated at €115 million, owed to both banks and other clubs including settlements to Sheffield United over the Carlos Tevez affair, and former manager Alan Curbishley.

Having made the mind-boggling move to put his money into a club with a seemingly bottomless pit when it comes to swallowing up any financial currency, Sullivan admitted: “We would not buy this club if it wasn’t West Ham. It makes no commercial sense for anyone to buy this club and it’s amazing two other people wanted to buy it. One is another West Ham supporter (Tony Fernandes) and the Italian (Massimo Cellino). I am not quite sure if he looked at the books properly, but if he looked at the books, he might have walked away.”

The move has bucked a trend started by Roman Abramovich which has seen big English clubs fall into the hands of foreign investors. Since the Russian bought Chelsea in 2003, a number of top-tier clubs including Manchester United, Liverpool, Aston Villa and Manchester City have been taken over – although the evidence from Liverpool, particularly, and also Man U would suggest the new owners aren’t in the same league as the Russian or Arab billionaires.

A recent study of football transfer trends by Plain Soccer – which combined reports from Deloitte and Forbes – indicated elite clubs in the English Premier League (with the possible exception of Man City) will be quiet in the transfer market relative to their European rivals. Although Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are among the highest-earning clubs in the world, they all have debt levels surpassing 50 per cent of club values and the report suggested money previously assigned to transfers will now be assigned to debt repayment.

Perhaps the time has come for clubs in England – and in Europe – to consider salary caps such as exist in American Football, the NBA and, indeed, similar to the structures put in place by rugby unions on their move into professionalism. Regardless of location, it seems crazy that players can be raking in huge salaries at a time when clubs are floundering. Surely it makes sense to introduce salary caps, although common sense – as Sullivan would seem to bear out – doesn’t always exist in the beautiful game.

Wood's absence awkward for woods launch

THE WORLD’S top – certainly richest – sportsman has gone into hiding, with some comparing Tiger Woods’s disappearance to that of Howard Hughes.

In the public eye or not, the rumours are flying with tales of the whereabouts of Woods, who hasn’t been seen in public since November 27th: that he is either in a clinic like The Meadows in Arizona for drug or sex addiction; or he has been having reconstructive surgery to fix injuries to his face from the “accident” of a month ago, or even that he is holed up in his house watching cartoons all day.

Interestingly, the New York Post pointed out Woods had been on the cover of that newspaper more consecutive days than 9/11 was, which gives an indication of the insatiable appetite for anything to do with the golfer who is on an indefinite break from the sport.

The other word on the street is that Elin, his wife, but probably soon to be ex, is interviewing different attorneys on the best course of action to take. Time will tell, but a story told by Canadian Mike Weir this week shows there was, well, another side to Woods apart from his on-course dominance and the off-course sexual shenanigans. The man, it would appear, had a sense of humour.

As Weir recalled it, the two golfers were doing a shoot for one of Tiger Woods’s EA Sports video games and Weir was “suiting up” for some computer mapping. “You have to put this suit on and they put all these electrodes over your face and arms to capture the image, so it makes it real in the video game.

“Tiger switched the outfit so it was a ladies, (size) small. So, when I was putting it on, the thing fit me like a bathing suit . . . the director was saying, ‘no, that’s not how you’ve got to put it on’. I could see Tiger around the corner, just rolling and laughing his head off.”

Them were the days.

In truth, there’s little to laugh about. With Woods in hiding, long-time sponsors Nike – who have stood by him during the mess – have taken the decision to launch its new range of Victory Red fairway woods (due to go on sale in the US next Friday) without any promotional input from Woods, whose traditional wearing of red shirts in the final round of tournaments inspired the name. Instead, the promotional material trumpets the fact the clubs were used in play by Lucas Glover, who last season made a breakthrough win in a major when capturing the US Open.

The Wall Street Journal reports Nike’s inability to bank on Woods comes at “a problematic time” for them, faced with deteriorating golf sales because of the recession.

FINAL STRAW

Sorensen serves up timely reminder

FAIR PLAY to Louk Sorensen for, firstly, emerging from qualifying to play in the Australian Open and, secondly, on winning his first-round match. It was a great achievement; and that, in a way, says all we need to know about where Irish tennis stands.

In golf, we’ve got two players – Pádraig Harrington and Rory McIlroy – in the world’s top-10: one of them, Harrington, has three Majors to his CV; the other, McIlroy, is the hottest young golfer on the planet and the timing of his move to play on the US Tour this season seems even better timed given the fall-out from Tiger Woods’s indiscretions.

In horse racing, there’s a string of jockeys – national hunt and flat – who are the equal of any to be found anywhere in the world.

Ruby Walsh, Tony McCoy, Johnny Murtagh, Barry Geraghty, Kieran Fallon . . . the list goes on and on and on.

In rugby, Brian O’Driscoll – voted the world’s best rugby player of the past decade by Rugby World – leads a golden generation of players that has made Ireland a genuine force in the sport.

In tennis, though, we are still waiting for a truly world-class player to emerge from Ireland.

Real home from home at the Madejski

THE ODDS are stacked against London Irish making it through to the Heineken Cup quarter-finals, despite having home advantage against the reigning champions Leinster in today’s match at Twickenham.

And, of course, I’ll be hoping Leinster don’t slip-up in the same way as London Irish did against the Scarlets last Sunday when they took their foot off the pedal and failed to finish the job, perhaps with an eye already being cast ahead to the visit of BOD Co. Yet, there’s a small part of me that’s sorry that the Exiles most likely won’t get a foot into the knockout stages.

I’ve been to the Madejski Stadium to see London Irish play – on the generous invite of former Irish international Mike Gibson, who played for Trinity, Lansdowne and Cork Con before moving to London where he proved to be a great servant on the field, off the field in arranging club sponsorship and on the golf course as captain to the London Irish Golf Society – and there is an unmistakable Irishness about the place.

From having copies of The Irish Times available at the ground’s entrance, to the sound of Irish music in the bar deep down in the bowels of the stand after the final whistle is blown . . . let’s hope their time will come, as Johnny Cash might say, down the line!