Originally Posted by
Fizzer
People can do a bit yeah, but I think it was an unreasonable point to have been made. It wasn’t actually a point at all, it was a misquotation of what McCarthy said. It arose, I would suggest, because of Idah’s ethnicity. MOTD would not have misquoted McCarthy if Idah was white. Obafemi had to field similar nonsense for no reason (Mark Hughes to blame primarily there, ably assisted by Martin O’Neill).
The point you make on the capping issue to keep players is a reasonable one, except that it’s only an issue in the context of players born outside Ireland, some of them with links only through one grandparent. I’ve never heard the ‘capping to keep them’ issue raised in the context of a white player born and raised in Ireland. You can call it something other than racism if you prefer but I think it’s wrong to call into question the loyalty of a young fella from Cork to his country and to suggest that he’s flighty on the basis of nothing other than the colour of his skin.
Idah should not now be expected to have to answer questions from the media surrounding his loyalty when he hasn’t done or said anything to the contrary, nor has McCarthy by all accounts.
The story should have been that another exceptional Irish player has broken through in spectacular fashion and might now be capped (which is the actual story if MOTD hadn’t taken liberties) but the insinuation that McCarthy has to now handcuff him to his own country is ugly, unwarranted and wrong.