LockerRoom: Romantic Ireland is dead and gone. No doubt about it. It's buried in the grave somewhere beneath the Gay Mitchell Dublin Olympic Wheeze. All we have to hope for now is that the Olympic nabobs will introduce a Fumbling (Greasy Till, Heavyweight Category) discipline to future Olympiads. Then the glory days are back.

It's a funny thing. There we were in Singapore the other day and London had just won the 2012 Games - and nobody was talking about money. We felt uncomfortable and out of our depth. English hacks, hardened folk and London lobbyists, sports mercenaries many of them, were all talking about what the London Olympics meant.

We were looking them in the eye, saying to them, listen, the vote is over, you can drop the act. It's me you're talking too. What are you going to do? Turn the house into a B&B? Snarl a quickie book deal? Get the kids out selling knock-off T-shirts? You've hit the jackpot here lads, start grabbing with both hands. C'mon man, pull yourself together. Think.

They were too sappy to get it of course. Too busy blubbering. To them, it meant the kids. The man from the Evening Standard was misty-eyed. His five-year-old son was on his mind. The Olympics would be a permanent inspiration. His city had created something to hand on to five-year-olds, to fill their little imaginations with, a chance to soak them in the glory of sport.

The man from the Evening Standard wasn't alone. There was sobbing and weeping everywhere. We walked away, shaking our head slowly. Appalled. We'd thought (Irish, you see. Cycnicism is a reflex.) that the youth angle which London peddled for the past year was a scam, a little ruse to tickle the egos of the big kahunas in the IOC. We thought that once the green light flashed there'd be a million Cockney voices shouting "Okay, where's mine, baby?"

We knew deep down from our loopy Irish discussions on hosting an Olympics (!!!) that the only reason for taking the Games into your home was to see which of our native bandits could make off with the most money. We knew that, in this deep down way, we had a fuller understanding than most about the true meaning of Olympism.

The Olympics mean rows and arguments, home-grown drug cheats, duelling sports administrators and bitter post mortems. The Olympics for us mean a cheat coming third in a poll of greatest Irishwomen and a solid-gold hero like Sonia coming nowhere. Olé! Olé! Olé! , says the greatest little sporting nation.

But here were the English, and they were telling us that it wasn't about gathering as much sugar as their big old pockets would hold. No! It wasn't about hotel room shakedowns. It wasn't about the quick ripoff and the long con. It was about the kids! It was about a legacy! It was about giving a chance to another generation! It was about the quality of their lives!

Yuck! Imagine our embarrassment standing there before our Blighty colleagues. We knew no way to respond to their troubling simplemindedness. We couldn't formulate the right sentences to match their little emotions and aspirations. We did our best to buck them up, promising that everyone would do well out of this one, that some people would be making a pretty penny and others would be making more than that. We talked about slices of the action and how the smart boys would be figuring out now how to get a piece.

In the end we despaired and went to bed. All evening we'd felt our leprous cynicism driving people away. Maybe it was us who were wrong.

Nope. When we got back to the land of Michelle and Cian and the National Aquatic Centre we felt right at ease again. It was then that we realised Dublin had indeed won the Games. Or the right to a decent grab at the cash action.

We might, we were told, start building some facilities! Don't be alarmed. Not for our own kids, who've depended on the volunteerism of the GAA and soccer and rugby for all these generations; we might build them because we might be able to stand in the doorway under the dim light and hoist our skirts a little and attract some mugs to come here. "Hey honey, doing a little business?"

"Teams will be coming here to acclimatise and to train," said John O'Donoghue (acclimatise? Oh yeah!) "provided we have the facilities." Phew. A sporting vision for our people.

And things are so convenient as they "acclimatise" (Irish Olympic Training Camp Rain Jackets just €125, acclimatise quick or they'll be twice that tomorrow). We have, per the minister, a running track in Castleisland and some tennis courts in Glasnevin, plus a lake in Inniscara, Co Cork. The words "unrivalled" and "world-class" weren't used but they were implied.

You begin to see that the word acclimatise applies not actually to climate but to getting used to our little Irish ways.

Those ritual purveyors of excellent value, the Irish Hotels Federation, weighed in with the romantic view that the London Olympics were the "next best thing to hosting them ourselves". The London Games offer a "fantastic opportunity to market Ireland as a prime destination". Tourism Ireland planned to "leverage every benefit" from London's Games.

Oh we'll be making whoopee alright. We'll be leveraging whoopee in fact. The Games going to London will be better than the Games going to Dublin. Those mugs in the hotel trade in London agreed two years back to a mandatory, low-price structure during the Games. We're not restricted in that way! Oh no. Come and acclimatise, suckers.

There is a wonderful opportunity here, if we are careful. So far the talk of teams coming here has centred on the Germans and the Scandinavians, who couldn't possibly acclimatise in their own countries with their pathetic facilities and who are all white and quite rich. That's what we want.

We have to be on our guard against impoverished African and Asian teams coming here just to cash in and enjoy our wonderful, multi-ethnic way of life. That's not what the Great Irish Dream is about. No huddled masses, thanks all the same. Send us your wealthy whiteys.

We have to be cool. While Britain's sports minister sissie, Tessa Jowell, spoke emotionally about handing the torch on to the next generation, we weren't letting the grass grow under our feet. Bertie (now, Haughey would have been in Singapore, celebrating conspicuously; shame on you lad) let himself down a bit with mention of our own athletes, but found the right note with talk of our "excellent competition and training facilities, not just for our own athletes . . ."

We're the only clear-eyed people about. The French are in a strop. The Scots and the Welsh just seem happy for London.

We're the only ones who know that it's all about what the Olympics can do for us. And let's face it, the Olympics owe us. We're the ones who made Sonia strip off before the start of a major race and change her brand of gear. We gave them Michelle. We gave them Cian. We built the symbol of our nation, the cracking, leaking, crumbling Aquatic Centre. We hosted the opening stages of the most memorably drug-tainted Tour de France in history (and a pretty penny we all made too).

Here's to the leveraging. Here's to the whoopee - but let's have some vision too. I think with a running track in Castleisland and some tennis courts in Glasnevin we should not be selling ourselves cheaply. Before we dig poor little London out of a hole, let's note that we may never have a better chance to get the Six Counties back.

That's just the start of the bargaining. What about Rockall? What about a deal on fishing quotas? And get rid of Sellafield and Big Brother too. Then we might talk.

The Games are about greed and cheating and marketing and retailing and faux nationalism and the ching ching and the bling bling. London has lost sight of that vision. It is up to us to rescue the spirit of modern Olympism.