QuoteI think he actually a few years ago said that playing for Ireland was purely a career move and something that meant little to him.Originally Posted by Murfinator
It's all true.
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
I think he actually a few years ago said that playing for Ireland was purely a career move and something that meant little to him.
These comments sound like begrudery to me. These clowns don't understand the meaning of support. So support only matters when you win? If you lose you are suppose to turn on your team? The meaning of the word support: to sustain (a person, the mind, spirits, courage, etc.) under trial or affliction: (They supported him throughout his ordeal).
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"The Irish are fake supporters. For them it's just a trip to Poland and yet another reason to get drunk all day every day. They don't give a **** about the football itself, just about playing dress-up and being blindly nationalistic"
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Blindly nationalistic yet we applaud other people's anthems? Hard to get to the games without making a trip to Poland and if they were only in it for the drink, why bother go to the game as there is no drink allowed. As fake supporters, they did very well to make noise throughout the same supporting the team even though the team was being thrashed.
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"Sing when they're losing? Thats implying they cared about winning to begin with"
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If the support was great even when we lost, that idiot should have seen the scenes IF we had won. WOuld have been unbelievable. Ridiculous comment.
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Implying the Irish actually support their local teams. That's how good a bunch of supporters they are, their league's dead and they rarely push attendances beyond the 10k mark. ****ing pathetic.
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Where is the implication that this has anything to do with local teams? This is international football. Where are all the Spanish and English who support their local teams? At home not supporting their country. ****ing pathetic.
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The reason why Irish and Scottish are so good is because they know they're ****. You won't see English/German/Spanish fans act like that when they're being thrashed because they feel ashamed, the Irish expect to be thrashed.
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No, English fans thrash the place rather than expecting to be thrashed. Of course our expectations are not as high as countries with 10 times our population or more. The English must feel ashamed a lot of the time since 1966. We don't expect to be thrashed but we regard it as a hazard of the trade.
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Come to support their country
>Wearing Scottish club shirts
You ****ing idiots
>not being passionate about sports and just wanting to get drunk
>best supporters
Thank god they're gone by next week. They're only in it for the drinking anyways
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Didn't see that many "Scottish club shirts" but I don't see any problem wearing a shirt of a club with a huge Irish tradition especially since they are green and white. I wore my Shamrock Rovers jersey. Perhaps it was me he was talking about. Many fans love to drink and enjoy themselves. Is that a crime? A very small proportion come only for the latter but if they go to games and support the team, good luck to them. Life is to short for the curmudgeons of this world.
Jealousy is a terrible thing. Stand up for the boys in green....
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
I'll probably get a grilling for saying this but all this talk about the Irish fans being the best in the world etc. is rubbish. When Manchester United came to town, how many United jerseys were on show compared to the Select XI? we have our fair share of barstoolers who enjoy the chance for a good ****up abroad but would struggle to tell you anything about the club history of any of the players or even venture near their local football stadium. Getting the tricolour out doesn't necessarily mean your really a supporter of Irish football.
For once maybe someone will call me "sir" without adding "you're making a scene."
What about a tri-color with "Ross County" emblazoned on it? True story. Christ almighty.
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
Dead right, it's garbage and patronising. Everytime I hear it it reminds me of the latest teeny bopper pop star saying "Oooooh I have the best fans in the world" to mass high pitched cheers from a crowd with an average age of 11.
I know people who went to the Euros who wouldn't go to the Aviva to watch any of the qualifiers - much less go to an away game. The same people have never seen the inside of an LOI ground or, save for once or twice, travelled to see the team they support across the water. They are event junkies, pure and simple.
We're a pathetic nation with a pathetic mentality for lapping it up and hearing people like Delaney and some of the players peddling this cr@p makes me cringe.
Is this a regular occurrence for you, barney?
Yes, most of the crowd are about 9 but I drag the average age to 11. My username isn't my real name - it's the costume I wear most days.
I don't see what the issue is with that, at least no more of an issue than any other Irish flag with the name of an Irish town or club emblazoned on it.
There are plenty of Irish fans born in England and now we know some come from Scotland.
Me too. Jealous if you ask me
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist thinks it will change; the realist adjusts the sails.
I heard Stephen Kelly on SSN saying the players owe the amazing supporters something. No cr@p being peddled whatsoever, straight from the heart of a very likeable very honest player who went to Lansdowne just as we did.
As for event junkyism, I take the point but only to a degree. I just finished a postgrad degree in sports business & economics (focusing almost 100% on football - and with a lot of focus on marketing) and I read a lot of published research into fan behaviour and motivation for attending matches. There's no one type of fan - which is important for the commercial people to identify so they can target different groups of fans with different products for example - but the key is that there are different motivations which we should recognise. One of these is being part of the event itself - some fans are more likely to attend as being part of the crowd is part of the matchday experience. Without this it's less appealing. I think this is a justifiable motivation, even though I don't need it myself, but as a guy who has gone many many times to small events I have to admit that when I get a chance to be an "insider" at a big event I love it. I don't feel a part of an Arsenal or Celtic event for example.
Other fans are loyal locals - like LOI fans. Some are even dysfunctional nutters, some are just casual occasional fans etc. (There's a concept known as "the escalator" - marketers at clubs needing to get the casual occasional into a semi-regular, getting the semi-regular into a regular etc. The analogy breaks down at the top - you don't want people to fall off!).
