More casual calumny

[BohDiddley]

Here's the text of Damian Corless's piece in the Indo yesterday. Lots of the usual stuff about hating GAA football (disclosure: so do I) but that's another debate.
The reason I'm putting this here has to do with the by now depressingly predictable 'give me ManU any day' nonsense, but especially the part that I've put in bold.
Sorry if this theme of media hostility bothers some people, but I think it's important. There is a clear link here to the troubles of Waterford Utd, SRFC and others that cannot be ignored.




Croker cracker? Give me Man U any day...

Tuesday July 19th 2005

Damian Corless turned his back on Gaelic games when he was 10 and couldn't make the local team. Last weekend, despite being a soccer fanatic, he was persuaded to go to the Leinster Final to see if his prejudice was still justified. What was his verdict?

'D'ya want hash?" The offer came from a group of young teens loitering close to Croke Park on Sunday. I wondered if I should have been surprised by the offer or, in the long years since I last made the pilgrimage to Croker, have the hash sellers become as much a part of the pageant as the scalpers and the yellow-pinnied gardai and the hucksters peddling crepe-paper hats and Crunchies?

The sense of not really belonging, of feeling like an impostor, struck me again when I reached the towering edifice itself. The faithful from Laois and Dublin surged towards the appropriate turnstiles along well-beaten paths. I, on the other hand, spluttered to a halt, dawdled on the corner of Jones' Road, stared at my ticket, stared at it again, gave up and asked a policeman for directions.

Once inside, locating my pew was relatively straightforward. Getting the elderly man who was in it to budge was another matter. I showed him my ticket. He nodded in a friendly enough manner, informed me that he wouldn't be staying too long, and resumed chatting with his friend. My ignorance of the seating etiquette at GAA matches left me at a disadvantage, so I had no choice but to comply.

I was there for Sunday's Leinster Final to conduct an experiment. As a Gaelic games atheist of long standing I wanted to find out whether the GAA's lavishly repackaged 'product' could lure me back to the fold I left many years ago. After all, the repackaging has clearly won others around. Crowds of 40,000 for a Leinster Final, never mind 80,000, were unheard of 20 years ago. It was time, I figured, to see if the new deal could work its magic on me.

My disenchantment with Gaelic games goes back to the age of 10 or so. Back then, as an open-minded schoolboy, I didn't differentiate much between Gaelic football and soccer, except to notice that soccer was the game of choice in the schoolyard, but Gaelic was the code enforced on the playing field.

So I signed up for the local Gaelic football team. After putting me through my paces, the manager decided that my best position was left outside, along with the other small kids. Most of us subs drifted away while the season was still young, but not before we'd witnessed the departure of the team's best player, a strapping forward. Early on, he developed a fiendishly clever technique of dribbling past defenders with the ball on the ground, and then kicking it into the goal for three points instead of over the bar for one.

This tactic paid off handsomely, and he scored freely as we won our first couple of matches. The manager's response was to take him aside and warn him that if he kept it up he'd be dropped. The headstrong youth protested that he was playing entirely within the rules of the game. The manager told him that he wouldn't have anyone playing "soccer" on his watch. So our top scorer was kicked off the team.

My brief flirtation persuaded me that I didn't have what it took for Gaelic games, either physically or in the logic department, and I decided to let well enough alone. I opted to concentrate my affections on Manchester United (my mother had decided that, as her first-born, I would be raised a United fan as a gesture of solidarity and sympathy over the Munich air disaster, and on the basis that Bobby Charlton was a gentleman).

A few years later, on the suggestion of a friend, I agreed to give Gaelic games another chance. Sometime in the early 1980s we went to Croke Park for a big game. It was a miserable experience. The stadium was draughty and decrepit. The mere act of trying to keep my feet in the milling scrum of a greasy Hill 16 made actually watching the game a near impossibility. The last straw was when I witnessed a very drunk man decide that, rather than fight his way off the terrace to visit the stinking toilets, he'd just unzip right there and urinate on the back of the man in front of him. Call me soft, but this wasn't my notion of a fun day out.

