Dublin Dons are still a long shot

Last week it was the London Evening Standard running a story that the club would be here within World Cup. The Dublin Dons saga, it seems, simply won't go away.

Many people took last week's story from London that the move could not, under European law, be halted as confirmation that it was inevitable. Doubtless many others will now draw comfort from Joe Kinnear's current position. After all, a few months ago, U2 manager Paul McGuinness, a would-be Dublin Dons investor who has now lost interest, said Kinnear would be an integral part of any move here.

It has dragged on for months on end now. The National League-supporting Casandras on one side, the Dons-backing Eamonns on the other, both camps seeing everything in black and white, neither prepared to concede an ounce of uncertainty.

Well, not quite. A week ago the FAI's general secretary admitted what everybody really knows deep down: that when you embark on a long, drawn-out legal battle in the courts of Europe, little enough can be predicted with any confidence.

In feeling that they have a strong legal case, the FAI is in a minority. The bottom line is that the FAI feels it would become redundant if a foreign club, answerable to a foreign association, came here. Manchester United operating a string of schools of excellence, Celtic running the AUL, Newcastle buying up every club in the first division - there is little telling where it would all end. In terms of the National League, Wimbledon moving here may not actually prove nearly so damaging as some people are making out, but it is the wider implications that make it almost inevitable that the FAI will head for the courts of Europe if necessary.

However, just how sincerely Sam Hammam, and more importantly Bjorne Rune Gjelsten and Inge Kjell Rokke, really want to pursue a Dublin move is open to question. When the two Norweigans bought into the club, Hammam said the move here was merely one of several options under consideration. Gjelsten and Rokke are believed to prefer a move to west London, while Kinnear said as recently as Saturday that the important thing was to get away from Selhurst Park and "if Dublin's an option, and I'm not so sure that it is, Sam has to look at it". Hardly conclusive, eh.

Yet we are told by those who have supported the idea in the media that the move has long since been a done deal. The fact that we were at one point told by the same people that McGuinness and his colleagues were within a matter of days of buying a controlling interest in the club has been forgotten. Wimbledon were, not so long ago, to be playing in their temporary home of Lansdowne Road from the start of this season.

The current line is that a 75,000-seater stadium on the west side of Dublin will soon be home to the Dons. That line raises important questions. For a start, just what precisely is such an enormous ground required for? No English club has seriously pondered construction on such a scale. Not Manchester United, not Newcastle and definitely not Arsenal, who are willing to abandon Highbury, move to a green-field site somewhere the wrong side of the M25 in order a achieve something in the region of Old Trafford's 55,000 capacity.

There is a feeling across the water that Dublin will be the away trip to be on each season - making every second weekend the time for Dubliners to leave the city - but even Manchester United's supporters, visiting and Irish-based, will be hard pressed to fill such a stadium. It may well be fairly empty when Coventry, Barnsley or Crystal Palace arrive to play on a Saturday afternoon.

What, for that matter, happens such a huge investment if the club is relegated. Few people expected Middlesbrough to go down after spending £30 million on players, but they provided a reminder that there are few guarantees in football.

Bryan Robson's side may still sell 25,000 season tickets because the club is based in a place where the population have grown up supporting their club, but how many Dubliners will pay to see the Dons take on Stockport, Port Vale or Crewe? How many quality players will be prepared to play for the Dons in those circumstances?

If, in the long term, everything does go well, then the potential rewards for moving the club to Dublin are considerable, but the risks are far greater than finding a new location in west or south London. By the standards of London Premiership grounds, Selhurst Park is a nightmare to get to and yet Wimbledon's average league gate last season was around 16,000. A return to Merton or a switch to the vast suburbs in the west would boost this figure considerably, while providing the sort of safety net which would ensure the club's survival in the event of relegation.

There is, of course, a belief in some quarters that the entire project is being looked at not with the Premiership - which Manchester United's chairman Martin Edwards has said in recent weeks will be merely a sideshow anyway - but rather a European League in mind.

If that is the case then fair enough, nobody here can say that they weren't warned. The FAI have dropped vague hints about their own plans in this area, but if they accept that Dublin should be represented at such a level then it is up to them to come up with a realistic alternative to simply buying in a ready-made package from England.

If events of the last few months and the weekend's rumours are anything to go by, however, it would seem that the people who run Oslo's clubs have more to fear from Wimbledon just now than the likes of Pat Dolan or Ollie Byrne.