SPORTING PASSIONS:Eddie Jordan reveals the fun to be had from things with the same initial - Coventry, Celtic, Cheltenham, caddying, writes Mark Rodden

WHEN I WAS at school in Synge Street we were barred from playing soccer but every Sunday morning I kitted out for Herberton United. My father played for Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers so soccer was in the family and I liked Gaelic because of the school.

At the time I was a fanatical Shamrock Rovers fan and when I moved to England and I was at Silverstone, a man who sponsored me was the vice-president of Coventry City.

I used to go to the football on Saturday afternoon when Jimmy Hill was the manager there and then we'd go to see Coventry Bees in the evening's speedway. If Coventry were playing Cradley Heath in a speedway race there'd be more at that than there would be at the football. But that was a day of total excitement. You got the best of two absolutely fantastic sporting occasions in the one day.

As time went on, Dermot Desmond asked me to join him and a few others at Celtic and I took an equity position there. My London home is next door to Chelsea so all the Cs - Coventry, Chelsea and Celtic - I go to their games.

It's hard not to be passionate about Celtic. There's such an unbelievable atmosphere up there. It's like a cauldron and a cacophony of noise and it's just fantastic. It's probably the best-supported club in the entire world in volume, in sound, in excitement and in passion. There's something more than a football club there.

The Old Firm games are fantastic. The bile and the resentment between supporters can be particularly vociferous on the day because they're very passionate. But I've been welcomed in Ibrox just as much as I have been in Celtic Park. David Murray, the chairman of Rangers, has always been a big motor-racing fan and he and David Coulthard are strong pals. It's interesting to go to Ibrox because there's no partition between the director's box and normal punters and the abuse that gets hurled at me - they knowing that I'm a Celtic fan - can be quite spectacular.

The memories that stand out for me are obviously Coventry winning the FA Cup in 1987. But in recent years with Celtic I was involved directly after Dermot Desmond told me that Martin O'Neill had spoken to him privately about his wife not being well and he was thinking of asking Dermot to look around for another manager.

I set the meeting up with Dermot and Gordon Strachan. I knew Strachan very well through Coventry and if you recall he went on to manage Southampton, who were in the Premiership at the time. He got them to eighth in the league, which was phenomenal for the resources they had, and then he had resigned.

So I rang him up and I said: "Listen, Strach, this sounds a bit bizarre but would you have any interest in looking at a position at Celtic?" He said he wouldn't while Martin was there and I said: "Maybe you'd better come up and have a chat with us." I introduced Dermot to him at Cheltenham three years ago. Everyone discussed it openly after that, we spoke to Martin, and Strachan agreed to take the job.

Celtic have qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League on a couple of occasions now and they're a team that are massively disadvantaged by being in Scotland. So I think they have performed way above their weight in terms of ability and it's fantastic to see. I'm sure a lot of the points that they get are based on the crowd participation, more than anywhere else.

I live next door to Paul McGinley and I caddied for Paul the year he won the Volvo Masters. He finished runner-up in the World Matchplay at Wentworth and he finished third in the Order of Merit. That was a major year for Paul and I was very pleased that I was part of that.

I had to spend some time at it because there's no point just putting the bag on your shoulder - you need to be sure that you can do the same things as they (the regular caddies) were doing. In other words, being very strict on the yardage and very strict about the mentality going into an event.

I loved it because it's not dissimilar to any sport in how you mentally prepare for a major occasion or a competition.

Anyone who feels that these players, in any category of any sport, just merely pitch up and do what they need to do is talking nonsense.

I still have horses with Mouse Morris because I think he's an outstanding horseman and, probably more importantly, he's an outstanding person. I had a great year with him with Rostropovich and I have a couple of young horses that I'm quite certain will feature prominently in Cheltenham next year. The fact we have decent horses coming through that Mouse has great regard for gives me great encouragement that we're going to have some fun days during the year ahead.