Post stolen from Shels message board

[Slash/ED]

You'll probably have to buy a ticket but that'll just be a matter of going to a cabin a few yards from the ground and buying one then showing it at the gate.

[holidaysong]

You'll probably have to buy a ticket but that'll just be a matter of going to a cabin a few yards from the ground and buying one then showing it at the gate.

Thanks hope to make it.. the Cork Fans should be good craic :D

Seriously though thought Shels played very well against Finn Harps, Rogers and Baker were superb.

[Da Real Rover]

I think we should stop communicating with the outside :) We are content in our love for the league. I have wasted too much of my tiem reading why I shouldn't support the league. It's just a fact of life that people will not support the league until it does something brilliant three seasons in a row. If we do well in Europe this year then I think people will start to sit further up. If we do bad, then it will undermine last year cos people will say it was a falsh in the pan!!
I agree with you there Gareth because those Premiersh1te 'SUPPORTERS' from Ireland will never understand that our football is not about the beauty of the game,its about the loyalty and connection you feel for your club which represents your community. If i wanted to watch beautifull football i'd watch La Liga, but thats not why i go to Rovers games, its cause i love my club and all it stands for. Personnally if i had a choice between our league being like the Premiership or the way it is now, i'd ask for it to remain the way it is because if you look at England now there are so few real fans left, now its been infiltrated by the Prawn sandwich brigade and those 'SUPPORTERS' from Ireland. Theres only one thing i'd ask of those barstool supporters, that when our day comes for success in Europe etc just stay the **** away because we have earned this priviledge for watching our 'CRAP' teams for so many years.

[hamish]

I'd rather stick pins in my eyes.
Yeh, big crowd at the AILing Finals. Caught the tail end of the programme. What did I hear McGurk say? Something about not filling a bus??

[BohDiddley]

I was waiting last night for ELW to come on and so I found myself flicking channels.
Instead of Irish football, which our ever so patronising media tell us they don't cover because no one is interested in it, I was able to find the following:
1. Setanta. A replay of some rugger buggers kicking seven shades of excrement out of each other in front of what looked like an EL-sized crowd. (If I'd tuned in a couple of weeks ago, I would have been able to see schoolboys from Belvo and the like doing this, only with smaller support).
2. RTE: GAA replay action, this time in front of a decent crowd. Only problem was that it was decades old.
3. TG4: coverage of a hurling match between two magnificently (as-Gaeilge)-named clubs of which I have never heard. The supporters, all of them fervent and having a great time, numbered about 50, at a generous guess.
Now, can one of the sages who keeps telling us that Irish football isn't covered in Irish media BECAUSE IT HAS NO SUPPORT, STUPID, complete with rolling eyes, please tell us why these non-events are gracing our screens in prime time, and we have to keep vampire hours to see the beautiful game?

[dcfcsteve]

Professional sport is about being the best at something beating everybody else this is why we all watch the sports above and the Embassy World Championship Snooker and the cream of world sport events. The reason that professional soccer does so bad in this country is that it is a celebration of failure, an icon we can hold up to the world and say look we’re crap.

Magoo - if your friend believes that professional sport is about being the best at something, then ask him why he supports the Irish international football team ? Supporting Ireland is the archetypal celebration of failure, and we think it makes us great people all together - "Sure win, lose, or draw there'll still be a party". Freak examples of success like Denmark and Greece aside, we are NEVER going to win the European Championships or especially the World Cup. There's 20 teams in the almighty English Premiership (all bow...). Only 3 of those have won the title in the last decade (and one of those only managed to do so in the last 2 weeks). The other 17 teams are increasingly unlikely EVER to win the title. By your friends measure, therefore, no-one Irish should be supporting the other 17 teams. Football around the world is increasingly becoming dominated by a monied elite, to the detriment of all other teams. By your friends view, we will therefore increasingly want to watch less of it, as for the vast majority of teams football is increasingly just an SPL-style 'celebration of failure'. Also - if people are only interested in sports where their team can be the best, then why does anyone bother with 60-70% of the GAA teams in the country ? How many people do you know who support a county other than their own - regardless of how crap their county is ? This suggests that following saport ISN'T about the winning - it's about something much deeper.

Your friend has taken the wrong spin on the right point. PARTICIPATING in professional sports is all about doing your personal best, and about winning. Sadly though - the nature of competition means that there can only be one winner, even though many try and fail. However - FOLLOWING professional sport is about a different set of rules and principles altogether. It's about pride, identity, hope, expectation, dreams and - unless you're Shels or Man U - the occassional very sweet taste of success.

