Lucky you. Pity there weren't more like that rare gem. We got nothing but grief for playing 'foreign' games, and this is a major component in the whole Prem/GAA v. Irish football equation.Originally Posted by CollegeTillIDie
When I was a teacher in Portumna,I used to regularly organise buses to Athlone games. It's amazing how kids can get into a local club with a bit of encouragement. Then names they heard about actually meant something 'cos they saw them play.
When they got the feel of LOI, they were certainly less inclined to worship at the altar of UK footie. I told them that these are our local footballers just like your hurling or gaelic football teams. That seemed to connect.
Regarading the justifying of supporting english teams, one of the most pathetic things in the papers is the 'Irish Watch'. Ooh, look, S****horpe Reserves have an Irish player, how exciting. Someone should tell the Journos and their editors that there are teams here just bursting with Irish players if they're so interested. DCFC Steve also hit the nail on the head with his reference to the National Team. If it's about quality, surely we should all be supporting Brazil. After all, why should you be tied to supporting a country just because that's where you're from ?
If you haven't read it let me recommend a brilliant book by a journalist called Ed Horton, an Oxford Utd fan. It's called "Moving The Goalposts" and addresses these issues and more. Here's a quote from it, talking about the joys of watching lower league football
"The lower Divisions are so often assumed to be of little importance, as if they were simply third rate, inferior versions of the sort of Clubs who compete for the Premiership, as if they had nothing to recommend them... As if the people who watch this football were getting something fundamentally inferior, as if they were doomed to have a dull and miserable time watching dull and miserable footbal outside the charmed circlle of the Liverpools and Arsenals. Football is not like that. Watching the game as played outside the elite few, or in the lower Divisions is not a fundamentally inferior way of appreciating football. It is, in some ways, fundamentally different. But that is among footballs many pleasures...... If Gillingham play Southend at Priestfield nobody expects to see a troupe of internationals. Nobody goes there by accident, imagining they are going to see the sort of game they might see if Ajax were playing Juventus and then walks out disgusted because they are not. Of course everybody wants to see the players produce the best standard of football and the best game that they can. We hope to see some good football and to see a good game, and the chances are we will. But there is no point in a journalist watching a game in the second division and comparing it unfavourably to the Premiership....... A good game is still a good game no matter in what Division it is played. A bitter struggle is a bitter struggle at any level. A tedious draw is no more enlightening in the Premiership than one played halfway up the third Division. Certainly the thrilling moments of great skill, too which all supporters are attracted are more plentiful the higher up the Divisions that we go. But these moments are not absent from lower Division football. And they are not, on their own, what makes a great game of football."
And on Man U bandwagoners, he has this to say
" People from Surrey or Hertfordshire(He could have added Dublin) who call themselves supporters, watch an occasional game, or follow them on television and then think that it reflects glory on them when they win again. If we were jealous we could do what they do, buy ourselves a satellite dish and a replica shirt and congratulate ourselves on having chosen to 'support' the best. (You'd think we didn't realise that the clubs we follow are not likely to be as good as Manchester United are. Damn, here's me having picked Oxford to follow and all the time I never thought Manchester United would turn out the better team) Glory hunters get up our noses, lording it over people who follow their local teams. It is a shallow, sad way to watch if all you understand about the game, if all you want from it, is a constant stream of victories and trophies"
Hey, Tony D,man. Great stuff! You remind me of a Simon Hoggart article in The Guardian a few months ago who mentioned the same type of thing when one of his family brought him to a Brentford game. Hoggart is not a footie fan but seemed to enjoy the game without the usual Premiership bullshine.
Thought occured to me though at the time, where did he get the time to watch Brentford when he was shagging Kimberley Quinn??
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