Quote:
“So what Irish football club do you support?” The questioner was the guide at Camp Nou, home of FC Barcelona, last summer. Questions like that make you think. Or they do me.
What Irish football club (soccer, that is) do I support? Um, none. I support Arsenal, I told the Camp Nou man, and I could see he was looking at me as if I was a bit unbalanced. After all, I’d just been impressing on him that I was IRISH not ENGLISH, that there was a serious difference.
Did it, does it make sense for an Irishman to support an English soccer team like Arsenal? I suppose you could argue that Pat Rice, an Irishman, has been a prominent figure at Arsenal for years, or that Liam Brady works with the youth team – but so what? Isn’t there something a bit...colonial about my gazing past local clubs and supporting an English team? In my defence you could say that Irish club football north and south is crap, and you’d be right. But it still doesn't let me off the hook.
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My fear is that it’s rooted in cultural cringe. Anything native has to be second-best /primitive, things from the seat of power, the imperial centre, are bound to be better.
If you could untease this cultural cringe without referring to me as “an evil old ****” (the thoughtful estimate of one comment-poster a few blogs back), I’d be in your debt.
In light of his epiphany, whether or not he'll be attending Omagh Town games from the beginning of the new Irish League season remains to be seen.
