[QUOTE=osarusan;1298583]LOI football has been around since 1921. It has sustained itself for 88 years.
I was responding to a post saying that the LOI had proven itself unsustainable. That is clearly wrong, as it has been going for 88 years.
There is a suggestion being made that the league being crap (which I'm happy to accept) means it is unsustainable. This connection is simply wrong.[/QUOTE]
I can understand where you are coming from, yes the LOI has been around for years. Some of my own family were part of it during its glory days and from their descriptions it was once a wonderful advertisement for Irish football. Some of the greatest footballers ever to play finished their careers in the LOI. To suggest that there is no correlation between the quality of the league and its sustainablity is however both wrong and a little naive. The LOI is a product, its something that is produced so that people will pay to enjoy it and therefore make it viable. If a mars bar was made of excrement would it be such a popular product?
The LOI as we know it ( a semi professional league) is completely unsustainable, yes it may continue as an amateur league but thats like saying mars bars still existed because someone kept pushing **** into a wrapper. The name lives on but no one is interested in the product.
You seem to know your stuff osarusan and I don't mean to offend but you really need to take the blinkers off and see that the LOI is dying and needs drastic change, the same goes for the SPL, IL and LOW.
Help something bit me!!!
62 pages.
Could this be the longest surviving thread to feature Northern Ireland?
In summary - what have we learned.
Well.............. ....... ..... wait now...............................feck it.
Quoting years at random since 1975
Anywho, any update on the proposed match against Belgium?
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist thinks it will change; the realist adjusts the sails.
No game against Belgium in March- the KNVB have organised a game with Croatia instead.
Whoops. Apologies to all my readers in Belgium.
It's a shame, I quite fancied that game. Maybe Luxembourg instead?
Belgium manager Dick Advocaat has rejected the possibility of playing a friendly with Northern Ireland as the Dutchman supposedly wants tougher opposition.
The Belgian FA (KBVB) and Northern Ireland had been discussing a friendly while Advocaat was reportedly under the impression that it concerned Ireland Republic, rather than their northern neighbours.
"We spoke with Northern Ireland and there was the possibility to play a friendly," said KBVB Chairman Jean-Marie Philips.
"Our coach was then brought up to date, but communication went wrong. Advocaat thought we meant Ireland. When in an e-mail he read that it concerned Northern Ireland, he informed us that he preferred stronger opponents."
According to media reports, Belgium have already found a replacement and face Croatia in a March 3 encounter.
http://uk.soccerway.com/news/2010/Ja...land-friendly/
Perhaps you were thinking about the NKVD?
What's wrong with Belgium exactly? Having worked there I think its a very badly maligned country and far from the cultural desert it is portrayed. Its just that the French lay claim to all their creative icons (Rene Magritte, Jacques Brehl, Tintin / Herge, Georges Simenon / Maigret) in much the same way as the English used to appropriate ours.
What was it Colin Farrell said to Brendan Gleeson when offered some quality Belgian beer in Bruges (or Bruggee)? "nah, that's fcuking gay beer."
I like Belgium myself.
I'm a big fan too (although only as a tourist). You can overrate a culture dominated by fictional detectives, mind.
Apart from the underachieving football team, I was thinking of the constant ethnic/ language bickering and threats to split the country. Of course these may be exaggerated to foreigners.
I think the French probably appropriate Sam Beckett more than the English do.
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