Lisselton offer jobs for the boys

SOMETIMES life can yoke the most disparate events together. In the week Wayne Rooney found a home at Manchester United for over £50,000 per week eagle-eyed readers may have noticed an intriguing advertisement in the Irish Examiner yesterday.

It read: "soccer players wanted for top junior club; jobs and accommodation provided".

Intrigued? So were we, and took some time out from the Rooneymania to ring the number provided.

Mike Higgins was happy to expand on the offer: "The players we get in will have a choice of free accommodation, either in an apartment or a hotel.

"As for the work, we'll sort out jobs in building, painting, whatever line those players are in."

Higgins is assistant manager of Lisselton Rovers' first team, stars of the Kerry league ("We're based between Listowel and Ballybunion and we've been on the go for about 15 years").

Lisselton are well known in Kingdom soccer circles after an impressive rise through the grades; the club cruised from Division 4 of the Kerry District League to the Premier League in a mere five years. However, though firmly established in top flight soccer in Kerry, recruitment has become a live issue for the club.

This news doesn't herald a return to the bad old days of the 1980s, when rural sports clubs of all types could resign themselves to waving goodbye to its best prospects as they headed for America or Britain seem to have passed. Lisselton's best are moving on but it's not a matter of emigration.

"Last year we got to the last 16 of the FAI Junior Cup before losing to Janesboro. While our youth team got to the last eight of the FAI Youth Cup. The problem for us is that our players get spotted by bigger clubs during those cup runs and move on."

The problem for Higgins is that those bigger clubs aren't the cash-rich giants of the English professional game, but Irish outfits.

Consequentially Lisselton don't enjoy the kind of pay-off that would result from a player sale to even a Nationwide League outfit. Their players are heading for brighter lights but the wattage involved is still modest.

Higgins outlines the losses: "For example, David Conway left us to play for Limerick City and Chris Kerins also went on to play in the Eircom League with St. Pats, though he's injured at the moment. Waterford United were interested in taking Stephen Conway, even though he's only a youth player."

The loss of Conway and Kerins certainly left a hole in the Lisselton midfield and the Kerry side are keen to get some experienced players in to add balance to the team and leaven the promising crop soon to come from that youth team. Hence the advert.

Higgins acknowledges that if Lisselton succeed in attracting players the whole cycle may repeat itself.

"Anyone we get in will be helping us," said Higgins, "But they'll also be helping themselves, because they'll get noticed."

Lisselton's initiative is admirable. Yesterday was probably too early to expect responses, but Higgins was optimistic about both the advert and the club's prospects for the season ahead.

That perennial wish of the dedicated, involved clubman will be familiar to many readers; maybe those who concentrated on the young Liverpudlian who switched clubs this week could learn something from it.