“First of all, with nobody sure how this will play out in terms of legislation and the future plans of the British government and so on, the speculation comes with a lot of caveats,” says Limerick native Lynam.

“But there are certain areas which are likely to throw up some issues. Take professional sports like football and rugby, and players coming from overseas to the UK.

“There are two separate issues here - one is the work visa requirement, which is basically the government requirement administered by the FA, and then there is FIFA’s requirement for international transfers.

“At the moment an Irish person doesn’t need a visa to work in the UK. If the UK exit the EU without some form of free trade agreement then that’ll change.

“What’s interesting is the presumption that some agreement will be reached on the free movement of workers, but that particular issue was a significant part of the Leave campaign’s platform, so I don’t know if that’s a foregone conclusion.

“If such an agreement on free movement isn’t reached, then Ireland would be treated the same way as other countries; it would mean that Irish footballers wanting to play in the Premier League would need a visa. Under the current rules such visas would be available only for elite players, who are categorised according to how their country is ranked by FIFA.

“If your country is ranked 33rd, like Ireland, that puts you in the group of countries ranked between 30 and 50; then a player needs to have played 75 per cent of the international games the country played in the previous 24 months. That’s a fairly small pool of players, obviously.

“It would also rule out all the 16-17 year olds who come over to English academies, and clearly there are a lot of such players in the system.”

The FIFA transfer regulations apply to the latter situation, too.

“That’s the second issue. Generally players can only move internationally when they’re 18 or older, but there’s an exemption allowing you to move within the EU and EEA at 16 if your education and so on are looked after.

“Unless the UK ends up in the EEA somehow, though, this will stop happening, too.”

There are implications in other sports also.

“The requirements are different in rugby, where a visa is given to players wishing to play in the Aviva Premiership if they’ve played one international game in the preceding 15 months.

“Looking at the Irish players now in the Premiership, most of them wouldn’t meet that requirement - Peter Stringer, Tom Court, Donncha O’Callaghan, JJ Hanrahan, all of those guys. On the current rules they wouldn’t be entitled to a visa to play in England.”

The fact that there are so many different interested parties in the visa question - government, the sports’ governing bodies, the sports’ international administration and the leagues themselves - further complicates matters.

“A lot of it may be up for grabs, but it’s important to flag the different sets of requirements,” says Lynam.

“Visa requirements are within the power of the UK government, so you would suspect - but only suspect - that it will probably take the view that it doesn’t want to do anything to disturb or damage the Premier League or Premiership Rugby. It may change those rules to make them more flexible.

“There is a potential for conflict, more broadly, between a national governing body and a league, however. The national governing body might want some flexibility in terms of the rules governing who can play for the national team; as an EU member you’re limited in what you can do in that regard, but if you’re outside the EU you can do what you want.

“However, a league in any sport will want to attract elite players from all over the world, no matter what their nationality. So the league and governing body may not see eye to eye on that.

“In addition, the FIFA regulations will also have to change, specifically in relation to those 16 and 17 year olds coming from Ireland. For that to continue not only would the visa requirements have to change, so would the FIFA regulations themselves.

“Neither the FA nor the UK could do that, and where’s the incentive for all those other countries which are FIFA members to change the rules to enable those kids to move to the UK? Most of them aren’t that keen on that happening in the first place, so why would they facilitate it? There could be potential for another stumbling block there, certainly.”