Not that the GAA ever had a monopoly on supplying bad experiences. Last autumn I went to see an Eircom League club entertain European opposition. The ground was spartan and smelly, but not nearly as offensive as the home supporters. Fathers giggled as their young sons yelled out a chant of "the referee's a refugee" and non-white pitch attendants were showered with torrents of racial abuse and the occasional missile. I will not be going back.

But will I be going back to Croke Park after last Sunday's reaquaintance with GAA HQ? Yes, absolutely, but not for the Gaelic football. The match programme carried a comment piece extolling the beauty and virtue of both Gaelic football and hurling, remarking "let's pity those who, in a snobbish attempt to turn taste into science, espouse the theory that one is vastly superior to the other". I am one of those who is to be pitied.

I have never played hurling in my life. I was always too attached to the idea of having an outward-facing nose. But it is absolutely beyond me how anyone can watch the game of hurling and the game of Gaelic football and conclude that one is the equal of the other. When it flows, hurling is breathtaking to watch, a spectacle of great pace and skill and thrills. If it's not 'the beautiful game', it is unarguably a beautiful game.

Hurling has an intrinsic grace and elegance, Gaelic football has little of either. Sunday's contest between Laois and Dublin provided lots of roughneck excitement and a close finish, but graceful or elegant it was not. I don't know why, of two sister codes, one should be so pretty and the other so ugly, and I suppose you can't blame the parent body for not wanting to have favourites, but I can only go on what my eyes see.

So I'll be back for the hurling, and for the rest of the repackaged Croke Park product. Here were 81,000 people coming together in perfect harmony, drinking beer like there was no tomorrow but with not a bad vibe in the house. There was one minor incident, where an item of fast food became a piece of sudden food as it was launched at a victim, but this turned out to be an eruption of good-humoured horseplay.

This mood of peace, love and goodwill to all even extended to the pitch, where the game was free from the niggly fouling and punch-ups I'd arrived expecting to see (and, if I'm being honest, maybe hoping to see).

A distinguished GAA man once explained to me the code's deep entanglement with violence in the following way: "A match is 14 individual one-to-one contests. You can be on a team that's winning easily but every time the ball comes in your direction the other guy is humiliating you. It's a very close contact sport, in keeping with the old Christian Brothers' dictum: 'stick to him like sh** to a blanket'. You're standing so close you really get to know your opponent, creating a great potential for lip, for niggly pulls on the jersey, for fisticuffs."

There were no serious fisticuffs, although as we streamed out one 10-year-old in a Dublin jersey shoved his twin brother, also in a Dublin jersey, yelping at him: "Go back to Laois!"

And me? Like many taxpayers of the non-GAA persuasion who've contributed to the building of this magnificent stadium, I can't wait for the day I can go there to see a soccer match.

© Irish Independent
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/

[Passive]

To be honest, all that does is prove that he's never been inside Old Trafford.

[Poor Student]

It seems convenient that on their one outing to an eL game they always hear or see something deplorable I've never seen once. Not to say there's no racism in the stands at games but I've personally never heard a racist comment.

[patsh]

Last Autumn, which el club played "European opposition" with a coloured referee, in a sparsely attended game?

This guy has simply made up some bullsh*t to have a dig at the eL whil;e talking about the GAA.....:rolleyes:

Interesting to see that he "proves" his long time ManUre credentials by claiming his mammy made him a fan in memory of the Munich air disaster. Not a bandwagoner then......:rolleyes: Did she knit him a jersey, I wonder.......;)

[Peadar]

To be honest, all that does is prove that he's never been inside Old Trafford.

Or outside it before a game for that matter.
Nasty place at the best of times!

[Drumcondra Red]

I was angered when I read that piece, I wonder which club he's talking about (shels??) but it seems like a bit of a fabrication and an easy excuse to let him off the hook with supporting his own.

I don't believe for a second he even went to an EL match and if he did there was never any racial abuse that he sems to think went on, especially not in Shels, no matter what you think of us, we don't have any racial chants!

