Stop the stadium Russian roulette

A few weeks ago I was watching the Republic of Ireland and the US hack it out on ESPN during the Nike Cup

A few weeks ago I was watching the Republic of Ireland and the US hack it out on ESPN during the Nike Cup. ESPN, America's top sports channel, enlivens its commentary booth by adding the unlikely ingredient of a Louth accent, that of Tommy Smith, a Wee County man transplanted to the Big Apple. For the occasion of the Irish game the other colour contributor in the booth was also Irish, although his name escapes me.

During a dull moment, and there were many of them, the lads took to waxing sentimental about the old country. They talked about the golden days of the Drums and the Shels and the Hoops, afternoons passed in the happy press of Glenmalure Park, days when you couldn't squeeze a nun's fart into Dalymount Park, so packed was the place. I sat there and thought did it really exist? Well, I'm not old enough to remember Drums but I know men who are willing to bore me with their reminiscences.

I can remember Milltown on those Sunday afternoons when Johnny van Giles was turning the Hoops into a European superpower and, whoa boy hand me my snuff would you, I can even remember a time when a trip to Dalymount was an exciting prospect. The intimacy of the place was astonishing. I remember being brought there once as a kid to see Manchester United play in a pre-season friendly. Cruel and unusual punishment for a Leeds fan. Intimate, but what a capacity. I'm the only person in the country who didn't see Liam Brady make his debut against the USSR on the day that Don Givens scored three goals. I was there when he scored four against Turkey mind you and there on lots of other afternoons pursuing that late phenomenon which Phillip Greene used to describe as the "School End roar". Or was it School End echo. I'm old. I forget.

I got big just as the League of Ireland began suffering from malnutrition and Dalymount took on the appearance of an old three-legged dog that nobody wanted. I'd wander along if Bohs had a good game or if UCD were playing there. UCD went through an eccentric patch a while back when they always played well against Bohs and the games were little festivals of goalscoring that were never to be missed.

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Mark Lawrenson has a story about homely old Dalymount and the famous occasion when the Italians visited and everyone had to hold their breath just so there would be enough room. The dressing rooms in Dalymount are of unequal size, indeed you'd have the ISPCA on your case if you suggested swinging a kitten in the smaller of the two. Anyway, instead of offending the Azzurri, the humble Irish retreated, caps in hand, to the broom cupboard while the Italians stretched their tanned limbs in the "king-size" facility. That was all long ago, of course, in a different country, and next weekend the FAI, the people who presided over the Lost Civilisation of Irish Soccer, find themselves contemplating the most grandiose plan imaginable: a stadium with a roof on it! Of course, "No Income Park" may yet become one of those rare follies that are refused planning permission despite being in the middle of bloody nowhere.

We are at a strange crossroads in Irish sporting life. If the FAI decide to press ahead with their plans, watching the costs creep up as they deal first with South Dublin County Council and then in all likelihood with An Bord Pleanala, it will seemingly not deter the Government one jot from pressing ahead with their own daft monument to themselves.

Spare us! Both plans are so imperfect that if you put all the brain power that conceived them into the head of a pigeon it would still fly backwards. What is the Government doing apart from getting into a "mine is bigger than yours" contest with Bernard O' Byrne?

I'm sure the veil of grateful discretion surrounding the involvement of PJ McManus is merely to preserve PJ's modesty as sport's leading philanthropist but surely it is undignified and unseemly for the Government to be building a national sporting landmark while in bed with private business. Surely the lottery and the accursed Celtic Tiger could cough up enough to look after our needs as regards stadiums.

And let's face it our needs are modest. All this talk of 80,000 seaters and retractable roofs and pitches that turn into pool tables and 24-hour-a-day entertainment centres is such nonsense. Both plans call for the creation of cold, outdated, 1970s-style stadia dropped into the darkness on the edge of town. Neither will be the sort of venue that one makes a last-minute decision to wander out to when there is a game on. Neither will be an enhancement to the city that hosts them.

Once again, and our pretty little face is blue from this, we ask what is wrong with getting together and repurchasing all that previously CPO'd land down on the docks? Forget about European Cup finals and the Gay Mitchell Pie in the Sky Games. Build a 50,000 seater with an option to enlarge it if ever needed. Give us something with a little life, a little character, a little common sense. Bernard and Bertie are playing Russian roulette with the stadium business. Somebody will end up with a hole in the head. Already the cost of No Income Park is creeping up to the extent that for it to get built for less than £100m the FAI council will have to mix the concrete themselves. The Bertie Bowl has its own characteristic bizarreness with its grandiose capacity, its heavy-handed impact on Abbotstown and the Government's apparently serene acceptance that the whole thing might end up being the State's gift to Rugby Union.

I notice that there's one slightly surreal thing that's hard to absorb after a year away in America. Despite scandal, ridicule and public demand the same loolahs are still running the place, dancing around telling us not to mind the cracks, we've never had it better.

Surely it's time for a grown-up to intervene. This modern world offers us very few excuses for getting together in a public place and celebrating together. Sport offers us that. The chance to have a forum, a dockland stadium that would open out the city a bit and enhance all our lives. It could be our gift to that much-abused concept: "the future of Dublin". It could help revive a sporting past that people still recall fondly.

But is anyone even listening. Hello? Hello? Well, don't say that nobody shouted stop.