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Whatever level of football you have played, I bet your desire was very much the same as mine. You wanted to be good.
All through my own career, from schoolboy days to the breakthrough to the professional ranks, the one sustaining and at the same time outstanding factor of motivation was the desire to play at the very highest level possible.
The first steps of this life ambition are usually taken in one's home town. It is every kid's dream to emulate their heroes. It is the first sporting ambition we have all held and it is also something that stays with us forever, irrespective of how our individual careers turn out.
However, this invariably lifelong romance generated at such an impressionable time in our lives does not, indeed cannot, prepare us for the harsh reality of the world of professional football. All too often, the game that is professional football is not the game we played as kids.
Football is in essence a kid's game, the game of the streets and parks all across the globe, it is a game that is performed best with a clear heart and an open mind. Over and above all the troubles that may surround the playing area, the beautiful game of football takes one into a world of excitement and imagination.
It elevates the spirit to a level that transcends the mundane. It can provide an escape from reality, a reality that all too often will alter dramatically the future of many of the young people kicking and chasing the leather sphere.
The simple fact is that professional football is a kid's game played
by adults. Sometimes, this manifests itself in petulance and self-importance. Not every professional footballer makes the transition from childhood to adulthood with grace and elegance.
Hence, our game is at times, subjected to degrees of boorish behaviour that display the love of self as opposed to the more innocent love of the game.
But it is I believe, fair to submit to you, that the vast majority of professional footballers plying their trade in every country around the world, generate an enormous amount of integrity that further embellishes the beauty of this game loved and revered by literally millions of people, young and old, in each and every one of those countries.
At its very best, professional football is a child's game played by adults, in a mature and responsible manner. Thus, the essential image cast in the direction of children everywhere offers a very acceptable role model for young people at a time when, I would suggest, it is most needed.
Shamrock Rovers, Drogheda United, Cork City and all eircom League of Ireland clubs have provided inspiration for generations of young Irish people. Even though the time for clubs like Cork City has been relatively short, it must be accepted that inspiration and imagination have little regard for time.
The consequence of this is that those most desirable qualities of imagination, trust and ambition have been fostered to a quite prodigious degree and one has only to gaze around venues like Turner's Cross, Dalymount Park and the others on any match evening to understand what these special clubs mean to the youth of the cities and counties of Ireland.
The great virtue of a football club is not so much its ability to help men succeed, although, of course, it can help them succeed. The great virtue of football lies in its ability to console men in the midst of failure, to encourage them to function even in the midst of despair because there is always another day, another game.
So Friday night in the eircom League of Ireland is about more, much more, than one single night's action. It is in fact a timeless event. An event and a night that will last as long as the imaginations it will help ignite.
