I am on my way to Sligo for tonight's big ‘Clash of Reds’. The arrival of the league leaders in town should ensure a big crowd.
I like Sligo, probably because one is always assured of passion on and off the park whenever one visits The Showgrounds.
I remember my first visit very well indeed. I was 18 or 19 years of age and playing centre-forward for Shamrock Rovers. It was one of my early games for the Hoops and it was important that I proved I could step up to the mark.
Manager Liam Touhy informed me on the train that Sligo Rovers always guaranteed two things for visiting players, one was that football would be played and the other was that you had to earn the right to play that football.
I quickly learned the wisdom of his words.
The game was frenetic, but in a good way. It was hard and tough but not dirty and rough. I acquitted myself well and it was a big step in my career. I had joined a team at Milltown that contained five or six Irish Internationals.
Every team raised their game against Rovers. Sligo showed me on that dark, damp Sunday afternoon in a jam-packed Showgrounds that if I was going to be a Rovers player, I had to be able to replicate the commitment of the opposition and perform in the accustomed style of Shamrock Rovers.
Perhaps, partly because that afternoon created such an impression on my career, I have always found it easy to engender a specific sense of eagerness and a heightened sense of anticipation on all my further engagements out West.
One has to understand the added dimension that Sligo Rovers Football Club has always supplied to League of Ireland football. The club's unique penchant towards employing full-time players bred two indigenous traits that have almost always impressed.
The determination to import foreign players down the years, many of whom hugely enhanced both club and league, appealed to the imagination of thousands of supporters right around the country.
Although it must also be stated that they have added many, many miles on to the careers of journeymen footballers who were perhaps journeyed-out by the time they slipped on the red shirt.
Further emphasising this tradition is the Sligo supporter. The reality of footballers of all colours, shapes, sizes and accents assimilating themselves into one of the most social of Irish towns, procured a united front that reminds me in many ways of small English towns where the local football team becomes the indispensable focus of the lives of many of the inhabitants.
This, in my humble opinion, is the quintessence that lies at the very heart of professional football.
So working alongside another talented Sligoman, Adrian Eames, for RTÉ Radio on this evening's game, will not only be pleasurable but also indicative of much that I hold dear about the eircom League of Ireland.
The further ramifications of Sligo Rovers' attitude to full-time football is that it has now been matched by many clubs as we enter this most exciting phase in Irish football.
However, Sligo, just like all the other very ambitious clubs, must succeed in their desire to make their club self sufficient. The full-time scenario is the way forward and yet the future is still somewhat uncertain, but is that not the main attraction of professional sport.
The belief to overcome seemingly insurmountable problems is the elixir of youth to all successful people, whatever their business.
A new football magazine was unveiled this week. Under the name ONSIDE, this bi-monthly offering is almost exclusively geared towards eircom League football.
The MNS show is improving week-after-week and is capable of providing Irish professional football with the added public profile that it needs to help broaden its appeal to those with only a peripheral interest in domestic professional football.
ONSIDE will be available at your club shop and at all venues on every matchday.
D Richardson.
