Loveable Sam is at it again

Loveable Sam was back at it again last week. The man who once kissed Dean Holdworth's backside as a reward for his goalscoring antics was once again kissing butt. Up and down the country officials from National League clubs were buttered up by a genuine player from across the water.

Most kept their heads down after the meetings but no matter. By Sunday one national paper was estimating that 17 of the 22 clubs were firmly behind the proposed relocation and that would be plenty to ensure that it went ahead.

Never mind that most have never formally adopted a position. Even Drogheda United, who are commonly regarded as the most sympathetic club in the land, don't see the point at this stage. For the purposes of this debate, in which endless claims to the contrary can simply be dismissed as subterfuge, the secret is to pick a number and stick to it. Once the seeds of doubt are sown there is plenty of time to attend to business back home before returning at some point in the future to reap the harvest.

Now Hammam may indeed end up moving his club to this country, although some of the country's best lawyers appear to be divided on the matter so there seems little point in second guessing the European Court of Justice.

But what has passed so far for a debate on the matter has been little short of a disgrace with much of the coverage - by and large a string of non-stories and opinion pieces dressed up as exclusives - clearly fed to the media by those keen to book their place on the bandwagon.

Verifiable facts are scarce in all this output, but a great many more than half a dozen clubs deny that they have given any indication of support to Hammam and not one has publicly come out in favour of the move. Reports that Dr Jim McDaid and Padraig Flynn were well disposed to the idea have been fiercely denied and repeated speculation that the international footballing bodies, UEFA and FIFA, are secretly enthusiastic has, on every occasion, been rubbished in Nyon and Zurich. At one stage, though, with the move even by the club's own estimates several years off, we had a national paper telling us that it was so certain that it was taking place that the club was already running the rule over the city's schools with a view to finding suitable places for the players' children. Thankfully, we decided against following that one up.

The laughable part is that to accept what all of these people and organisations say at face value appears to open oneself up to accusations of naivety. All of which would be a little amusing if it weren't for the fact that the people attempting to manipulate the situation have a vested interest in causing as much confusion and distrust as possible.

If the move never happens and Hammam opts to hawk his outfit around the farther reaches of south London instead, then any damage caused to the Irish game will be of little consequence. He will have bigger fish to fry and the damage done here will matter no more to him than any other business deal which, having been pursued for a while, didn't quite come off.

What, after all, could Hammam possibly care for the Irish game if he cares so little for the club he professes to love? What Hammam quite obviously loves is having a ticket to the big time. What Wimbledon Football Club really consists of - its fans and traditions - have counted for next to nothing over the past 18 months.

Its original home, Plough Lane, sold for millions to a supermarket chain by a holding company based in a tax haven, was the first thing to go. The Dons will stay in south London if the objections of wealthy Merton residents to one of their parks being built on can be overcome, or the offers from elsewhere in the borough are good enough. Otherwise, European Court permitting, it's a case of "Dublin here we come".

Well, at least it's becoming increasingly clear that the case will go to Europe. A few months ago Eamonn Dunphy was berating Bernard O'Byrne for ignorance of the situation after the FAI's General Secretary had suggested that Wimbledon would have to bring the association to court, but last week that's precisely what Hammam is reported as saying he intends to do.

The services of Jean-Louis Dupont, the man who represented Jean Marc Bosman in his ground-breaking case, have been retained and, as Pat Dolan made clear on Sunday, even if the FAI and every other club in the country decide to give way on the issue, then his club will make sure to provide the opposition through the courts.

"We'll fight it because if this happens there will be no St Patrick's Athletic," he said after his team and Shamrock Rovers had a bigger crowd to Inchicore than some of those managed by Wimbledon at Selhurst Park over the past few years. "If other clubs don't want to have full-time commercial officers, don't care about having full-time panels of players, don't want to have a league where players from St Pat's and Rovers and other clubs play for the national team like they do in Belgium or Scandinavia, then fine, let them take their bribe money."

The sort of figures being bandied about when these bribes - sorry, incentives - are talked of are currently in the vicinity of a £350,000. Many clubs hope that this is just an opening offer by Hammam and that an annual fee could be extracted, too.

The likelihood is, however, that a successful court action would cure the Dons chairman of any desire to hand over in excess of £7 million of his club's money to National League outfits, while a failed one would virtually seal the fate of the relocation, no matter how much money is in the pot.

If the court action is successful then, whatever about the rest of the league, the long-term ambitions of the big Dublin clubs will certainly be capped. The rest of the country may not be unaffected, however, in the Europe-wide farce that will surely follow. Club officials at Clydebank confirmed at the weekend that, aside from Dublin, Belfast was one of the options considered for their new home should Wimbledon successfully pave the way for others.

In a world where a club is no longer about its home, its place in the community or its relationship with the people who support it, but only its legal entitlement to play in some league or other, how long will we have to wait before other clubs, fallen on hard times, are relocated by owners who decide that life would be oh so much sweeter in the likes of Cork, Galway or even Drogheda.

Sounds stupid, eh? Well not to Clydebank apparently. Nor, make no mistake, to UEFA and FIFA which may want (who doesn't?) a representative from Dublin for whatever future versions of the Champions' League the sponsors and television people come up with. But not at the cost of the chaos which would follow a Wimbledon victory. Well, not when those two football authorities are talking on the phone to this paper anyway.