Eloquent Pat can save the world

Made a symbolic decision while trekking back from Newry yesterday. Instead of setting the dial to 909 medium wave and the excitable Alan Green and his commentary from the Reebok Stadium, Bolton, we stuck with Gabriel Egan and Pat Dolan and their extravaganza of Bohemia.

Yes LockerRoom is part of the new footie generation. Moved by The Irish Times front of supplement picture of 6,500 comrades forming a "derby crowd" on Friday night in Tolka, LockerRoom asked what he could do for his national league, not what his national league could do for him.

OK, it was difficult to stay tuned when the word leaked from Bolton that it was three goals apiece. Gabriel and Pat were making heavy weather of talking up Bohs and Dundalk. A bad own goal and a bit of a jammy penalty put Bohs two-nil ahead, as near to total football as the club gets these days. With 15 minutes left Pat was brave enough to suggest that unless Dundalk did something quick they were going to lose.

Oh well. We were glad to have stuck with Gabriel and Pat to the death. RTE had cunningly lined up a couple of interviews. Joe Kinnear chatted to Roy Willoughby (recorded last Thursday at the Manager of the Year awards) about the possibility of Wimbledon coming to Dublin.

I don't know Joe and people tell me he is a great fellow and the heart and soul of the Crazy Gang and as Irish as the Irish themselves or whatever. This may be all true but I am ever more sincere in my view that all people discussing the possibility of Wimbledon coming to Dublin should be wired to a lie-detector machine.

Joe spoke about Wimbledon's interest in coming to Dublin. This column is not well disposed to Wimbledon's arrival here but can see very well how it would suit Wimbledon just fine to move into a vacant soccer constituency and sit tight until the jackpot of a superleague comes about. This column can understand that view and could respect it if it were stated in terms which highlighted the essential selfishness of the move.

Instead Joe Kinnear castigated those in the domestic game who out of their own sense of selfpreservation are opposed to Wimbledon coming to Dublin. Morally then it is the right thing to do for Wimbledon to ditch their own limited support but the wrong thing to do for Irish professional soccer to protect its own support. The 6,500 comrades bathed in orange light at the Dublin derby on Friday night are to be handed rattles, paper hats and Dublin Dons flags.

The rationale for all this is that Joe feels that Wimbledon coming to Dublin will not merely be an act of naked and desperate self interest, satisfying two financial imperatives with the one stone (survival and then superleague jackpot), Joe feels Wimbledon coming to Dublin will be an act of altruism, a panacea which will end emigration, long-term unemployment and bad weather in one fell swoop. An urchin will not be able to throw a stone without breaking the window of a European-style soccer academy. That window will not be broken without some kindly coaches coming out and teaching the urchin the nuances of playing three at the back.

The Dublin Dons shall not be a squad of callow professional footballers who have their strings pulled by self-interested shareholders. No they shall be a national movement. They shall sign up perhaps 75,000 long-term unemployed people to play on their myriad reserve teams. They will unite Ireland.

That isn't precisely what Joe Kinnear said. I was driving at the time and could only get the gist of it. Ditto with Pat Dolan who was asked for a response. Bullshit said Pat. Only at more length and with more eloquence and passion.

I DON'T know Pat Dolan any better than I know Joe Kinnear but his case struck a chord. He made the point that when Trevor Molloy, Colin Hawkins and Thomas Morgan were stuck for clubs after the heroics of Malaysia last summer it wasn't Wimbledon FC who were offering contracts to the huddled masses.

I was in Sunderland FC a couple of weeks ago being shown around by Niall Quinn and in the bowels of the stadium we ran into two Irish kids who have just started apprenticeships.

They were both 15 years of age. Maybe they were mature for their age but at 15 I knew nothing and was certain of nothing and living away from home in Sunderland in a professional football club would have destroyed me. I'd seen the two young lads playing football that morning in a training game out on Sunderland's training ground in Whitburn. The slighter of the two boys Tommy (second name escapes me) had turned the Sunderland first-team midfielder inside out a couple of times and won the praise of Peter Reid.

Afterwards Niall Quinn pointed out to me what a lucky break this might turn out to be. The youngster could go back to the youth teams and play badly for a month but the manager's memory of him would be turning Alex Rae the wrong way a few times during a training game. When the contract comes up for renewal that raw morning in December might be the difference between surviving and being thrown back in the pond.

When we met the kids later in the day they were cleaning up in the stadium. The kids at big English clubs still clean boots and wrap dirty gear into big towels and bring it to the laundry. They sweep out dressing rooms and lay out kit and act as runners for the professionals. Then they get thrown back into the pond.

With their afternoons free and only a digs to head back to there is no reason why they shouldn't be getting a few hours schooling in during the afternoons, but the system which English soccer offers is all take and no give.

Pat Dolan spoke passionately about the future of Irish soccer, how, when a European superleague arrived, the game in this country should be in the position to put forward its own team. If he means an Irish-based professional team, the profits of which would trickle down to the game as a whole, I am in favour.

And in the meanwhile if the FAI are serious about keeping Wimbledon out and bringing football here to a higher level, why not a couple of centres of excellence which will offer kids a football education and other academic support instead of shipping them off at 15 years of age to the mills of the English professional game.

Why not create an institution and a system whereby kids can be affiliated to and paid by English, Scottish or Irish clubs till they are 17 or 18 but they live at home and do their training in a centralised place and play regularly in some sort of feeder league.

And when the great day comes and we have a massive professional soccer club in Dublin it will be born out of and fed by the FAI's progressiveness and not some English club's self interest.

Pat Dolan and I will save the world. Brian Kerr too.

Six goals at the Reebok Stadium? Who cares?