Irish people have sought to distort these rules/principles to justify their following of foreign football. Man U and Celtic are suddenly 'Irish' teams; someone from their home town played for Spurs when they were a kid; their dad was a huge fan - all these reasons are consciously used to enable them to artifically feel pride and identity with foreign teams that they have absolutely nothing at all in common with. I bet you 90%+ of Irish Arsenal fans wouldn't have a clue where Highbury is on a map of London. Find one and test them ! A lot of the Man U fans would probably struggle to pin-point Manchester on a blank map of the country as well. Yet it's somehow "their" team...

Saddest thing is - Irish football has itself to blame to a large extent for all of this. Somewhere between the late 60's/early 70's and now we lost a lot of people who used to pack Glenmalure Park, Dalymount, Kilcahoan Park etc. Domestic football in any country doesn't exist in a vacuum. Foreign football has always been a presence and of interest to Irish football fans. Over time, however, we lost the arm wrestle between our game and the foreign one, and people drifted primarily away from our game. We have to hold ourselves to blame for that to at least some extent.

The current generation of adults are by-and-large lost to Irish football. They may go to the occassional game, but their balance of interest in football lies outside this island. Our target, therefore, should be the next generation of football fans - the kids. If we had a competent FAI and clubs, we might be in with a chance of attracting them to our grounds early on and getting them before the pendulum swings too far towards foreign teams. It's a very difficult struggle when their parents support English/Scottish teams, but it's our only chance of reducing the next crop of blinkered self-delusional idiots like your friend.

[fosterdollar]

Magoo - if your friend believes that professional sport is about...

Gladly passed on to my friend (but as I said they weren't his words). He's pretty much a neutral on the issue as hasn't got a whole lot of interest in football anyway. :ball:

[Dr.Nightdub]

Excellent stuff Steve

[MariborKev]

Unfortunately Shels don't have another home game until the 17th of June, but there's a chance of making the Setanta cup final which will be in Tolka.


Cup game on the 10th now :D

[CollegeTillIDie]

Magoo - if your friend believes that professional sport is about being the best at something, then ask him why he supports the Irish international football team ? Supporting Ireland is the archetypal celebration of failure, and we think it makes us great people all together - "Sure win, lose, or draw there'll still be a party". Freak examples of success like Denmark and Greece aside, we are NEVER going to win the European Championships or especially the World Cup. There's 20 teams in the almighty English Premiership (all bow...). Only 3 of those have won the title in the last decade (and one of those only managed to do so in the last 2 weeks). The other 17 teams are increasingly unlikely EVER to win the title. By your friends measure, therefore, no-one Irish should be supporting the other 17 teams. Football around the world is increasingly becoming dominated by a monied elite, to the detriment of all other teams. By your friends view, we will therefore increasingly want to watch less of it, as for the vast majority of teams football is increasingly just an SPL-style 'celebration of failure'. Also - if people are only interested in sports where their team can be the best, then why does anyone bother with 60-70% of the GAA teams in the country ? How many people do you know who support a county other than their own - regardless of how crap their county is ? This suggests that following saport ISN'T about the winning - it's about something much deeper.

Your friend has taken the wrong spin on the right point. PARTICIPATING in professional sports is all about doing your personal best, and about winning. Sadly though - the nature of competition means that there can only be one winner, even though many try and fail. However - FOLLOWING professional sport is about a different set of rules and principles altogether. It's about pride, identity, hope, expectation, dreams and - unless you're Shels or Man U - the occassional very sweet taste of success.

Irish people have sought to distort these rules/principles to justify their following of foreign football. Man U and Celtic are suddenly 'Irish' teams; someone from their home town played for Spurs when they were a kid; their dad was a huge fan - all these reasons are consciously used to enable them to artifically feel pride and identity with foreign teams that they have absolutely nothing at all in common with. I bet you 90%+ of Irish Arsenal fans wouldn't have a clue where Highbury is on a map of London. Find one and test them ! A lot of the Man U fans would probably struggle to pin-point Manchester on a blank map of the country as well. Yet it's somehow "their" team...

Saddest thing is - Irish football has itself to blame to a large extent for all of this. Somewhere between the late 60's/early 70's and now we lost a lot of people who used to pack Glenmalure Park, Dalymount, Kilcahoan Park etc. Domestic football in any country doesn't exist in a vacuum. Foreign football has always been a presence and of interest to Irish football fans. Over time, however, we lost the arm wrestle between our game and the foreign one, and people drifted primarily away from our game. We have to hold ourselves to blame for that to at least some extent.

The current generation of adults are by-and-large lost to Irish football. They may go to the occassional game, but their balance of interest in football lies outside this island. Our target, therefore, should be the next generation of football fans - the kids. If we had a competent FAI and clubs, we might be in with a chance of attracting them to our grounds early on and getting them before the pendulum swings too far towards foreign teams. It's a very difficult struggle when their parents support English/Scottish teams, but it's our only chance of reducing the next crop of blinkered self-delusional idiots like your friend.

