Graham Gartland is proud of his Jobstown roots but wants the Government to help

Much of who he has become was born in these streets. The have-a-go defender who won three FAI Cups, a League of Ireland title, and two caps for the Ireland B team, before maturing into a coach who worked in the SPL as an assistant manager with Dundee.

Suddenly we stop walking, but Gartland keeps talking, his arms moving furiously, pointing in different directions, like a traffic cop on ecstasy. Gartland took a deep breath. A gust of wind blew in from the Dublin mountains. It does that regularly around here. “Me da is from Ballyfermot and he hated the wind out here,” Gartland says. “He wanted us to move back to Ballyer.”

“They made you realise that it was okay to have dreams. Like, at 18, I was released by Barnsley. I came home. Straight away, Uncle Harry, mum’s brother, met me. ‘Here are the options you have, Graham.’This part of the story ends here. Gartland the achiever, the respected co-commentator on RTE, the coach who guided a Shamrock Rovers underage team to a win over Ajax last year, the player who got every drop of ability out of his body, is now a man of middle age.

And it all seemed like a fairy tale. Working class boys come good. A community rowing in behind their own. “I loved it here,” he says. “I loved the freedom of it; of waking up on a summer’s day and saying to me ma, ‘I’m away out here’ and that was it. "Wait til I tell you, there’s nothing you feared more than a scalding off either your own ma or someone else’s ma. I was taught the difference between good and bad.”

He dreams of bringing hope back to this area. And he isn’t the only one. On our walk we bump into Paul Perth, his predecessor as Longford Town’s centre back.Perth and Richie Dunne were neighbours in Killinarden, another estate in Tallaght. Now Perth works as a community officer in the area. He loves his job, loves the people but hates when he sees young people without hope. His mission is to give them some.

Robbie Keane Stephen Bradley

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