LockerRoom: First of the Resolutions Columns or Things That This Column Will Be Doing in 2005.

In an era when even Premiership stars aspire to make the wages of Waterford-based PR consultants LockerRoom will be introducing its own range of PR services at bargain basement rates. Prices will range from €300 (The Kindly Mention) to €900 (The Entire Column). For a mere €300 you could have the (literally) dozens of people who read this column come across a paragraph (late in the piece, introductory paragraphs are priced separately) reading that "The Minister/ The Inimitable (Your Name Here) was in typically sparkling/robust/sexy form last week when we ran into each other at the annual kickboxing/bungee jumping/chess meet for the homeless/the gifted/the well to do in (location of your choice)".

Or for €900, the Deluxe Suck Up, previously only available to editors and Dublin GAA stars. A flattering, crawling, brown-nosing profile that you can feign surprise and embarrassment over should anyone draw your attention to it. Guaranteed to include phrases such as "The finest human being I have known", "Unimpeachable integrity", "Boulevardier on five continents", "dazzling intellect" and "shapely bosom".

Things being how they are, this column shall also be entering into a number of endorsement deals with the intention of more fully exploiting the author's image rights. In future the byline picture at the top of this column will depict the author lustily enjoying a draught from a bottle of a healthy and refreshing isotonic sports drink which, incidentally, would promote fast recovery for regular readers.

Furthermore, the author enjoys certain rights of access at big GAA events and is at liberty to repeatedly wander across the background (foreground intrusions will cost extra) conspicuously swigging from a bottle of the same healthy and refreshing isotonic sports drink while players are being interviewed by RTÉ television after games or while a selector is being interviewed at half-time in big live games.

The author is prepared to be seen sucking from a giant-sized bottle for maximum product exposure. For an extra consideration the author will pause in the background, look admiringly down at the bottle from which he has just drunk and then bolt out of shot at maximum speed (providing width of shot is no greater than five yards.) In all byline photos for the next few years the author shall also appear wearing a jersey with his personal sponsors name (a private health spa) emblazoned on the chest.

Further discreet product placement opportunities are available within the text of the column. For instance, your ailing product might just need the sort of sales boost which would naturally come from The Kindly Mention (see above) or from repeated use of your advertising slogan, a discreet option which experts claim could subliminally prompt consumer interest.

(Eg. "It's a quare name but great stuff" was the first thought of almost all those left breathless by last night's crunch (and epic) World Cup qualifier in Paris. Indeed. Not unlike some massively worthwhile consumer product, soccer is actually a "quare name. " But this? This was also "great stuff.")

Speaking of Paris, this column intends to use more classy French phrases over the coming year. This is after all a classy paper and the last remaining broadsheet in the western hemisphere. We have standards. Rather than merely say that it occurred to me that a particular side were doomed to be relegated this column may note with a certain mal du siecle (worldweariness, so the book says) that il se fit jour dans mon esprit que les blancs etaient terminée (It dawned on me that Leeds were shagged - but 47 per cent more classy).

If Bono grew up on the seventh floor of the Ballymun towers and Colin Farrell of Castleknock was reared to have a mouth on him like a dockside pimp with gout and personnel problems, this column hereby claims the right to cut and paste its own background to suit the occasion. Indeed, this column may eventually be renamed "All the Great Sporting Events of the Seventies and How They Happened to Me".

A few examples . . . It was the late spring of '74 and I was having another bad night kicking the frees. This time there were no excuses. The championship was around the corner and with my knee giving me trouble the free-taking was about all I had to offer.

Kevin Heffernan approached me. "It's not working out for you is it," he said. "We're bunched for a free-taker." I thought for moment and then said "have you thought about Jimmy Keaveney? I think you should. Forget about me. You guys can manage without me. I'm only 10 years old after all."

Kevin stood for a minute and finally said "well, I suppose you were right about the possibilities of the handpass and the whole fitness thing . . . " And thus I stepped quietly out of the Dublin scene and Jimmy, I'm glad to say, did a fantastic job. I genuinely doubt if I would have done any better.

Or . . . My tribe were noble warriors and part of the experience of our growing up was to be lined up with all the other boys of your own age in descending order of size. The smallest boy would be made to fight the biggest boy till the death. I was small back then and was pitched in against a much feared giant of a lad from a neighbouring family. To everybody's surprise I let him blow himself out against me absorbing his stones, arrows and spearheads before shaking myself into life and finishing him off quickly. Imagine my surprise not long after the epic battle when a tall , dark stranger grabbed me by the wrist and said "I like your tactics sonny, what do you call that technique?" I gazed at his handsome face. "Rope-a-dope, sir." The Kinshasa of my childhood was as you can tell a very different place than it is today. I later learned that the stranger's name was Muhammad Ali.

Furthermore, this column shall as of midnight on the December 31st cease to be a vehicle for cynicism and scepticism. Instead, the column shall be aligning itself with The Scorn Not Their Simplicity School of Sports Journalism. Great men, great women, great deeds. Those shall be our themes. And expressions of worry and disapprobation about those who would do down great heroes. We shall believe all excuses in relation to drug taking. We crashed (Kenteris and Thanou). Too much sex sent my testosterone crazy (Denis Mitchell). It's a world-wide conspiracy (Michelle de Bruin). I was having a real bad day and people were saying hey, why the long face? And rather than bring everyone down I thought I'll just have one. What harm could it do? (Waterford Crystal).

Speaking of Mr Kenteris, the accident prone Greek god was in riotous form when we chanced upon him the other week while quietly organising a celebrity online track meet for athletically gifted street children in Calcutta. "Vorsprung durch technik," he quipped sexily with a warm but dazzlingly intellectual smile when asked if he wasn't actually the finest human being we have met. Then the computer crashed. Should have bought Dell, we said. They're great . . .

Note - Since his childhood years teaching the rudiments of swing and ball address to a friend called Vijay Singh the author of The Above Column has used the Sexy Beast range of personal grooming products for men. "For the Tiger in You. Grrrrr."