Roger Moore scores: dome or doughnut?

It's a little known fact, but my grandfather was an inventor. Some years ago, my brother wrote a piece for Channel 4 covering the launch of a new electric car and likened it to one our dear old ancestor had launched unto the world in the 1950s.

Grandad's three-wheeler was called the ‘Pixie' after one of his daughters (our mum). It's hard to distinguish between the sales spiel and the facts across five decades, but seemingly the old boy's creation was at least a match for Sir Clive Sinclair's C5.

Alas, for me, the result was pretty much the same and if there's to be a Moore family goldmine it will have to be of my own digging.

Necessity, they say is the mother of invention. It is from need not greed that most of the world's greatest innovations can be traced; from cat's eyes to e-mail, the pioneer applies his wit to the betterment of mankind. And this brings us on to the latest innovation at Southampton Football Club, our very own ‘super-dome'.

First and foremost, any initiative aimed at improving our footballers is to be welcomed. There's nothing so disheartening for the frequent fan as to see a handsomely rewarded footballer do his best to disguise whatever latent talent he possesses, and for a great deal of this season it was difficult to distinguish between the strikers and the half-time pitch-prodders.

But what exactly does our new £1.25million dome contain which we can point to as ground-breaking?

As far as media coverage allows us to see, our dome features mainly those things that one might ordinarily expect every professional football club to boast.

Video cameras enable players to analyse their technique, a board-room enables their team-mates to offer their own assessment. A gymnasium provides exactly as one would expect, equipment for getting fit(ter), and a player's lounge discourages first-team members from working on their golf-handicaps.

There are, however, two genuine innovations. An ‘eye-gym' apparently assists the development of finely tuned vision – enough perhaps to name the person in row Z struck by the shot? And a ‘response wall' of some description is aiding one of the oldest goal-keepers in the league, Kevin Miller, to be so feline that the new dietician is now serving Whiskas with his pasta.

But for a minority of fans, this is simply not enough. Perhaps rumours of wallpaper at £210 a roll and more staff that the Titanic's restaurant explain why some have been less than impressed.

Couple this with its inventor confessing he'll probably leave to fulfil his management ambitions and it's easy to see why our dome could easily go the way of its older brother, now only famous for fleeting appearance on the Eastenders' credits.

But hang on.

If my timing is right, the launch of the dome also coincides with a run of four straight victories, doesn't it? Could the two be related? Isn't it just possible that the new facilities are actually working? And sooner than expected?

I'm not a fan of having a former rugby coach as Director of Football, it's true. And neither am I convinced that we now possess little more than we should have done when our former (sorry, current, just) Chairman reassured us we had the best facilities this side of Kronos. But, the facts speak for themselves.

We're now winning football matches - four of them. We've scored goals and conceded few. It's a results-driven business, and we're finally getting results.

So, whatever your preconceptions and bias, I urge you to think long and hard about the current structure at the club before you voice your doubts again.

We, after all, are pioneering.

And when it comes to innovation, surely the name ‘Sir Clive' speaks for itself.