My Trip to the High Court

Since posting the letter (below), I've learned that one of the Athlone Towns has made a deal with Valeo Futbol Club, not with Irish Sea FC. Having gained far too much experience of guys working the system for their own benefit, I cannot take anyone at face value. That said, Valeo's founder Emelio Williams is an engaging and intelligent character.  He is a coach who says ''Adults have hijacked the impromptu, free-spirited play that usually is the domain of kids ...Right now, we suffer from over-coaching and too many adults in the system''. I love that. But Valeo is clearly a business, and its  charging Jamaicans up to US$295 for a day's training (with coaches connected to Sporting Lisbon and Atletico Madrid and camps using those famous clubs' names) seems pretty steep for a country where that amounts to around 12 days of an average wage - equivalent to around E1,250 here. It is likely that the deal happened through the Leal-Ganly (*) family connection.  ...

''It is extremely difficult to actually discover you're like a eunuch in the harem. You can watch it all but there is fuck all you can do'' - Alan Shatter, ex-Minister for Justice It is probably an oversimplification to say that football in Athlone was once a working class operation now appropriated by the middle class. But there is truth in it. Athlone Town used to play in the ramshackle St Mel's Park, properly situated, as any football centre should be, in what was not the richest part of town. Boys played on the street, knowing that they could be playing behind the wall for the Town in a few years' time. That vital connection was still there.  Outsiders don't get it, what football can mean to those who need it. It has nothing to do with 'academies' or 'pathways', managers or CEOs. That might be ok for a regimented game like rugby, not for football. Those ideas are really just tricks to distance the game from the people who made it, to ...