THE BACK PAGE pub in Phibsborough has humorously offered free pints to any Leinster fans on their way to Croke Park today who turn up carrying Brown Thomas shopping bags.
It is a nod to the picture from a few years ago where one Leinster fan was snapped holding a BT shopping bag while talking to another, as both cradled pints of Vitamin H.
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The boozer got their publicity out of the post, and maybe some extra business too, though the Dublin 7 establishment won’t be all that foreign to many rugby fans.
The number of Leinster scarves every second Saturday on the 39 from Ongar is proof positive that rugby fandom is spreading as quickly as the crowds at Gaelic football’s Leinster Championship disappear.
But the jokes will remain because it’s part of the Leinster identity as much as it’s part of the make-up of any rugby hater.
The Leinster team that’ll run out at GAA HQ this evening will be largely made up of southside boys, old pupils of St Michael’s, St Andrews and Blackrock.
But rather than bemoaning the success of rugby schools, football needs to start stealing their ideas.
FAI assistant director of football Shane Robinson said as much last week when he stated that football might have the “perfect model that is staring us in the face”.
Robinson pointed out how three quarters of the current Ireland Under-15 squad are Dublin-based and playing for a small number of clubs. The FAI’s presentation last week also highlighted how tough it is for those players to make the next step.
Last season, there were just nine players aged 18 or under training full-time, and a further 29 on part-time contracts.
Not everyone can or wants to go full-time at that age. That is why stealing ideas from rugby schools is important.
It’s already happening, too.
Mason Melia is the most-talked-about 16-year-old in Ireland right now and St Pat’s and his school work hard to make sure he gets the best of both worlds.
Saints boss Jon Daly said: “He’s ready for first-team football because he’s been training with the group full-time for the last year.
“There is schooling that comes into it. It does help when you are in full time.”
At Shamrock Rovers, Conan Noonan reckons training before and after school at Under-15 level under Damien Duff paid off for him and he’s in the first team now.
Hoops set up their own transition year so that the likes of Freddie Turley — currently on loan at Bray Wanderers where is a regular at 17 — could train full-time.
Around the league, clubs have worked with schools so the talented players can train more often and fulfil their potential.
We’re still some way from ‘football school’ becoming a byword for a production line.
The sooner it happens, the sooner the back pages are filled with Irish success stories, instead of The Back Page being filled with Brown Thomas-bag-toting posh boys.