Do we know an e-mail address for this príck??

[BohDiddley]

Actually, Corless is a pretty decent and level-headed guy. I wouldn't go along with your description of him as a sharp pointed object. I just think he is misinformed.
It may well be that he heard some racist comments at an EL game. I never hav, unless we count the odd (minority) spot of anti-orange sentiment.
Slightly related to the subject of footballing ignorance, he was also on Newstalk 106 yesterday as a follow-up, and he brought up that old one about not calling football 'soccer'. Now, I used to subscribe to this trendy notion, until I was put right by an old-timer who exposed it for the posturing nonsense that it is. Soccer has been called just that since long before the Americans and GAA commentators got their hands on it. Didn't the old Goal and Shoot mags call it soccer?

[patsh]

Actually, Corless is a pretty decent and level-headed guy. I wouldn't go along with your description of him as a sharp pointed object. I just think he is misinformed.
It may well be that he heard some racist comments at an EL game. I never hav, unless we count the odd (minority) spot of anti-orange sentiment.
Slightly related to the subject of footballing ignorance, he was also on Newstalk 106 yesterday as a follow-up, and he brought up that old one about not calling football 'soccer'. Now, I used to subscribe to this trendy notion, until I was put right by an old-timer who exposed it for the posturing nonsense that it is. Soccer has been called just that since long before the Americans and GAA commentators got their hands on it. Didn't the old Goal and Shoot mags call it soccer?
Goes back to the time when the game was first called Association Football, and the name soccer came from there.
Or is this just another old story?

[Poor Student]

Indeed soccer is a term invented by the English. It was to differentiate it from rugby football I think. Association football being the official name they took soca out of association and it eventually turned into soccer. That's what I think I have read.

Does anyone actually remember a coloured referee at any of the Irish European games last year? I'd assume we're talking about Shels or Bohs as I doubt he'd leave Dublin to see an eL club. And it would have to not be the Deportivo or Lille games as they were not at an eL ground. That would leave Bohs v Levada Tallin, Shels v Hajduk or Shels v KR Rekjavik.

[Drumcondra Red]

Thats fair enough Boh, but I don't appriciate him slagging off the EL, and lets face it, encouraging people not to come along, he's an idiot and I'll repeat what I said earlier, I don't believe he actually went to this "game," and is writing stories he has heard went on!!! If anybody knows an e-mail to contact him I'd be grateful, I don't know how to go about finding it!!! :o

[superfrank]

I think he's just talking bull **** to slate the EL. I was at a European match this season with Macedonian officials and I heard no racism what-so-ever. Also if he had actually gone to a European match it would've been packed.

He's not exactly innocent himself, referring to the attendants as "non-whites". Another muppet insulting our league, just like that "teenage kicks" gob****e. :mad:

[patsh]

Does anyone actually remember a coloured referee at any of the Irish European games last year? I'd assume we're talking about Shels or Bohs as I doubt he'd leave Dublin to see an eL club. And it would have to not be the Deportivo or Lille games as they were not at an eL ground. That would leave Bohs v Levada Tallin, Shels v Hajduk or Shels v KR Rekjavik.
Thats what I meant by him making this sh*t up.
Uriah Rennie reffed our game against Neijmegen at the Cross alright, but that was in July........
And all the games you mentioned were fairly well attended, none could be called "sparse".

[Peadar]

Does anyone actually remember a coloured referee at any of the Irish European games last year?

Even if there was, does anyone here believe that there were racist chants?
We all know there are sometimes comments made in the heat of the moment but such chants would not be tolerated!

By the way, who is he referring to here?

non-white pitch attendants

[Réiteoir]

Last Autumn, which el club played "European opposition" with a coloured referee, in a sparsely attended game?

That would be Cork City - Nantes:

Referee: Uriah Rennie (England)
Assistant Referees: Kevin Pike and Roger East.

