LOCKER ROOM:Hate to say it but every league needs a team like Shamrock Rovers and, in recent weeks, their uncertain march to a first title in 16 years proved riveting, writes TOM HUMPHRIES

BRACE YOURSELF Bridie. This may come as a shock. That’s right, make a cup of tea. Take a seat and just wait for it. I’m going to say this once and I’m going to put it bluntly. Fact is that sometimes people write in to complain about this column. Not just editorial staff on the newspaper but what appears to be for all intents and purposes, readers.

Hush now with your gasps Bridie, hush. Breathe slowly.

Don’t get me wrong, as footballers like to say in their autobiographies, but it isn’t a deluge of complaint pouring out of postie’s groaning sack every morning. No, it’s just the epistles of a special and dedicated cadre of people who, (hmmmm) very like the editorial staff on the newspaper, seem incapable of happiness.

With all due respect, because readers are the life source and the wage payers, nothing pleases the bastards. Misplaced commas and apostrophes are among the smaller peas which, when placed underneath all the mattresses of excellence in this newspaper, keep these pettifogging nit-pickers awake. Bad cess to them all.

Other themes harped on constantly through this orchestrated campaign of hate are the barriers presented to the enjoyment of events like the Heino and the Ryder Cup by a few lines of light-hearted banter (or as they put it , “chip on the shoulder diatribes of small- minded begrudgery and bitterness”) which occasionally lurk on the back page. It makes you feel like the Grinch who stole Christmas.

Most wounding and hurtful though are the soccer crowd. Nothing pleases them. Being a fan of Leeds United (how the Champions League can call itself a top-level competition in our absence is beyond me) apparently requires one to ring a bell when entering the parlours of polite society so that people therein shalt know that you are unclean.

There are other cavils for which a man can be stoned to death. Expressing an admiration for any team, especially Manchester United, draws the slings and poison-tipped arrows from the disciples of other teams.

And there is a steady sub-theme through the correspondence to the effect that because this column mentions the League of Ireland only at times when Halley’s Comet is visible, therefore this column must hate and detest the League of Ireland.

Therefore it is especially dangerous and worrying to find oneself inviting a fatwah by giving in to the urge to write a column not just on the League of Ireland but a column which also expresses grudging admiration for Shamrock Rovers, whose last mention in dispatches was during the the Rovers v Thomas Davis War.

Anyway, long ago as a kid I formed an attachment to Bohs which faded after the Jackie Jameson era and which only resurfaces in times of triumph or disaster for the club when I find myself fretting ever so slightly about their fate. Have to confess too that for a while there in the late 1980s and early 1990s I took some pleasure in attending UCD games in Belfield Park, especially when the exotic Hungarian contingent were playing.

I can remember being in Glenmalure Park twice as a child, which doesn’t license me at all to wax on sentimental about it, and by the time Rovers had lost the place it didn’t seem remotely as big a tragedy as the surrender of Pisser Dignam’s field (Dalymount Park) would have been. In fact, it seemed kinda funny.

For quite a while my only interest in the league has been to urge a friend to write a book about a full season of the dramas therein because the anecdotes are of such a wonderful quality that a string of them arranged in book form would be a sure-fire hit. And I look out for the results from Bohs, Wexford Youths and UCD.

These past few weeks though I’ve been riveted by Shamrock Rovers’ slightly uncertain march to their first title in 16 years and have taken to watching it unfold on television. I succumbed to television because the steady stream of triumphalist texts from my good friend and Hoops devotee Comrade Eddie required the odd answer and rebuttal.

And there is another reason. Hate to say it but every league needs a team like Shamrock Rovers. I, for instance, bow to no reasonable man when it comes to the pleasure I take in seeing misfortune befall Manchester United on the pitch and in the board room, but they are a compulsive drama. Without them the entire play would lack balance.

So it is with Rovers. Their return to glory (possibly in the typically extravagant form of a double) is the best thing to have happened to the league in years.

Every league needs a big, successful, ebullient and exuberant club whose history entitles it to some swagger and bragging rights and whose distinctive strip evokes all sorts of memories and emotions. And however much it may pain people not raised in the faith of the Hoops, that club for the League of Ireland is Shamrock Rovers.

Recent novel champions and contenders who dissolved into little pools of financial mess almost immediately after achieving glory (or even Bohs, who almost folded after being booted out of Europe by some shepherds of the valley Welsh team this year) weren’t the model for anybody to aspire to.

Rovers, with their neat ground (Nuff said, it’s over. Enjoy!), their innovative ownership structure and the youth development schemes which people keep writing to me about, look like being the template to work off for the foreseeable future. And they have Gary Twigg, the sort of big star in a small picture that the league needs.

And hopefully both Rovers and the League will enjoy the benefits of a close rivalry with one or two other healthy teams. If Bohs continue to be in that bracket, all the better.

I didn’t think I had any real attachment left to League of Ireland football until I found myself with my head in my hands when Galway scored their late winner in Terryland Park two weeks ago.

And Friday night’s conclusion, with the Gypsies taking care of business at their end and Bray almost scuppering Rovers out at the seaside, was just as tense and just as much fun to watch on the box.

So there. That’s it. A breakthrough. League of Ireland written about with hardly any sneering done.

Come back next week for How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Heino.