Great post dcfcsteve

I am a EL supporter largely down to a Primary school teacher I had in the 1970's who supported Waterford, back in the days when they were winning Leagues. He doesn't teach anymore , he flies planes for Ryanair, still supports the Blues though. A few of my primary school class mates went on to be supporters at least for a while of League of Ireland/ EL teams.

I didn't get any of this from either of my parents however!
My Dad only got interested in football after I did and my friend's brother Paul Kavanagh got a scholarship to go to UCD. He came out to see Paul play for College and has been a supporter for 20 years now.

[BohDiddley]

I am a EL supporter largely down to a Primary school teacher I had in the 1970's .
Lucky you. Pity there weren't more like that rare gem. We got nothing but grief for playing 'foreign' games, and this is a major component in the whole Prem/GAA v. Irish football equation.

[hamish]

Lucky you. Pity there weren't more like that rare gem. We got nothing but grief for playing 'foreign' games, and this is a major component in the whole Prem/GAA v. Irish football equation.
When I was a teacher in Portumna,I used to regularly organise buses to Athlone games. It's amazing how kids can get into a local club with a bit of encouragement. Then names they heard about actually meant something 'cos they saw them play.
When they got the feel of LOI, they were certainly less inclined to worship at the altar of UK footie. I told them that these are our local footballers just like your hurling or gaelic football teams. That seemed to connect.

[TonyD]

Regarading the justifying of supporting english teams, one of the most pathetic things in the papers is the 'Irish Watch'. Ooh, look, S****horpe Reserves have an Irish player, how exciting. Someone should tell the Journos and their editors that there are teams here just bursting with Irish players if they're so interested. DCFC Steve also hit the nail on the head with his reference to the National Team. If it's about quality, surely we should all be supporting Brazil. After all, why should you be tied to supporting a country just because that's where you're from ?

If you haven't read it let me recommend a brilliant book by a journalist called Ed Horton, an Oxford Utd fan. It's called "Moving The Goalposts" and addresses these issues and more. Here's a quote from it, talking about the joys of watching lower league football

"The lower Divisions are so often assumed to be of little importance, as if they were simply third rate, inferior versions of the sort of Clubs who compete for the Premiership, as if they had nothing to recommend them... As if the people who watch this football were getting something fundamentally inferior, as if they were doomed to have a dull and miserable time watching dull and miserable footbal outside the charmed circlle of the Liverpools and Arsenals. Football is not like that. Watching the game as played outside the elite few, or in the lower Divisions is not a fundamentally inferior way of appreciating football. It is, in some ways, fundamentally different. But that is among footballs many pleasures...... If Gillingham play Southend at Priestfield nobody expects to see a troupe of internationals. Nobody goes there by accident, imagining they are going to see the sort of game they might see if Ajax were playing Juventus and then walks out disgusted because they are not. Of course everybody wants to see the players produce the best standard of football and the best game that they can. We hope to see some good football and to see a good game, and the chances are we will. But there is no point in a journalist watching a game in the second division and comparing it unfavourably to the Premiership....... A good game is still a good game no matter in what Division it is played. A bitter struggle is a bitter struggle at any level. A tedious draw is no more enlightening in the Premiership than one played halfway up the third Division. Certainly the thrilling moments of great skill, too which all supporters are attracted are more plentiful the higher up the Divisions that we go. But these moments are not absent from lower Division football. And they are not, on their own, what makes a great game of football."

And on Man U bandwagoners, he has this to say

" People from Surrey or Hertfordshire(He could have added Dublin) who call themselves supporters, watch an occasional game, or follow them on television and then think that it reflects glory on them when they win again. If we were jealous we could do what they do, buy ourselves a satellite dish and a replica shirt and congratulate ourselves on having chosen to 'support' the best. (You'd think we didn't realise that the clubs we follow are not likely to be as good as Manchester United are. Damn, here's me having picked Oxford to follow and all the time I never thought Manchester United would turn out the better team) Glory hunters get up our noses, lording it over people who follow their local teams. It is a shallow, sad way to watch if all you understand about the game, if all you want from it, is a constant stream of victories and trophies"

[hamish]

Hey, Tony D,man. Great stuff! You remind me of a Simon Hoggart article in The Guardian a few months ago who mentioned the same type of thing when one of his family brought him to a Brentford game. Hoggart is not a footie fan but seemed to enjoy the game without the usual Premiership bullshine.
Thought occured to me though at the time, where did he get the time to watch Brentford when he was shagging Kimberley Quinn?? :D