Money moves as unstoppably as the tides and all the poor high-minded divils who hoped to keep Wimbledon from our shores are about to get their feet wet. Football decided long ago that it was a business and not a sport. The price it pays is that the courts view it that way too.

It's not a pleasant business to watch. From the selling out of a small, but loyal support in London, to the invited-audience-only press briefings in Dublin, from the loadsamoney encounters with hard-pressed national league owners, to the patronising assurances that it will be all for the good of the poor little country, the move has the cheap scent of spivishness about it.

If these people would stop pretending that they are humanitarians doing us all a favour and just announce that this is an opportunity for a few people to make a whole lot of money quick, then it would be easier to respect the forces behind the Wimbledubs.

Hitherto, the argument has centred on whether or not Wimbledon would be allowed relocate. This column, with a pessimism founded mainly on ignorance, has always assumed that they would be allowed to move. Others have argued that if only the FAI or Europe or somebody would put a finger in the dyke, it would all stop there and then.

It won't. Wimbledon will come. Great will be the gnashing of teeth and great too will be the wave of excitement. Even as somebody who would vote against their arrival, this column can sense the buzz that regular big-time soccer would bring about both in the sports departments of newspapers and in the popular imagination.

Therein lies the problem. As a phenomenon, Wimbledon will swamp us. We will have to get used to the presence of several thousand drunken soccer yobs in our city every second weekend. We must become accustomed to the accelerated tabloidisation of our culture when every player's tryst in Rumours, or wherever, is breathlessly reported as news.

Irish kids will still go to clubs in Britain where the youth leagues and reserve leagues will still be played. The Wimbledubs will have youth teams and reserve teams with an Irish flavour (eventually, when existing contracts expire) and probably a big school of excellence, but you are being fooled if you believe that they shall be the salvation of Irish soccer. When they have 75,000 rabid fans in the house and some greedy shareholders on the phone, the Wimbledubs will always splash for the Italian striker, rather than give the kid from Waterford or Galway a chance.

The chances on offer will be limited, but that won't stop the Wimbledubs from colonising the imagination of every schoolboy in the country. Hurling, football, rugby and other sports will all suffer.

There will be diehards who will announce that they wouldn't cross the road to see that shower, but the Wimbledubs can afford to ignore them entirely. There are those who cackle about what will happen if the Wimbledubs are relegated. If it doesn't happen before they get to Dublin, it will never happen. By the time they hit Dublin, they will financially insulated against such a pitfall.

You see, the Wimbledubs are the team who shall make sporting hope and technological history rhyme.

For instance, last summer the world's leading soccer club, Leeds United, announced their intention to pursue the option of putting all their games on pay-per-view television. They hope to have the scheme up and running for next season.

Pay-per-view trials have already taken place in Italy, Spain and Holland. The cost to viewers varies, but Leeds United envisage a similar system to the one used in Italy, where supporters of any of the 18 Serie-A teams can purchase a season ticket for the 17 away games, at a cost of around £120 and a homeand-away season ticket for £180 to £200.

"There will have to be an agreement first between Premiership clubs and BSkyB," said a Leeds spokesman - "that's not impossible. The capacity will be there to launch the service." Can Sky and the Premiership work out a mutually profitable deal? Hey, has Bill Clinton got a libido?

Lo and behold. In November, Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) announced a three-year deal with BSkyB. Two companies will cooperate to launch digital cable and satellite television. As part of the agreement, CWC will take BSkyB's pay-per-view films and sports programming.

IF YOU were to make out a table of the current Premiership clubs and rank them according to their prospects in the era of pay per view, Manchester United would be at the top and Wimbledon would be at the bottom, a club with a tiny following existing in a crowded regional market. Wimbledon have an average home gate of about 17,000 this season, about one third of which appears to be constituted by away fans. The potential for pay per view doesn't extend much beyond that.

Move Wimbledon to Dublin and they are a top-three team. The only Premiership club in a city of one and a half million people, the only Premiership club on an island of more than five million people.

Picture it this way, the move to Dublin will coincide with investment in a few big name stars just to secure the season-ticket sales. For 10 months of the year, the sports pages will be filled with the Wimbledubs (at the direct expense of League of Ireland, one suspects.) The shops will be swamped with the Wimbledubs gear. The merchandising opportunities that the GAA have never taken up will be consumed avidly.

The Wimbledubs will absorb sponsorships like a sponge. With a 50-game glamour season to look forward to, they will sell executive box space as fast as they can create it. Without the ideological ball and chain which the GAA lugs around, they will sell use of their stadium to the FAI the IRFU and anybody else who has the cash.

Like Manchester United or Celtic, the market doesn't stop at the city limits. There is huge sales potential among the Irish in Britain and indeed, among the Irish in New York.

That's what it is all about. The granting of a licence to print money for a few people, the narrowing of sport's horizons for the rest of us. DISC and other self-appointed megaphones, who have been hailing the Wimbledubs as being good for sport, should be ashamed of themselves. The Wimbledubs will be good for lining the pockets of DISC's business friends. In every other respect, they will be bad for the diversity and quality of Irish sport and culture, but money is like the tides and we idealists standing arm to arm on the beach are about to get very wet.