There was a time when it seemed as if Ireland would soon be faced with the environmental doomsday scenario of being an island nation covered entirely by golf courses.

The current prosperity has brought a little twist. If all goes according to plan, we will soon be sinking under the weight of our accumulated sports stadiums.

The feast or famine approach to our sports infrastructure is no substitute for thoughtful centralised planning. Until five years ago, we had no facility worthy of comparison with the great sports cathedrals of the twentieth century. Now as Croke Park looms on the north inner city skyline it seems it will be possible to rise to its top deck and survey the little used hangars of all the GAA's rival sports.

Perhaps a monorail will whisk curious tourists around the great yawning monuments of our fractured sports culture.

As of noon yesterday, Dublin was looking at the following scenario. The FAI are to build a "state of the art" facility in west Dublin which will house 45,000 people. Retractable roof. Sliding floor. Flushing lavs.

The Government, with the help of J P McManus, have announced to the nation that they, too, intend building a "state of the art" facility on an unspecified plot. This dust-gatherer will be designated "our National Stadium."

The IRFU, now the only feasible tenants in the "National Stadium", are the most self-sufficient of the major sports bodies, have the dowdiest international rugby facility in Europe and are unlikely to swallow their proud tradition and become anybody's tenants. Even if they do, the two or three full houses a year which rugby brings to a stadium aren't going to be the making or breaking of any facility. Besides Lansdowne Road sits slap in the middle of the most attractive real estate acreage in the country. The IRFU have less need than anybody to become tenants. All that and Croke Park, too. The GAA headquarters is progressing inexorably to being an 80,000-seater, "state of the art" facility. Meanwhile, Owen O'Callaghan is sitting on his long gestating idea for a £90 million "state of the art" facility to be built in Neilstown, Co Dublin.

The BLE are chipping away at bringing Morton Stadium in Santry up to the measure of their modest needs and the National Basketball stadium in Tallaght (the last national arena built without an anchor tenant) is absorbing the painkiller of its last, life-saving, Government handout.

For a city which plays home to no big time professional sport, the situation is mildly comical.

The plans announced by Bernard O'Byrne and the FAI yesterday are most impressive on the surface. Deutsche Bank, the "biggest bank in the world" are to be the financial partners in the venture. This no more guarantees success than the fact that the EBS "are partners" in buying my house guarantees that the mortgage gets paid.

To that end, IMG have been commissioned to sell the executive boxes in the new facility. It is IMG who will first come to curse how thinly Dublin proposes spreading its corporate fare.

The market for executive boxes and premier facilities in Dublin is finite. Everybody who has dabbled their toes in the business agrees that this is the case and the FAI whose much heralded 10-year ticket scheme ended in humiliating fiasco know it better than anyone.

The GAA have several distinct advantages in securing their share of the corporate leisure cake. They have had a five-year head start at least on selling the concept, they have a distinctive season with a series of high-profile events which are guaranteed to occur in Croke Park come what may.

The IRFU have an edge, too. Their constituency has been bred to executive boxes, the genial social ambience of a rugby international lends itself to the market better than almost any other sporting occasion. Plus the World Cup comes to the northern hemisphere on every second turn of the wheel. Rugby, with generous reserves of cash on hand to create its own facility if it likes, can guarantee clients that mainline events will take place.

This is where the FAI plan begins to creak a little. At best the association can offer six or seven internationals in a given year. Last year, for instance, the home game against Croatia was the only meaningful crowd puller which the association staged. The balance of the fare in a typical year will be made up of friendlies and competitive games which, by virtue of the seeding system, will be against minnows at least 50 per cent of the time.

It has been suggested that, in the brave new world of a European super-league, that an amalgamation of League of Ireland clubs will take their place among the nations and become an anchor tenant in Dublin West. Apart from being a little jab at Wimbledon FC's sluttish ways with foolish cities, this is just pie in the sky above the retractable roof. We may imagine ourselves to be part of soccer's top table but a European league doesn't need us anymore than it needs a Welsh, Lithuanian or Moldovan representation.

Surprisingly, too, the FAI model stadium unveiled yesterday appears to have ignored the worthwhile example of Copenhagen's Parken Stadium, the upkeep of which has been financed by the rental from three adjacent office buildings. Seating 45,000 customers, Parken has become self-financing by being part of a broader complex. The Arena, as a stand alone venture, will have to capture not just a significant corporate market for its basic soccer calendar but also cut massively into the highly competitive market for concerts in Dublin.

That is a headache for the future, however. Yesterday's announcement by the FAI may have thrown the cat among the pigeons in so far as the capital's sporting map is concerned but it did represent a coming of age for the FAI.

Bernard O'Byrne's plans are ambitious, top-line and clearly stated and would significantly boost the self-confidence of a peripheral soccer nation. The fact that Bernard sits on the feasibility committee for a Government-financed national stadium should not detract from yesterday's unveiling.

Back before Christmas when it was announced in the Dail that the Government were to build a national stadium, Bernard O'Byrne was in Arklow at an under-21 international. He looked like a man taken distinctly unawares by the timing of the announcement. Yesterday he hoofed the ball back into the Government's half of the field. In doing so, he upped the ante considerably.

Will Bertie Ahern, man of the people, build a major national stadium just for the benefit of rugby? If he does or if the IRFU erect their own home, our modest little city will make a curious project for some browbeaten archaeologist in the year 3999.

Imperial Rome had only one coliseum after all.