Grounds for disbelief and cynicism

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A business consortium has acquired a substantial greenfield site on the outskirts of an Irish city. It wants to build a national stadium on the site, complete with other related leisure facilities. They have approached English Premiership club Wimbledon to be the anchor tenants at the stadium. Despite criticism from the local football association, they are pressing on with their plans and are courting public support with promises of the opportunity to watch Liverpool and Manchester United on a regular basis.

Substitute Belfast for Dublin in the above scenario and you have the second instalment of the "Wimbledon Coming To Ireland" saga that has unfolded in the Northern media during this past week. The same arguments that have been played out 100 miles down the road for the past few years have been rehashed and revisited in an unerringly similar way.

The demeanour of those promoting the project has been characterised by optimism that flies in the face of all available logic.

Where Dublin has a proposed site at Neilstown, a 119-acre piece of reclaimed land by the shores of Belfast Lough is Belfast's own Field of Dreams. One of the Kevin Costnertype characters who makes up the Belfast United consortium is Nick McCafferty. He has been speaking despairingly about seeing the legions of misguided souls at airports and ferry terminals in Belfast, weekend after weekend, preparing to travel to Premiership games in England or Premier League matches in Scotland.

"Why are they not going to football on their door step?" he muses wistfully, as if this alone was justification enough for the plan to sail through.

The Belfast United consortium seem blithely unaware of the forces ranged against it. The successive hurdles to be overcome - the English Premiership authorities, the Premiership clubs, the English FA, the IFA, UEFA and FIFA - comprise what has been described as "a powerful sixcard trick".

Already one of those - the IFA - has been mounting a strident defence of its position. One of the harsh lessons that the Belfast consortium will have to learn quickly is that there is no bite as vicious as that from a vested interest under threat.

The one interesting aspect of the proposed Belfast bid that differentiates it from what unfolded in Dublin is the evidence of apparent government support. The site alongside Belfast Lough is controlled by the British government and last week the North's environment minister, Lord Dubs, gave a strong indication that he was prepared to lease that land, free of charge, to the consortium. "Subject to other people agreeing," he said, "I think it would be very good for Northern Ireland. It could be very positive."

Now this is a piece of land valued at around £1 million and here is a British government minister offering it to a group of businessmen free, gratis and for nothing. One million pounds sterling is small beer when compared to the estimated £55 million cost of the entire project, but Lord Dubs's offer does say something about the government's approach to sport up here at the moment.

The arrival of a Premiership soccer club in Belfast - and they don't care who it is - would represent another symbol of creeping normality and add further gloss to the city's veneer of respectability. It is almost as if a by-product of US involvement in the peace process here has been to import the laughable concept that no modern, self-respecting city is complete without its own transplanted, soulless sporting franchise.

Confirmation of the financial support of the British government for the Belfast United group has produced much jumping up and down from Irish League chairmen who imagine that there is some great conspiracy afoot to usher their league and their clubs out of existence. The truth is that the Irish League, with its crumbling facilities and substandard product, is itself doing a good enough job of presiding over its own demise. In contrast to a fairly vibrant National League that lined up against the Dublin Dons project, there is little enthusiasm or passion here for protecting the Irish League. Even those charged with its future recognise the weakness of their position.

"There are pressing causes for concern which we need to address as a matter of urgency," says Linfield chairman Billy McCoubrey. "Falling attendances, poor playing standards, the need to improve facilities." The poverty of those facilities - one club is facing closure of its ground if it does not carry out renovations costing £250,000 - is the most pressing crisis for the Irish League. But at a time when most are struggling to pay their players' wages, they have been listening to a government minister promising an asset valued at £1 million to a group that wants to transplant an English club into Belfast. This is all about expediency and the Irish League chairmen should face up to that. Plans for a national stadium in the North have been floating around for over 20 years and now the British government has been given the opportunity to get that particular monkey off its back. Lord Dubs made it quite clear that he would provide the site, but that after that the consortium was on its own. "Sport is a private industry,["] he said. "I don't see any reason why the government should provide a stadium out of public money."

While revelations of the British government's involvement in the Belfast United project has provoked predictable paranoia and anger here, the reality is that it is a fairly marginal player. As anyone associated with the machinations of political lobbying can tell you, when you go public with your plans it is a fairly good indication that discreet, behind the scenes approaches have been unsuccessful.

Government support is an interesting talking point, but last week's events would have been much more newsworthy if the consortium had been able to announce that, for example, the IFA was full-square behind its plans. That is not going to happen in the foreseeable future and now that Belfast United has edged out of the shadows into the spotlight, the inescapable conclusion is that the emperor has very few clothes.