Unless you're a member of the multi-million millionaires' club at the topof the English Premiership, a life in soccer can deliver more downs thanups. With the collapse of ITV Digital, clubs in the lower English divisionsare facing a gloomy future, with many forced to cut costs by sheddingplayers.Harry Browne has been to DCU to check out a new initiative aiming to close the narrow gap between success and failure for young Irish players.
How do you deal with a guy coming up to you in a nightclub and calling you a "reject"? The tabloids are regularly filled with tales of marginalised young footballers who deal with such public taunting all-too-emotionally. But for a pair of sports-science undergraduates at Dublin City University (DCU), the question is becoming literally academic.
That's because as soon as students Daragh Sheridan (23) and Neil Coleman (20) finish exams later this month, they'll turn into administrators themselves -even employing some of their own lecturers - for a unique new course aimed at providing help to the "rejects", players who have recently been released by their British clubs.
On June 10th, poignantly in the midst of the World Cup, 15 young men, of roughly 19 to 21 years of age, will start a six-week residential programme by descending into DCU's human-performance laboratory XB21. If the location sounds a bit futuristic, let's hope that's an omen, and that the future for such players is markedly different from the history of neglect and career-drift.
Course co-ordinator Daragh Sheridan knows what he's talking about: at 19, he was released, on St Patrick's Day 1998, by Aston Villa. Since then, he has struggled to combine playing for his hometown club, Galway United, with pursuing his studies - first a part-time sports management diploma at UCD, then the DCU degree course - all the while teaching himself to cope with the nightclub questions.
In July 1999, he heard that Eoin Hand (Jack Charlton's predecessor as Irish manager) had been appointed career-guidance officer at the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). "I wrote to Eoin and said 'something needs to be done'." The first bit of Sheridan's "something" is this new REAP programme. REAP stands for Reinvention, Education, Appraisal, Preparation, and it only sounds corny until you've heard the details. REAP assumes its participants want to keep playing soccer at some level, and so it has three elements at its core: physical analysis and training, career guidance and computer skills.
On an average day they might be out on the pitch at 8.30 a.m., then in the computer lab, earning an European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), all afternoon; in between they'll have talks and individualised sessions about everything from diet and personal motivation to VEC courses and CV preparation. (The course staff includes a guidance counsellor and a psychologist.) And it will all be aided by technology that can analyse everything from their cardiovascular performance to their body language. Much effort will be made to identify the footballing qualities that can be transferred to other careers. (Imagine lots of young sales reps confidently regaling customers with yarns about their days at Sunderland.) Finally, the timing of the course maximises the players' chances of getting super-fit for the start of the Eircom League season in July and the chance of a part-time contract with an Irish club - or even, yes, going back to England.
HAND says: "If we get them to refocus and get enthusiastic about themselves, that's a big part of it." However well or badly it actually works in practice, the existence of REAP is in itself a boon. Last February, Sheridan and Coleman went to Lilleshall in England, for a Premiership "exit programme" for young players just being released from their clubs.
It was a chance for the footballers to be seen by everyone from lower-division scouts to US-college recruiters, but for a few Irish lads the presentation on REAP offered the most liberating way out.
Says Sheridan: "One player told me there, 'I rang my mam straightaway and she was delighted'. These guys have got a very good excuse to come home now."
Seamus Crowe (21) was a contemporary of Robbie Keane at Wolverhampton Wanderers, the club that let him go before last Christmas. He's at home now in Galway, having done a gym-instruction diploma in the meantime. "I can't explain how good it is that REAP is there."
Crowe is typical in having gone to England at 16 with just a Junior Cert. "At Wolves I wasn't really interested in the education side. I believe it's improved since, but when I started it felt like it was there just for the sake of being there - there were only two subjects, business studies and leisure and tourism."
In recent years, the English players' union, the Professional Footballers Association (PFA), has helped ensure that more than lip-service is played to young players' education, but according to Eoin Hand the "academies" still face hostility at a few top clubs. Even the existence of REAP has been tough enough to disseminate - he cites a big Nationwide League division-one club where a recently-released Irish player had heard nothing about it, despite copious efforts from the FAI and PFA. "They're telling a player they're letting him go, and they won't even take the time and trouble to stick a brochure up on the noticeboard."
DCU is providing facilities for REAP, through the agency and enthusiasm of the likes of Dr Niall Moyna, senior sports-science lecturer. But the €60,000 funding is coming entirely from the FAI (two-thirds) and the PFA (one-third). EU "Leonardo" funding will be sought for an expanded version of this course, which can be a template for international best-practice, but for now everyone agrees that it is best for soccer itself to take responsibility for REAP.
Hand is delighted with REAP, but likens it to a late "Elastoplast" applied to a problem that needs addressing more holistically.
In Ireland, he says, we're still dealing with a legacy of soccer's virtually "banning" from the education system.
"The clubs were like an underground-cell movement," he says. "Because football happened outside the education system, there's a conflict between the education system and football."
It's not just the Britain-bound players who leave school after Junior Cert, but most Irish-based footballers too, says Hand - "although this has improved an awful lot in recent years".
SEAMUS CROWE, meanwhile, looks forward to REAP and a career in personal training or PE teaching: "I've been a footballer. Now I want to be something else for a while."
He reckons now is better than eight years from now, after a career in Britain's lower leagues.
He's not looking for sympathy either: "I've got an apartment over in England, and the rental income goes straight into an account there. I've got great experience. How many 21-year-olds can say that?"
Neil Coleman noted the special credibility Sheridan brings to REAP at previous meetings with players. "They're hugely receptive to it because Daragh is a former player. You can see their heads go up when he's talking."
Meanwhile, Sheridan's own nightclub strategy now involves engaging the taunter in conversation about his rich experience of having played the game at a high level. "It's only now I'm getting proud of what I've achieved."