[superfrank]

Actually, Corless is a pretty decent and level-headed guy. I wouldn't go along with your description of him as a sharp pointed object. I just think he is misinformed.
It may well be that he heard some racist comments at an EL game. I never hav, unless we count the odd (minority) spot of anti-orange sentiment.
Slightly related to the subject of footballing ignorance, he was also on Newstalk 106 yesterday as a follow-up, and he brought up that old one about not calling football 'soccer'. Now, I used to subscribe to this trendy notion, until I was put right by an old-timer who exposed it for the posturing nonsense that it is. Soccer has been called just that since long before the Americans and GAA commentators got their hands on it. Didn't the old Goal and Shoot mags call it soccer?
I know what you're getting at but that would be considered sectarianism, not racism. If you go up to a foreigner who doesn't have the same religion and you insult him about where he is from, you're a racist but if you insult him about his religion, you're a sectarian.

If this is what he's basing his remarks on he's even more of a gob****e.

[Peadar]

That would be Cork City - Nantes

I sincerely doubt Rennie was racially abused and that this "journo" actually went to Turners Cross.

[Poor Student]

Even if there was, does anyone here believe that there were racist chants?


I was just wondering if he had actually imagined it entirely. It is of course deplorable if it happened however it is not rife and certainly with the amount of people in his beloved OT I am sure a few people say things best unheard too.

[superfrank]

I sincerely doubt Rennie was racially abused and that this "journo" actually went to Turners Cross.
Surely that match was packed tho?

[razor]

That would be Cork City - Nantes:

Referee: Uriah Rennie (England)
Assistant Referees: Kevin Pike and Roger East.
Autumn ?? That game was played in July.

[tiktok]

That would be Cork City - Nantes:.

That game was a sell-out. Definitely not sparse attendance.

[Poor Student]

Eh lads, he said the ground was spartan not sparsely attended. That would mean lacking facilities and comfort.

[Réiteoir]

Other referee appointments for Irish clubs last season:


Bohemians:
vs. Levadia Tallinn - Away leg: Marijo Strahonja (Croatia), Home Leg: Robert Krajnc (Slovenia)


Shelbourne:
vs. KR Reykjavik - Away Leg: Peter Vervecken (Belgium), Home Leg: Michael Svendsen (Denmark)

vs. Hadjuk Split - Away Leg: Viktor Kassai (Hungary), Home Leg: Stanislav Sukhina (Russia)

vs. Deportivo La Coruna - Away Leg: Alain Hamer (Luxembourg), Home Leg: Michal Benes (Czech Republic)

vs. Lille - Away Leg: Emil Bozinovski (Macedonia), Home Leg: Costas Kapitanis (Cyprus)


Longford Town:
vs. FC Vaduz - Away Leg: Merab Malagouradze (Georgia), Home Leg: Ghenadie Orlic (Moldova)


Cork City:
vs. Malmo FF - Away Leg: Alexander Gvardis (Russia), Home Leg: mario Strahonja (Croatia)
vs. NEC Nijmegen - Away Leg: Damien Ledentu (France), Home Leg: Sergij Berezka (Ukraine)
vs. Nantes - Away Leg: Joao Lopes Ferreira (Portugal), Home Leg: Uriah Rennie (England)


The only coloured referee among all those is Uriah Rennie

[BohDiddley]

Eh lads, he said the ground was spartan not sparsely attended. That would mean lacking facilities and comfort.
Well, they have us a bit confused, what with all the diesel sucking lately. :D

[pineapple stu]

He also said the ground was smelly. Not a problem I've ever associated with wide open spaces before (Dublin city of a weekend morning excepting!)

[paudie]

He mentions about the referee being called a "refugee" which could mean that he was from Eastern Europe rather than being black.

Anyway whatever problems the league has (and there are a lot) thankfully racial abuse isn't prevalent at all.

[Peadar]

certainly with the amount of people in his beloved OT I am sure a few people say things best unheard too.

My mate was there for the Chelsea league game last season and he said the racist abuse directed towards Duff everytime he took a corner was disgusting. He supports Man Yoo.

