“The concept was really, really strong,” said Higgins, now chairman of League of Ireland side Sligo Rovers.
“Jack Charlton’s Irish team was in his heyday, and coming off Italia ’90 and USA ’94, you’d have had a mini-international side playing in Dublin every other week.
“I believe it would have transformed soccer on the island, but they [the FAI] were looking down too narrow a pipe.
“And look at what’s happened since – rugby and the GAA have eaten our lunch and they get the money for TV and sponsorship.
“Soccer just didn’t have the vision to do something transformative.”
In the end, it was a moot point. After 18 months of talks, the line to Hammam went dead. Calls went unanswered, correspondence unreturned.
Higgins, who still has the unsigned contract among his files, was walking through an airport the next year when he looked up at a television screen to see news that Hammam had sold 80% of the club to Bjorn Rune Gjelsten and Kjell Inge Rokke for £26m, more than four times their own bid.
A shopping centre now sits where the Premier League stadium was to be built.
Dublin would not get its team, but nor would Wimbledon keep theirs with the club ultimately moved to Milton Keynes in 2004.
In the community left behind, AFC Wimbledon were born, starting life in the ninth tier of English football that same year with Heller among four co-founders.
Three decades on from those first murmurs of a move to Dublin, the reclaimed club are a League One side and since returned to their spiritual home of Plough Lane.
“You talk about the FA Cup, league finishes, cup semi-finals, but for me what they’ve done, that’s the biggest achievement in the history of the football club,” said Cunningham.
“To be knocked for six, to go careening down the leagues, and come back, it’s a success every time they take the pitch. Good luck to them.
“The Dublin thing? It’s a bit of nostalgia now, maybe a bit of sadness at a missed opportunity.
“People would be laughing now but it’s something that would have worked, no doubt about it. Absolutely, people would have rowed in behind it.”
