Ian O'Riordan On Athletics:The news that Dublin will host the 2009 European Cross Country Championships is a real shot in the arm to all devotees of the sport, even if it's still two years from now.

Unlike with the World Cross Country, Ireland has nothing to fear at this level and the prospect of competing on home soil is probably tempting even some former runners, including myself, into chancing a comeback.

Those with real aspirations to making the Irish team face an exciting and challenging two years. In a way the race to make the starting line in Santry on December 13th, 2009, begins tomorrow with the Gerry Farnan cross-country, the traditional opener to the domestic season. The race was started 24 years ago as a memorial to the former Metro-St Brigid's coach, who died suddenly in 1982, just a few months before his star pupil, Eamonn Coghlan, ran 3:49.78 to break the world indoor record for the mile.

Farnan always understood the importance of cross-country running, even for the so-called track specialists like Coghlan, and the long, hard slog of making the Irish team in 2009 needs to start straight away. It's fitting, too, that tomorrow's race takes place around the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix Park, a trail Farnan renamed "Munich Hill" as a way of planting the Olympic dream in young Coghlan's mind.

Although Coghlan never had a great reputation for cross-country running he never shied away from it either. He ran the World Cross Country when it was staged in Limerick in 1979, finishing 70th the day John Treacy famously won the gold medal, with Coghlan also part of the second-placed Irish team. During his formative years at Villanova University he would frequently run the tough five-mile courses of the American east coast, under the equally avid cross-country enthusiast Jumbo Elliott.

For the young Irish athletes currently on scholarship at American universities the cross-country season is already coming to a climax. Even before Coghlan's time the debate over whether these athletes were better served by going away or staying at home raged, some seeing the US option as a death-knell for young talent, others seeing it as an absolute necessity. While that debate continues, it has lost much of its intensity as the actual numbers heading away have fallen significantly.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s the number of Irish athletes on scholarship in the US peaked at around 100, spread out across the vast country like pilgrims. Over the past decade this number has gradually been reducing and there are currently only 24 such athletes on scholarship, just six of whom are first-years or freshmen.

There are several reasons behind this decline, including the increasing appeal of staying at home.

A good illustration is Coghlan's own son, John, a highly talented prospect and reigning Irish schools and national junior cross-country champion. He declined a strong offer to follow his father's footsteps to Villanova, and instead has just started the scholarship programme at Dublin City University (DCU). A decade ago this would have been viewed as a massive gamble, but now it appears the bigger gamble is to follow the American scholarship route.

Incidentally, another first-year student at DCU this year is Seán Treacy, son of John - although despite his father's seemingly genetic talent for cross-country running, Seán, believe it or not, has discovered his talent is for rugby.

The success of DCU's athletics scholarship is based on the Field of Dreams theory - build it, and they'll come. Or in this case, they'll stay.

DCU now has 55 athletes living on campus, around 40 of whom are receiving scholarship assistance of some sort. One of the student residences has been completely taken over by athletes, and in many ways DCU now boasts the elite-athlete ethic and spirit that was once the preserve of the American universities.

One major difference does, however, remain, as the level and depth of cross-country competition between American universities is far ahead of what's offered at home.

Their season has been under way since early September and will culminate over the coming weeks with the regional and conference championships, and finally the NCAAs - known simply as "the show".

As well as the higher standard, America unquestionably offers some tougher cross-country courses. No scholarship athlete will ever forget the brutal Cemetery Hill of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, or the cruel Bear Cage of Franklin Park in Boston.

In case they need reminding, the worst thing about Cemetery Hill was not the ascent but the descent, which was roughly the equivalent of running down a cliff face.

Just how long this American scholarship tradition will remain is unclear. Universities are spreading their recruitment net to target, understandably enough, the young African distance runners, as well as those in Australia and New Zealand.

Budget pressure has increased as sports such as football, basketball and ice hockey take greater precedence, and so too has the issue of gender equality, which has made it more difficult again to offer a full scholarship to an Irish male student.

Still, some of Ireland's most talented young cross-country runners continue to pursue the American scholarship trial, like Waterford's David McCarthy, who attends Providence College, Cork's Ciarán O'Lionaird, who is at the University of Michigan, and Meath's Andrew Ledwith, at Iona College.

It will be interesting to see, come the European Cross Country in 2009, how many of those that make the Irish team are still US-based and how many will have come through DCU. We may be surprised at the split, or lack of it.