Since when has local pride not been enough, Vetinari? To any suporter willing to follow their team through thick AND thin (as us City fans are painfully used to), local pride is the ONLY reason needed to follow the team.
This isn't about thick and thin Cityfan. Or more accurately, it's not about thick, it's about thin. Irish soccer is thin on the ground, it lacks substance, it lacks a decent following. From a management perspective, it lacks caring, often understanding of soccer itself, and usually complete ignorance and/or apathy of basic business tenets. The FAI has middle-managed local soccer into the ground, and the owners and managers of the clubs have assisted them with this at every turn. There needs to be a revolution in Irish soccer. So no, local pride isn't enough.
Take me as an example. I'm not a big soccer fan, but I'm more interested in it now than I was before I started working with Cork City Football Club. The only pride I have for my local soccer team is local pride though, my pride of Cork, the People's Republic. I have very little pride for the club itself, and I certainly don't have enough pride to buy a jersey. I don't even have enough pride to go to a match, because I refuse point-blank to support the ignorance of Irish soccer chiefs. Is that wrong? Perhaps it is, but that's the way it is.
Though I am on the 'no English jerseys' side of this debate, I'm still not so narrow-mindedly dismissive as to say that there isn't merit to both sides arguments.
And neither am I. There is merit, and I challenge you to point out exactly where I said there isn't. But the sad fact of the matter is that Premiership jersey's at Irish soccer matches is a symptom, not a cause. Recognising symptoms is the first step in creating a cure, but you have to weed out the cause first. The underlying cause is the FAI, and the soccer chiefs.
Hopefully Brian Lennox will live up to his promise and be one of the first (I would suggest that, like him or love him, Pat Dolan is one of the trailblazers here) to tackle the causes, and not point at the symtoms and whine.
adam