I remember being there for their first CL game in defence of their title, against Croatia Zagreb. The away fans sang constantly before, during and after the game. All the Man Yoo chaps could do was throw stuff, shout racist abuse give the two finger salute.
Pathetic!
Boring 0-0 draw too.

[Slash/ED]

Funny how he was the only person to hear this abuse out of every one of us who between us would have gone to every European game last season, and covers his tracks by not mentioning which team or which game.

for his sake I hope he never bothers going to a game in England anywhere, it would just shatter his illusions.

[anto eile]

Goes back to the time when the game was first called Association Football, and the name soccer came from there.
Or is this just another old story?

rugby football=rugger
association football=soccer
both coined in england

[pete]

It has been a long time since a racist chant has been heard in an eL ground. I don't see what a club can do about an individual shouting at an official as that is just mirrowing society.

I'd be amazed if an Indo journalist went to City game. There were over 8000 people at City Nantes & most people have a seat, all walking areas have tarmac or concrete...

:confused:

He seems to be the epitomy of a bar stooler isolated from reality by Sky censors.

:rolleyes:

[Réiteoir]

It has been a long time since a racist chant has been heard in an eL ground. I don't see what a club can do about an individual shouting at an official as that is just mirrowing society.

Blame the gardaí? ;)

[dcfcsteve]

It has been a long time since a racist chant has been heard in an eL ground.

Errrr - the Shels v Linfield Setanta game anyone......? (I think it was the final - audible monkey chants towards Ndo....)

Can everyone also stop with this 'coloured' nonsense as well please. It's effectively a rascist term itself - it's what the white South Africans used to negatively label everyone who was non-white. What's wrong with black, Asian, Oriental etc instead of 'coloured'.... ? :confused:

[BohDiddley]

Errrr - the Shels v Linfield Setanta game anyone......? (I think it was the final - audible monkey chants towards Ndo....)

Which as you know and surely should not have omitted was not an EL game, and did not come from EL supporters.

[Slash/ED]

Exactly, how could you look down on the EL for fans from another league racially abusing one of our own players?

[hamish]

I've always called it football, more out of habit than anything else. Besides, it's no big deal, "football" or "footie" is often used by the Aussies for all their football sports so it's a general term used throughout the world, regardless of what type of football it is. I wonder do the Chinese, Japanese etc call soccer "football"??

Boh Diddley is doing us all a service by bringing us regular examples of the
sh!te written in Irish 'papers about football/soccer. I think it's a great idea that we can try to email these plonkers with protests - maybe, just maybe, they'll take notice and cop on but I won't hold my breath on this happening.

I don't buy the Indo or Times 'cos of this attitude they have to footbal/soccer - the Star is probably the fairest. Ironic that a tabloid is more honest and fairer-minded than the broadsheets.

Boycott those fcukers - that's the only answer - even a drop of 5,000 in sales by EL fans would make a difference since many Irish 'papers are losing sales anyway and they can't afford to alienate anyone.

[ShelsTim]

Who cares if it's soccer or football, once you know what the other fella is talking about. Jesus Christ, you'd think you had better things to be worried about.

And sirhamish, Irish papers aren't losing readers, every time anything is mentioned in them, they all have a big increase. Not only that, but Irish newspapers are the only in the world to have increased their readership.

As for e-mails I could only find this for general inquires to the Indo: info@unison.independent.ie and this feedback form for general inquiries on unison.ie: http://www.unison.ie/contact_us/open.php Enjoy.

[hamish]

Who cares if it's soccer or football, once you know what the other fella is talking about. Jesus Christ, you'd think you had better things to be worried about.

And sirhamish, Irish papers aren't losing readers, every time anything is mentioned in them, they all have a big increase. Not only that, but Irish newspapers are the only in the world to have increased their readership.

As for e-mails I could only find this for general inquires to the Indo: info@unison.independent.ie and this feedback form for general inquiries on unison.ie: http://www.unison.ie/contact_us/open.php Enjoy.