There are many ways to skin a cat basically, none being superior to the other. In rugby AIL attendances have always been poor, yet when the context changes and the product improves, crowds turn up all of a sudden. Apart from the national team there is not a football product that appeals to large and varied segments of demand. The loyal locals and dysfunctional nutters () seem to be the only segments attracted to Irish domestic football. I think Trap's style has turned people away too. We got 65k against Cyprus and 40k+ against Andorra not too long back.
PM me if anyone wants me to send the fan research studies.
The Examiner provide a synposis of the Spanish press:
“Silva always wanted to win the game with his intelligence,” wrote San Martín. “He approached the Irish penalty area with intent, looking for gaps, lifting his head and searching for the best passing option, as the great players do. That is how he scored the night’s ‘golazo’, and that is how Spain played one of their greatest games, to the wonder of the world.”
Marca’s match report said that the Irish team had been completely overrun, especially in central midfield.
“Ireland suffered a calvary,” wrote Santiago Segurola. “The Irish are still stuck in the stone age. Far from advancing, they provoke nostalgia for the likes of Johnny Giles or Liam Brady, excellent midfielders who would have been disappointed in their national team. Ireland could not string two passes together.”
After all the pre-match talk of Xabi Alonso’s brief experience of Gaelic football in Meath as a teenager, El Mundo analyst Julían Ruiz chose another sport to make his point about Ireland’s lack of quality.
“Ireland seemed like a rugby team because of the shape of their players and the roughness of their technique,” wrote an unimpressed Ruiz. “But they could not invent a try or a scrum. The Irish ‘potatoes’ ended up in the sack made by the Spanish team.”
There was more reasonable analysis from Julio Maldonado in AS.
“There was little Ireland could do,” he wrote. “They began with a high defensive line, but Spain pushed them back with their passing game. That left McGeady and Duff without any options, and it was even harder for Robbie Keane. The centre of Ireland’s defence was powerless against Torres’ movement. Only Given saved Ireland from a hammering.”
Former Spain coach Luís Aragones was nicer to Ireland in his Marca column: “There was only one team on the pitch,” argued the Euro 2008 winning boss. “You cannot belittle the win because the opponent was not as good as they might have been. This is also to Spain’s credit, they knew how to magnify their own virtues and minimise those of their rival.”
All the papers agreed that Ireland’s fans had outperformed their team by singing through to the final whistle.
“Spain spent the last few minutes showing off, and it was then we understood that the true representatives of Ireland were their supporters,” wrote Juanma Trueba in AS. “They were exceptional.”
http://euro2012.irishexaminer.com/an...ge-197688.html
Like that covers all the people that went there and supported the team. Of course there are event junkies who go to games. That doesn't mean that there are thousands of fans who go to support the team and enjoy themselves (the two are not mutually exclusive). There are also thousands of LOI supporters who don't support the national team. DOes that make them any less of a football supporter. As I mentioned above, the definition of "support" is to sustain (a person, the mind, spirits, courage, etc.) under trial or affliction: (They supported him throughout his ordeal). Support does not mean to turn your back on someone when times get difficult. Of course this "best in the world" supporters is hyperbole but the support has been phenominal and to knock it is so typically Irish for those who weren't there. As was said by Vincent Hogan in Saturday's Inndo, the singing was not a celebration of failure but people lifting themselves beyond the immediacy of failure.
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
that's just a myth thats peddled about. Plus you don't talk about LOI fans in terms of thousands!!
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
I don't think that's a myth at all, at least judging by what some people post here.
so you judge by the number of fruitcakes on this forum as opposed to the erm, thousands, of fans who travel to tournaments wearing their local teams jerseys...
Im sure theres on or two nutbars who dont support the national team, as there are in England, but its not representative of LOI fans in any way and therefore is just a myth that a lot of barstoolers buy into to make themselves feel better about not supporting the local game.
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
Supporters not fans.
I love how even when I point to academic work just 3 posts earlier profiling football fan motivation and categorisation, you still see only 2 kinds - local fans and barstoolers. C'mon Stu, you're smarter than that. I'm not sure I understand Dong's distinction between fan & supporter, but I presume the same point applies to him (apologies if not).
Get this into your heads lads - there are many types of fan, varying degrees of attachment and many ways to support the game or be interested in it.
Also, I don't think I have ever heard a fan of the national team say he's not interested in the LOI because LOI fans aren't interested in the national team. Surely a myth has to be widely believed to be considered a myth. I know of several other reasons why many don't support it.
im not sure why you have more problems with my generalisation, which simplifies things for the sake of readability and do not take umbrage with Owlsfans categorisation of what can only be described as the majority of LOI fans... harrumph.
As a supporter of an Irish team in flesh and in spirit for almost 20 years now, i fully understand the fact that there is more than two categories of fan. I found myself nodding in agreement at the points you made in your post vis a vis floating fans, regular fans, diehards etc... if i tried to capture those intricacies in my posts id be here all year!
Ive heard that myth from a lot of people over the years as a reason for not supporting an Irish team. Its a myth and its bizarre logic!
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
OK, fair enough but I've never heard it and I also hate the term barstooler. I hated Brian O'Connor's patronising article about the LOI a while back but he does have a point about the "righteous indignation of the LOI fan"!
Outside the glory days of big tournaments I think our media (and the editors are to blame, not the hacks - something Brady alluded to in the RTE debate), except maybe The Examiner, patronise ALL of Irish football while they are in thrall to all things English. As DCFC Steve (where is he these days?) said ages back it's some bizarre post-colonial reverse psychology thing.
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