Around the country the same thing was happening. Karl Sheppard had already done a week or so at Everton. Greg Cunningham was off to Manchester City. Conor Clifford was heading to Chelsea after being signed up over a year back. That's just a taster as the summer exodus of Irish talent to English academies begins another cycle. It's hardly a surprise as the exact same thing happened to Butler's U-16 squad last summer, the majority going from home-based to British-based in a few months.

Most if not all of the youngsters heading over will pass through Eoin Hand's office at some time or another, Hand being the FAI career guidance officer. He reckons somewhere in the region of 25 players will dive across the water this summer chasing the dream in the academy system of mostly Premiership clubs. Last year it was 26, and it's been rising slowly since the low-water mark of 2001. "It halved in the space of two years around that time, " Hand explains. "In 1999, on the back of the Kerr successes at underage and all that, it was 36. Then suddenly the compensation guidelines came in and it shot down to 17 or 18 in 2001. It's been working back up in ones and twos every year, almost as clubs are finding loopholes in the system. It can get complicated and clubs here can be put under pressure not to look for the money owed for training the player."

Hand reels off the attributes needed to survive in England. The discipline for the sheer hard work and training tops the list. The toughness for the double whammy of the football and being away from home. Dealing with different cultures. And the fear and pressure of failure, the lack of self-esteem if the send offs aren't matched by success.

Still, the percentage of guys who end up doing okay out of the system is rising. Hand only saw one Irish player at the exit trials at Lilleshall this April . . . a yearly get together where players being released from academies try to impress enough to earn a deal with an onlooking club . . . where other years may have been teeming with them. "Also, the PFA list of players looking for clubs had maybe seven or eight Irish players on it and most of those were older players or in their mid-20s, there weren't really any 18/19 year olds trying to find a club or being let go, " Hand says.

"As much as anything it's simply a higher standard of player coming over, or at least more consistently now that clubs have to be more careful with who they bring. Before there was a culture that you have one good player and the club might bring over a friend of his as well to try out who wasn't of the same ability and he'd end up packing it in. Clubs won't do that now."

Basically, with the cream of Europe open to them, the clubs at the top can afford to nitpick about who they take a punt on, while the others don't want to be wasting time and money.

Anyone going over has been watched and vetted. Almost every Premiership club has an Irish presence in their youths, from Conor McCormack at Man Utd, Michael Collins and Shane O'Connor at Liverpool, to a clutch of players at Man City and Blackburn. John O'Shea is the last player to make it through the academy of any of the big four and on to the first team though.

And for the guys who don't look like breaking the code at their academy club? Well, there are more and better options now, though it's split roughly half and half between dropping down a notch or two and coming home. Paul McShane learned his trade at Old Trafford, moved down a division and looks set to move back up now, such has been his progression in little over a year. Anthony Stokes slipped away from Arsenal to show what he could do and ended up back in the Premiership. Willo Flood and Alan O'Brien have both left the Premiership for Scottish clubs this summer. Jonathan Hayes played underage with McShane and has left for Leicester after coming through the ranks at Reading.

After that it's home and, strangely enough, home is becoming as much a chance to regroup, get playing again at a decent enough level and find some form as it was perhaps an admission of failure before. Call it the Daryl Murphy route if you will. He spent a couple of years impressing all and sundry at Waterford after a miserable few seasons at Luton had rattled him badly. Barely two summers later and he's played . . . and done well . . . for Ireland and finds himself back in the big league.

Kevin Doyle did his bit for the profile and Roy O'Donovan looks like benefiting shortly.

Ask Sean Kelly about the decision he made last summer and he'll tell you no regrets.

Ask about the two years before that which he spent at the academy in Arsenal and you won't hear any complaints either. "Ah it was an experience, " he says. "Everything was done with the ball, you were taught how to play your position so well, how to move the ball, awareness of space, that sort of thing.

Technically you learnt so much. The youth team and reserves trained together so a lot of the guys you see in the first team now would have been there and first-teamers would have come over now and then, guys like Dennis Bergkamp. I enjoyed every minute, the football, getting to know other players and cultures. I was living with Armand Traore, who's a Muslim and he prayed five times a day. Stuff like that."

Then last summer he and the club decided it was time to move on. He spent a few weeks with Yeovil and was about to sign when the manager was sacked. The new boss didn't fancy him and Kelly was left in limbo, thinking of a move to the US a on scholarship and a life away from professional football. A call from Liam Murphy at Cork City changed it all. "My head was all over the place really.

I was gutted cos I really wanted to stay in England. But Cork City came in and I appreciate that so much now. I'm playing football, the standard here is much better than what it was and Cork's a great place to play."

Around 25 of the cream of young Irish talent have it all to do then. Of Brian Kerr's U16 XI that won the European Championships nine years ago, only two are in the Premiership next season. Of his U-18 winners of the same year, two from the fourteen who had a role in the final are still in the big league. The odds have got better as the options have increased but it's still a long haul ahead. It could turn out any which way for this crop.