Not every top player shares his loads

On Soccer: It seemed more than a little odd to be sitting in Celtic Park on Sunday while more than 50,000 of the Glasgow club's supporters made so much of their identification with a country that many, after the way it has changed in recent years, might struggle to recognise.

Probably more outdated, however, than the notion of Irishness bandied about on such occasions was the event itself. A testimonial match for a player who, while perhaps not one of the best paid at a club which, by Premiership standards, would be a rather modest payer, must be pretty comfortable after 10 years of top-flight football seems pretty much bizarre at this stage.

This in no way meant to be a criticism of Jackie McNamara who seems a likeable person, a hugely popular figure with Celtic's fans and a player whose future is in limbo. He did, in any event, give a portion of the proceeds to cancer and children's charities but with tickets priced at £21 (£15 for kids) and many of the club's fans drawn from some of Glasgow's most deprived areas you were still left wondering who needed the money more.

The problem is not with any individual but with a system that was originally meant to provide a much needed help to players who had shown exceptional loyalty to a particular club and now approached the end of a modestly-paid career.

At that time, moving clubs brought signing-on payments and other benefits that could be negotiated from new employers keen to secure your services. Those who stayed put were often taken for granted and so lost out financially.

In these days of the Bosman transfer when clubs are afraid of losing star players without the compensation of a fee it really doesn't work like that any more and loyalty to a particular club, as the current Rio Ferdinand saga amply demonstrates, is often not the precious commodity it was.

A couple of Irish players have, of course, been at the forefront of putting the testimonial system to better use, with Niall Quinn and Gary Kelly donating all of the takings from their games, more than €1 million each, to their chosen charities (Kelly's annual golf classic in aid of the cancer care centre he funded in Drogheda is at Baltray next Thursday, as it happens).

Several others have followed suit but a good many more haven't and it remains disappointing to see how little some players give back after lucrative careers in a game that, for all its hugely positive points, doubles as a business that, with considerable effectiveness, channels money from some of society's poorest members to a very few of its most comfortable.

Irish squads have included a number of players who have, in other ways, done a good deal for a wide number of causes, with Shay Given (whose mother died of cancer when he was a small child) working with the MacMillan Trust among others, Lee Carsley (whose son Connor has Down's syndrome) doing extensive work with disabled children through Everton's Ambassador scheme, Roy Keane helping to fundraise for Guidedogs for the Blind and Dean Kiely supporting a number of causes, including the Demelza House Children's Hospice in London to which he makes a donation every time he keeps a clean sheet at Charlton.

This list is by no means exhaustive and I don't pretend to know what each and every player does or does not do but even some of those who do work in this sort of area have conceded that they occasionally find the attitude of others frustrating when something is organised at club level and the whole squad is supposed to be involved.

On a direct economic level the ability of the modern player to make a difference is remarkable. Before Kelly's testimonial game against Celtic two years ago there is reported to have been a "whip around" that raised £90,000 and that, it is said, after one England international then with the club declined to contribute.

When interviewed earlier this year on the subject by the Independent newspaper in Britain, however, Kiely talked about the broader momentum that the involvement of footballers can generate.

"When we (the Charlton players) score a goal we give money," he said "and then a company hears about it and has a charity dinner or something. A cricket club wrote to me the other day saying they'd heard about what I was doing and how they'd be making a donation. The fact is once I'm an ex-footballer my stock will be more or less nil so I need to make the most of all this while I still can."

In the great scheme of things it's small enough beer but in a game that, at the very top level at least, has changed beyond recognition since the days when a system was devised to help prevent even the greats slipping into poverty after retirement, it at least goes some way to suggesting that people who tell us all the time in interviews that they appreciate just how lucky they are really do believe what they're saying.