Pity this site cant hand out yellow cards for posts like this (some sites do)Originally Posted by Kildareman
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist thinks it will change; the realist adjusts the sails.
Why? We have a domestic league which nobody in the great irish sporting nation cares for. I don't think the op is unfair. I happen to think the people of Scotland for example deserve to get to world cup because of their commitment to their national league despite being on the same landmass as one of the greatest leagues in the world.
So we outplay a team way superior to us for 1 and a half matches and get oudone by a poxy goal that shouldny have been and we are out...I understand that we should have taken our chances adn that france are a stronger team hence they will bring bigger playrs to south africa but we wanted it more and we deserved it far more than them
woah woah woah I don't want no penalty shoot-out determining whether i'm gonna be a Protestant or a Catholic....
Folding my way into the big money!!!
I think some people are missing the point. Nobody is saying Ireland didn't derserve to go through last night, they did. What people are trying to say is in the grander scheme of things France invest a hell of a lot more in their youth and developing their game from within. As do most the top countries (and some weaker ones too). We are being past out by countries with half the money we have (i ain't saying we are rich or anything) and half the resources we have all because these countries look at the bigger picture. They look ahead, not just in the here and now. They teach players how to play very well technically from a very young age. We have failed to qualify for two world cups (2006, 2010) and 2 euro (2004, 2008) in the last 7 years. That comes down to more than Henry screwing us last night.
You're not comparing like with like there though. There are a whole host of factors mitigating against football in Ireland - many self-inflicted. Just because a huge economic powerhouse where football is the undisputed no.1 sport invests more in football than we do doesn't mean they deserve it more. I'd argue that our team last night deserved it more because they played so well despite, not because of, their country's football infrastructure.
I agree they are a much bigger country with better resources and football is the no.1 sport but i'm not necessarily saying they deserve it more but that until we have the right structures in place in the long run countries that do will leave Ireland behind. There are countries with less than Ireland that are improving all the time with a lot of promise in the future. Ireland despite the small bit of progress in the senior team as a whole just seem to be in limbo. We aren't even competing well at underage level anymore which is a sad thing to see.
I think we do deserve world cup football yeah. Yes there a lot of people who don't follow the national league but they still passionately follow Ireland.
Just because some people follow manchester united or liverpool instead of shels or cork or derry doesn't mean they dont deserve to see their national team in a world cup. We can pretty much get at least 50000 fans to any home international and we always bring a great travelling support.
I wish more people did support the national league but they dont and this soon after the france game is not the time to be arguing about it.
how dare you make perfect sence at a time like this!!
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...258923337.html
How stupid an article this is now. It was stupid at the time and it is even worse now.
In Trap we trust
I think that article is as much of an attack on stephen Ireland as anything else. Will be interesting to see what Humphries writes now.
I've always liked his writing but this was a wee bit negative for my liking
Folding my way into the big money!!!
That should be his death-knell now for writing about football. He's been taken over by Malone for Ireland soccer, and Duggan is streets ahead with GAA.
Cheerio Tom.
Here they come! It’s the charge of the “Thanks” Brigade!
I'm not so sure about this I'm trying to think of a country with a population of 4 million where soccer is the not the most popular sport that has a better record/standard than us...
The 31 teams (left out SA - population 48 million) qualified for the world cup have an average population of 49 million people... most of those countries soccer is the number one sport... of the qualified teams 2 have a smaller population than Ireland and 1 has about the same. New Zealand is about the same and of course soccer is not the most popular sport, but can you compare European qualifying with Oceanico/play off. The other two are Uruguay and Slovenia. Credit to both of them, but on the balance you cannot expect a country the size of Ireland (as much as we'd love to) to be qualifying regularly for world cups especially when they are seeded in the third pot for Europe and there is a second round of seeding for the play-offs...
”That should be NO problem for the defence – OH NOOOO!!”
George Hamilton...
http://www.innishvilla.com
Good riddance would be more like it.
I agree. But what does one expect from Humpty Dumpty. He consistently lauds other sports over football and also saw no wrong in what RK did in Saipan.
Would'nt worry about him. Trying to sell newspapers, I expect.
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