Agree with your first paragraph ShelsTim. I'm not worried about it tbh, just interested in other's points of view.

Not too sure if you're right there about Irish papers not losing readers but I'm open to correction. I thought that Irish papers had lost a lot of sales to incoming UK papers and "Oirish" ones but maybe I'm wrong there and sure, everyone will grab a paper if there's a "big story", I guess. I make a deliberate effort not to buy in this case, especially if I hear that there's an anti EL article. I just wish others would do likewise.

Maybe I'm getting paranoid here but I've just heard/saw Colm Murray on 6.01 news on RTE referring to "Belfast side Glentoran". Doesn't seem much but surely most Irish sports people would know where Glentoran are from? Are RTE trying to give us the impression that their viewers know little about football/soccer/whateveryou'rehavingyourself on this island??? Maybe I'm just being paranoid and this post should be on the conspiracy thread LOL :D

[BohDiddley]

Who cares if it's soccer or football, once you know what the other fella is talking about. Jesus Christ, you'd think you had better things to be worried about.

And sirhamish, Irish papers aren't losing readers, every time anything is mentioned in them, they all have a big increase. Not only that, but Irish newspapers are the only in the world to have increased their readership.

As for e-mails I could only find this for general inquires to the Indo: info@unison.independent.ie and this feedback form for general inquiries on unison.ie: http://www.unison.ie/contact_us/open.php Enjoy.
You're right Tim. Irish newspapers, unlike those almost anywhere else, are putting on readers, which is healthy. Now if we can only persuade them to give EL a fair run in their pages ... I'm not suggesting patronising favouritism; just decent coverage and an end to this by-now routine hostility towards EL.

As for whether the game is called soccer or football or both, I couldn't care less. But there is a silly notion currently that somehow you establish your football credentials by slagging off people who use the word 'soccer', and that having done so you get to pontificate about the game in the way we have seen in this article, without ever going to football matches. It's the posing I object to, not the language.

[Dotsy]

Agree with your first paragraph ShelsTim. I'm not worried about it tbh, just interested in other's points of view.

Not too sure if you're right there about Irish papers not losing readers but I'm open to correction. I thought that Irish papers had lost a lot of sales to incoming UK papers and "Oirish" ones but maybe I'm wrong there and sure, everyone will grab a paper if there's a "big story", I guess. I make a deliberate effort not to buy in this case, especially if I hear that there's an anti EL article. I just wish others would do likewise.

Maybe I'm getting paranoid here but I've just heard/saw Colm Murray on 6.01 news on RTE referring to "Belfast side Glentoran". Doesn't seem much but surely most Irish sports people would know where Glentoran are from? Are RTE trying to give us the impression that their viewers know little about football/soccer/whateveryou'rehavingyourself on this island??? Maybe I'm just being paranoid and this post should be on the conspiracy thread LOL :D


TBH I think most people outside of EL fans in the Republic wouldn't have a clue what part of NI Glentoran are from. MOst wouldn't pay any attention to the Irish League except to see if Linfield were beaten.

[BohDiddley]

TBH I think most people outside of EL fans in the Republic wouldn't have a clue what part of NI Glentoran are from. MOst wouldn't pay any attention to the Irish League except to see if Linfield were beaten.
Sorry. I'm confused. Glentoran are from Belfast.

[Dotsy]

Sorry. I'm confused. Glentoran are from Belfast.

My point is that most people in the Republic with the exception of EL fans wouldn't know that Glentoran were from Belfast

[BohDiddley]

My point is that most people in the Republic with the exception of EL fans wouldn't know that Glentoran were from Belfast

No, but the original criticism of RTE implies that they got it wrong ... :confused:

[Schumi]

He meant that they shouldn't have felt the need to say where they're from, like they wouldn't say "Dublin side Shelbourne".

[Passive]

Prior to the Rovers v Derry game, the Setanta presenter was talking about the European games and he referred to the wins of Longford, Cork and "Shelbourne Rovers". The camera panned to Alan Matthews and you could see he was just thinking, 'what a dick'.

