By Cathal Dervan

The Premiership wannabes of the Dunshaughlin Youths under-12 team, now resident in Division 12C of the Brenfer League, received their Inter Milan-style Umbro jerseys for the new season complete with the famous blue and black stripes a few months back.

As is the habit out our way, each player was awarded a squad number and the matching jersey via an open draw for the duration of the season, a system that hands responsibility for the shirt over to the player involved for the nine-month campaign.

That means he or she gets to bring the jersey home after every game and his or her mother — or maybe even father but I doubt it, knowing them — gets to wash it in time for the next game, usually on the following Sunday.

Not for the first time everyone wanted to get their hands on the number seven shirt, only because it is the jersey that David Beckham, the most popular footballer of his generation in our part of the world, used to wear for Manchester United.

One kid, Brendan Bowe is his name, was aghast when his name was matched to the number 14 jersey, and the look on his face served only to illustrate his disappointment before he vocally confirmed he had craved the desirable seven.

In an effort to placate the youngster I pointed out that the number 14 shirt was made famous by the one and only Dutch Master himself, Johann Cruyff. Brendan, only 12 remember, is all but looking at me still with a mysterious eye.

He had never heard of Johann Cruyff, although his memory did offer something approaching recognition when I mentioned that Cruyff had inspired the step-over that is now the norm in every training session on every Thursday night across Ireland.

On Sunday morning Brendan and his number 14 shirt were on duty at St. Anne’s Park in Clontarf as the aforementioned under-12s fought out a thrilling 4-4 draw with Clontarf/Belgrove in a league game.

Before the match we discussed another legend of the game, and this time Brendan and the other 15 kids knew exactly who we were talking about when we spoke of the untimely death of George Best 48 hours earlier.

Every kid on that field knew who Best was. So, I would hazard a guess, did the players on the eight or so pitches each hosting a game around us not a goal kick from Dublin Bay.

They knew who George Best was. They knew he was a great footballer and a great entertainer.

And they nodded, as they tend to do, when I told them one of George’s favourite lines about his late, great mentor Matt Busby.

“No matter who we played the last thing that Matt Busby said to us was to go out and enjoy the game,” said Best in one of the many television interviews re-run over the weekend.

It was a fitting message to give those kids before they played their game on Sunday morning, and to be fair to them they tried to enjoy the game, even the last minute equalizer that cost us a game they probably should have won.

George Best deserves to be remembered by kids who never saw him play, by kids like my under-12s all across the world.

Sure, drink ruined George Best’s career and ultimately it ruined his life. There is a case to argue, as I have done in the past, that he should never have received a liver transplant back in 2002, but even that argument can’t take from the footballing memories of the genius who learned to dribble kicking a tennis ball around the back streets of Belfast.

Nor should it devalue the sporting legacy of the finest footballer this island has ever produced.

A few years ago the great man himself admitted, “All the bad times cannot wipe away the memories of my career and, despite all the ups and downs, when I look back at my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.”

Those of us who saw him — on television, in the flesh or on video — were also blessed. May he rest in peace. God knows he deserves some peace right now.