I wouldn't mind dangerhere or any other board like it. You will just get frustrated. Enjoy your league and if others odnt like it and are annoying about it, just ignore :)
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I wouldn't mind dangerhere or any other board like it. You will just get frustrated. Enjoy your league and if others odnt like it and are annoying about it, just ignore :)
That about the size of it right there !!Quote:
Originally Posted by Gareth
There is one thing though ... the eL clubs could do more to promote their own games locally. It is their own fault for not doing this and the buck doesn't stop with the bar stooler for this. It is all down to the clubs and how much value they put on getting new punters through the gates.
Shels have posters up all over the city and I am not sure it has significantly increased their gates, it certainly has increased awareness of the team though.
fair play Mick Nevilles Hair, put it better than i ever could!
One of my mates replied with this. Don't know where he got it but it's not his words anyway. I find it a particularly lazy and lame response.
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The reason no one goes to soccer matches in Ireland is that in the national list of priorities in sport it is below gaelic, hurling, rugby and arguably horseracing. 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.
In my opinion there is no problem with supporting premiership teams, I grew up in Drogheda and used to go to the odd game as a kid but even by the time I was ten it felt like charity work. Any aspiring soccer player in Ireland is looking for a contract with an English club. How many players do you think there are in league of Ireland who drive home from training thinking “thanks be to god I never got sucked into the aesthetic spectacle that is the premiership I’m so happy being a third rate player in a league so poor that it can only get a player from it’s ranks on to the national team once every three or four years” and by the way the appearance on the national team (for a friendly) is the equivalent of throwing the giblets from the Christmas turkey to a mangy mongrel on the street.
By the way the AIL semi finals are on in this weekend and next weekend Armagh play Fermanagh in the first round of Ulster football for the All Ireland if you are still wondering why nobody bothers with Irish league soccer please attend these matches. But if you enjoy the soccer that’s fine and now you know why no body else does.
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'd rather stick pins in my eyes.Quote:
the AIL semi finals are on in this weekend and next weekend Armagh play Fermanagh in the first round of Ulster football for the All Ireland if you are still wondering why nobody bothers with Irish league soccer please attend these matches.
Took a mate of mine from the north to his first eircom League game on friday (Shels vs. Finn Harps) and he commented that it was a better atmosphere, match and football feeling in general than when I took him to the Ireland vs. Portugal friendly in Lansdowne a few months ago although..
Put it this way - I think he will be more likely to go to Tolka Park again than to Lansdowne Road..
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.
I want to introduce him to the eL... not make him a Shels fan!! :eek: :D ;)
Will you be able to pay at the gate as a neutral for the Setanta Cup final do you know?
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 :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Slash/ED
Seriously though thought Shels played very well against Finn Harps, Rogers and Baker were superb.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gareth
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??Quote:
Originally Posted by 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?
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magoo
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.
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:Quote:
Originally Posted by dcfcsteve
Excellent stuff Steve
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Originally Posted by Slash/ED
Cup game on the 10th now :D
Great post dcfcsteveQuote:
Originally Posted by 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.