[Jerry The Saint]

Prior to the Rovers v Derry game, the Setanta presenter was talking about the European games and he referred to the wins of Longford, Cork and "Shelbourne Rovers". The camera panned to Alan Matthews and you could see he was just thinking, 'what a dick'.

At last we find out who The REAL Rovers are! :D

[BohDiddley]

Prior to the Rovers v Derry game, the Setanta presenter was talking about the European games and he referred to the wins of Longford, Cork and "Shelbourne Rovers". The camera panned to Alan Matthews and you could see he was just thinking, 'what a dick'.
When he meant to say Shelbourne Shams :p

[Jaime]

Corless always struck me as a bit of a nerd, and his columns are usually fairly boring. TBH there's nothing much in that one that would anger me, if eL fans got angered every time somebody wrote something ignorant or disparaging about the league, eL fans would be an even angrier lot than they currently are.

Pitch attendants???? I'd love to hear him mutter that one inside an English ground. :rolleyes:

[hamish]

Sorry to be an awkward sob but is there a source for newpaper circulation numbers?
Do Irish newpaper sales include sales by blow-in tabloids? and most importantly, do the sales include BULKS? The Herald is regularly dumped for free and the Indo is also notorious for bulking?

Every month the Guardian Media section shows sales for UK papers and it is amazing how newspapers bump up their so called sales by adding bulks - or freebies - to their circulation figures.
Minus bulking - does the Irish Times, Indo, Examiner sell more papers now than 10 years ago, again, minus bulking.

Since there are now more dailies than 15 years ago, either Oirish or local, wouldn't that also not indicate rising sales? Reason I ask this - are the likes of the Indo etc losing sales to the non-Irish or Oirish papers but the overall sales figures show a rise.
This post is very rambled - sorry about that - I'm getting round to asking - are the likes of the Irish Star, Irish Sun, Irish Mirror etc hitting the Indo etc because they feature more football/soccer, including local footie, in their pages.

Not disputing Troy McClure or Shels Tim - just curious.

If anyone bothers to answer this please don't forget bulking - it's a con.

I also thought that Ireland was part of the figures that showed paper sales declining and only rises in places like India, Africa etc. :confused:

Finally, given that the population is up on 10 or 20 years ago, what's the pecentage of paper sales to the population compared to the past? Is it up or down. 120,000 sales of the Indo today, for example, is quite different to 120,000 sales of same paper in 1980.

[Dr.Nightdub]

SirHamish, it's all vetted by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. There's also a Joint National Readership Report that measures increases or decreases in papers' circulation and who's getting all the famous ABC1 readers. Any of the journos who post here should be able to get at the figures fairly handily.

[crc]

Sometime in the early 1980s we went to Croke Park for a big game. It was a miserable experience. The stadium was draughty and decrepit. The mere act of trying to keep my feet in the milling scrum of a greasy Hill 16 made actually watching the game a near impossibility. The last straw was when I witnessed a very drunk man decide that, rather than fight his way off the terrace to visit the stinking toilets, he'd just unzip right there and urinate on the back of the man in front of him. Call me soft, but this wasn't my notion of a fun day out.
That, my friend, is called "Hot-Leg", and if you were that surprised to see it happening at all in the 1980s (let alone at Croker) it just goes to show that you can't have gone to too many football games in England in the 80s. In those days, especially on the Kop in Anfield, such an occurrence might actually be welcomed if it was a damp, freezing, dour match in the middle of January! :D


Aussies call it "soccer" (e.g. the "Socceroos", though I prefer the Matildas (http://members.fortunecity.com/noops211/matidas_soccer_team0043.jpg) !). :eek:

I don't make fun of people calling it "soccer", only Americans calling it "soccer"!

[hamish]

SirHamish, it's all vetted by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. There's also a Joint National Readership Report that measures increases or decreases in papers' circulation and who's getting all the famous ABC1 readers. Any of the journos who post here should be able to get at the figures fairly handily.

Thanks Dr.Nightclub - should have remembered that. :)