Tommy Martin: Can Tolka Park be saved from the bulldozers?

It wasn’t that long ago it seemed in the middle of things in Irish football. The first all-seated League of Ireland ground, home to a successful team, big European nights. Underage internationals were played there and British clubs played pre-season friendlies there too.

Refurbishing Tolka Park to Uefa category 3 standard and building a community centre with gym, crèche, café, and meeting facilities has been proposed to give Shelbourne’s historic stadium a new lease of life. Picture: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

“In a perfect world,” Roger Kahn wrote in the classic baseball book The Boys of Summer, “The Dodgers would have remained in Brooklyn and Los Angeles would have gotten the Mets.”

There was outrage when the Dodgers were ripped from their spiritual home in 1958; a little less in 2016 when Shelbourne FC announced that they’d be bunking in with Bohemians at the new, redeveloped Dalymount Park.