Originally Posted by
dcfcsteve
Magoo - if your friend believes that professional sport is about being the best at something, then ask him why he supports the Irish international football team ? Supporting Ireland is the archetypal celebration of failure, and we think it makes us great people all together - "Sure win, lose, or draw there'll still be a party". Freak examples of success like Denmark and Greece aside, we are NEVER going to win the European Championships or especially the World Cup. There's 20 teams in the almighty English Premiership (all bow...). Only 3 of those have won the title in the last decade (and one of those only managed to do so in the last 2 weeks). The other 17 teams are increasingly unlikely EVER to win the title. By your friends measure, therefore, no-one Irish should be supporting the other 17 teams. Football around the world is increasingly becoming dominated by a monied elite, to the detriment of all other teams. By your friends view, we will therefore increasingly want to watch less of it, as for the vast majority of teams football is increasingly just an SPL-style 'celebration of failure'. Also - if people are only interested in sports where their team can be the best, then why does anyone bother with 60-70% of the GAA teams in the country ? How many people do you know who support a county other than their own - regardless of how crap their county is ? This suggests that following saport ISN'T about the winning - it's about something much deeper.
Your friend has taken the wrong spin on the right point. PARTICIPATING in professional sports is all about doing your personal best, and about winning. Sadly though - the nature of competition means that there can only be one winner, even though many try and fail. However - FOLLOWING professional sport is about a different set of rules and principles altogether. It's about pride, identity, hope, expectation, dreams and - unless you're Shels or Man U - the occassional very sweet taste of success.
Irish people have sought to distort these rules/principles to justify their following of foreign football. Man U and Celtic are suddenly 'Irish' teams; someone from their home town played for Spurs when they were a kid; their dad was a huge fan - all these reasons are consciously used to enable them to artifically feel pride and identity with foreign teams that they have absolutely nothing at all in common with. I bet you 90%+ of Irish Arsenal fans wouldn't have a clue where Highbury is on a map of London. Find one and test them ! A lot of the Man U fans would probably struggle to pin-point Manchester on a blank map of the country as well. Yet it's somehow "their" team...
Saddest thing is - Irish football has itself to blame to a large extent for all of this. Somewhere between the late 60's/early 70's and now we lost a lot of people who used to pack Glenmalure Park, Dalymount, Kilcahoan Park etc. Domestic football in any country doesn't exist in a vacuum. Foreign football has always been a presence and of interest to Irish football fans. Over time, however, we lost the arm wrestle between our game and the foreign one, and people drifted primarily away from our game. We have to hold ourselves to blame for that to at least some extent.
The current generation of adults are by-and-large lost to Irish football. They may go to the occassional game, but their balance of interest in football lies outside this island. Our target, therefore, should be the next generation of football fans - the kids. If we had a competent FAI and clubs, we might be in with a chance of attracting them to our grounds early on and getting them before the pendulum swings too far towards foreign teams. It's a very difficult struggle when their parents support English/Scottish teams, but it's our only chance of reducing the next crop of blinkered self-delusional idiots like your friend.
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