Eamonn McCann [Archive]

pete

10/07/2002, 10:30 AM

Commentators Ignorant Beyond their Years
- If you thought that most of the ill-informed guff would be overand done now that the World Cup is finished, you'd be sadly mistaken.

Eamonn McCann

Many football people will have breathed a sigh of relief as well as regret at the final whistle of the World Cup finals. Now there'd be respite from addle-pated articles yammering on about the zeitgeist. During the tournament blithe ignorance blithering idiocy had been no impediment to ink. The Irish Times published a column conveying Kevin Myers' thoughts on how to take a penalty. I'm not at all sure if I didn't read a piece by Eoghan Harris about the Celtic Tiger stalking the Connemara Pony.

But we sensed relief too soon. Last week, the July issue of Magill appeared. Magill is the Fine Gael of Irish publishing - a feeble thing compared with the force it once was, and unable to decide what to believe in so as to give a chance of a comeback. But this is no excuse.

The writer didn't have lacunae in his knowledge. Rather did his knowledge form a lacuna in the vastness of his ignorance. "The players who in recent years have been representing Ireland have, almost without exception, gone directly from the amateur local level to the English Premiership" (Of the squad in Korea-Japan, no more than five took this route.) "Most local clubs date from the early '60s, when Match of the Day began to beam into small-town Ireland." Roy Keane and John Giles "jumped fully-formed into the arms of Manchester United".

But idiocy rather than ignorance was most marked. "This means of expressing ourselves to the external will have been received from the violator, and will provide a way fot the violated to seek the approval of he (sic) who has tried to persuade him he is something indigenous, however necessary this may be in one sense, validates the violater's (sic) poor opinion in another. And by succeeding at the other, I, we affirm a part of our own dread that we may no longer be fully ourselves. "I wasn't fully myself eihter after 3,000 words.

Insofar as there was a discernible point about football it was that the National League is an embarrassment, that Premier Division grounds across the water are the natural and appropriate fields of freams for football people here. This of course - its the reason the Magill piece is wrth mentioning - is the view of an influential faction of the sport's opinion-formers.

These are the commentators who typically tell us that Roy Keane, Ryanair, U" and the Tax Avoidance Kid represent the clued-up cosmopolitian Ireland of the future which only the incorrigibly uncoll hesitate to embrace. The National League, on the other hand, epitomises the ram-shackle Ireland of a time happliy fast fading.

The National League kicked off last Friday. Some of us feel a lilt in our step already. We will have a cluster of bejewelled vignettes stored in the memory from last season - Liam Coyles hundreth goal, or Paul Doolin of UCD giving a master-class in how to orchestrate a midfield without running too far or very fast. And while we won't remember many matches, or any maybe, which we could honestly estimate as classics, all of us will recall a number of engrossing encounters between decent sides giving their all.

There will have been dreay, shivering afternoons and evenings, too, that we came away from cursing. But that's part of it as well. If you never left a ground swearing that that's effing it, you'll never be back, well, you've never really been there in the first place.

Fans of the National League are not a separate section of the footballing public. Many will be heavily involved at junior livel in their areas. A high percentage will also follow this or that cross channel or European side. They will have a much deeper knowledge of the game generally and a finer appreciation of play than those whose involvement in football consists entirely in having affixed their hopes of happiness in life to the fortunes of some glamour-studded outfit run by hot-money chancers.

We're regularily invited to revere the great, serious-minded men of football across the water - Sir this, so-and-so OBE. The National League has Ollie Byrne, not a man to invite reverence, with a seemingly constant urge towards infuriating behaviour, who pours his whole being into Shelbourne. Why does he do it? It must be love. There's no other explanation. The only good reason for giving your life to, as opposed to living your life through, a football club. All love is occasionally irrational in its manifestation.

The real reason many self-proclaimed "football fans" and self-regarding "football analysts" disdain the National League is that there's no money in it. Nobody makes big bucks from involvement. To some that's proof positive it can't be of real value. Buts its worth is beyond measure when compared with football as misunderstood by the sorts who imagine they're taking the game seriously when they ponder the wisdom of such tosh as: "It was probably inevitable that soccer would become a vehicle for the unashamed expression of our post-colonial imagination, a sort of surrending to that which, in other contextsthe national project of de-Anglicisation sought to eliminate."

There writes a man who has never read CLR James on West Indies cricket.

But enough! Get away with ye, we have Rovers on Thursday!

Eamonnderry@aol.com