Whereas Jason Sherlock has told Tom Carr that he will not be signing for the New England Revolution soccer club this year, the Dublin football manager is aware that circumstances might change after the player's visit to the Revolution's Florida training camp.

"Who can legislate for what he is offered out there?," said Carr. "At the end of the day, Dublin isn't going to pay Jason Sherlock to play and if he's keen to pursue a full-time career in sport, that's his own business.

"He's going for 10 days to a training camp and has told me that nothing is going to happen this year. Jason wants to go over for the experience and to explore the soccer opportunity. I don't have any problem with that because we're happy with the commitment he's shown and we want a happy player, not someone who's wondering all the time about something else."

Sherlock was unavailable for comment on his precise plans - he departs today - but if he decides to pursue a full-time career in soccer, his absence will be keenly felt in Dublin. Ironically after two years of sometimes strained relations with former county manager Mickey Whelan, who resigned dramatically last November, Sherlock had re-dedicated himself to the cause after Carr's appointment. Sherlock's role in the Dublin panel has been complicated by his soccer scholarship with UCD and even back in 1995 when he made such an impact on the team's All-Ireland victory, then manager Pat O'Neill compromised wherever necessary to ensure the player's availability during the soccer season.

O'Neill was happy with the player's commitment within those constraints and picked him whenever he was able to make himself available. Since his appointment as manager in December, Carr has made a similar accommodation.

"I've spoken to Tony O'Neill (UCD's general manager) who has been very accommodating and worked out a suitable arrangement. Jason has given us every commitment so far and I believe this trip is an adventure for him as much as anything else. I have a gut feeling that he doesn't want to relocate to America. He likes the scene in Ireland."

In Boston some attention has been paid to the possibility of Sherlock combining a soccer career while also playing for Dublin in the championship although this is obviously unrealistic in the course of a soccer season lasting from March to September and featuring two or three matches a week.

"Obviously, if Jason were to come over here and set this league on fire, we'd try to accommodate him any way we could," said Brian O'Donovan, general manager of the New England Revolution (whose family is from Skibbereen). "I'm perhaps more mindful than most that he does have important commitments in another sport, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Carr is, however, quick to reject any chance of a hybrid career being pursued back and forth across the Atlantic. "There's no question of him combining a soccer career in the US with a championship season back home," he said.

Sherlock himself is quoted by a US journalist as commenting: "that situation isn't very clear right now".

The loss of so potentially important a player as Sherlock would be an unwelcome development for Carr and Dublin.

"Of the nine or 10 forwards or so that I have at my disposal," says Carr, "I can't say who's going to be the more important. But I do know that I want Jason Sherlock available and that the Dublin team will be the better for his being available. I like to think that he'll be able to assume the sort of role he played in 1995 when Dublin won the All-Ireland."

Soccer commitments will still intrude even if the 10-day trial comes to nothing. Dublin know that UCD have the services of the player for the first two weekends of the NFL resumption. On February 15th when Dublin play Monaghan, UCD are in action against Shamrock Rovers and on March 1st when the county face Tyrone, UCD play Kilkenny City.

Sherlock's desire to pursue a full-time career in sport has been no secret and his name was linked in the past with English Premiership clubs Liverpool and Newcastle United, although nothing came of either speculation. During the autumn of 1995, he was involved in some controversy when a department store signed him up for an advertising campaign in order to exploit his status as a teen-idol.

Changes in the GAA's rules governing amateurism would allow such work in certain circumstances but involvement with commercial agents has been ruled out which affects another controversy that flared up concerning the player. It was announced in 1995 that he was using the services of Kevin Moran as an agent and a year later signed for the former Dublin footballer and Ireland soccer player's sports agency Pro Active.

Carr was quick to express the hope yesterday that if Sherlock did commit himself to the GAA, that his marketing potential would be used for the benefit of both the association and the player himself.