QuoteTo be honest, all that does is prove that he's never been inside Old Trafford.
Here's the text of Damian Corless's piece in the Indo yesterday. Lots of the usual stuff about hating GAA football (disclosure: so do I) but that's another debate.
The reason I'm putting this here has to do with the by now depressingly predictable 'give me ManU any day' nonsense, but especially the part that I've put in bold.
Sorry if this theme of media hostility bothers some people, but I think it's important. There is a clear link here to the troubles of Waterford Utd, SRFC and others that cannot be ignored.
Croker cracker? Give me Man U any day...
Tuesday July 19th 2005
Damian Corless turned his back on Gaelic games when he was 10 and couldn't make the local team. Last weekend, despite being a soccer fanatic, he was persuaded to go to the Leinster Final to see if his prejudice was still justified. What was his verdict?
'D'ya want hash?" The offer came from a group of young teens loitering close to Croke Park on Sunday. I wondered if I should have been surprised by the offer or, in the long years since I last made the pilgrimage to Croker, have the hash sellers become as much a part of the pageant as the scalpers and the yellow-pinnied gardai and the hucksters peddling crepe-paper hats and Crunchies?
The sense of not really belonging, of feeling like an impostor, struck me again when I reached the towering edifice itself. The faithful from Laois and Dublin surged towards the appropriate turnstiles along well-beaten paths. I, on the other hand, spluttered to a halt, dawdled on the corner of Jones' Road, stared at my ticket, stared at it again, gave up and asked a policeman for directions.
Once inside, locating my pew was relatively straightforward. Getting the elderly man who was in it to budge was another matter. I showed him my ticket. He nodded in a friendly enough manner, informed me that he wouldn't be staying too long, and resumed chatting with his friend. My ignorance of the seating etiquette at GAA matches left me at a disadvantage, so I had no choice but to comply.
I was there for Sunday's Leinster Final to conduct an experiment. As a Gaelic games atheist of long standing I wanted to find out whether the GAA's lavishly repackaged 'product' could lure me back to the fold I left many years ago. After all, the repackaging has clearly won others around. Crowds of 40,000 for a Leinster Final, never mind 80,000, were unheard of 20 years ago. It was time, I figured, to see if the new deal could work its magic on me.
My disenchantment with Gaelic games goes back to the age of 10 or so. Back then, as an open-minded schoolboy, I didn't differentiate much between Gaelic football and soccer, except to notice that soccer was the game of choice in the schoolyard, but Gaelic was the code enforced on the playing field.
So I signed up for the local Gaelic football team. After putting me through my paces, the manager decided that my best position was left outside, along with the other small kids. Most of us subs drifted away while the season was still young, but not before we'd witnessed the departure of the team's best player, a strapping forward. Early on, he developed a fiendishly clever technique of dribbling past defenders with the ball on the ground, and then kicking it into the goal for three points instead of over the bar for one.
This tactic paid off handsomely, and he scored freely as we won our first couple of matches. The manager's response was to take him aside and warn him that if he kept it up he'd be dropped. The headstrong youth protested that he was playing entirely within the rules of the game. The manager told him that he wouldn't have anyone playing "soccer" on his watch. So our top scorer was kicked off the team.
My brief flirtation persuaded me that I didn't have what it took for Gaelic games, either physically or in the logic department, and I decided to let well enough alone. I opted to concentrate my affections on Manchester United (my mother had decided that, as her first-born, I would be raised a United fan as a gesture of solidarity and sympathy over the Munich air disaster, and on the basis that Bobby Charlton was a gentleman).
A few years later, on the suggestion of a friend, I agreed to give Gaelic games another chance. Sometime in the early 1980s we went to Croke Park for a big game. It was a miserable experience. The stadium was draughty and decrepit. The mere act of trying to keep my feet in the milling scrum of a greasy Hill 16 made actually watching the game a near impossibility. The last straw was when I witnessed a very drunk man decide that, rather than fight his way off the terrace to visit the stinking toilets, he'd just unzip right there and urinate on the back of the man in front of him. Call me soft, but this wasn't my notion of a fun day out.
Not that the GAA ever had a monopoly on supplying bad experiences. Last autumn I went to see an Eircom League club entertain European opposition. The ground was spartan and smelly, but not nearly as offensive as the home supporters. Fathers giggled as their young sons yelled out a chant of "the referee's a refugee" and non-white pitch attendants were showered with torrents of racial abuse and the occasional missile. I will not be going back.
But will I be going back to Croke Park after last Sunday's reaquaintance with GAA HQ? Yes, absolutely, but not for the Gaelic football. The match programme carried a comment piece extolling the beauty and virtue of both Gaelic football and hurling, remarking "let's pity those who, in a snobbish attempt to turn taste into science, espouse the theory that one is vastly superior to the other". I am one of those who is to be pitied.
I have never played hurling in my life. I was always too attached to the idea of having an outward-facing nose. But it is absolutely beyond me how anyone can watch the game of hurling and the game of Gaelic football and conclude that one is the equal of the other. When it flows, hurling is breathtaking to watch, a spectacle of great pace and skill and thrills. If it's not 'the beautiful game', it is unarguably a beautiful game.
Hurling has an intrinsic grace and elegance, Gaelic football has little of either. Sunday's contest between Laois and Dublin provided lots of roughneck excitement and a close finish, but graceful or elegant it was not. I don't know why, of two sister codes, one should be so pretty and the other so ugly, and I suppose you can't blame the parent body for not wanting to have favourites, but I can only go on what my eyes see.
So I'll be back for the hurling, and for the rest of the repackaged Croke Park product. Here were 81,000 people coming together in perfect harmony, drinking beer like there was no tomorrow but with not a bad vibe in the house. There was one minor incident, where an item of fast food became a piece of sudden food as it was launched at a victim, but this turned out to be an eruption of good-humoured horseplay.
This mood of peace, love and goodwill to all even extended to the pitch, where the game was free from the niggly fouling and punch-ups I'd arrived expecting to see (and, if I'm being honest, maybe hoping to see).
A distinguished GAA man once explained to me the code's deep entanglement with violence in the following way: "A match is 14 individual one-to-one contests. You can be on a team that's winning easily but every time the ball comes in your direction the other guy is humiliating you. It's a very close contact sport, in keeping with the old Christian Brothers' dictum: 'stick to him like sh** to a blanket'. You're standing so close you really get to know your opponent, creating a great potential for lip, for niggly pulls on the jersey, for fisticuffs."
There were no serious fisticuffs, although as we streamed out one 10-year-old in a Dublin jersey shoved his twin brother, also in a Dublin jersey, yelping at him: "Go back to Laois!"
And me? Like many taxpayers of the non-GAA persuasion who've contributed to the building of this magnificent stadium, I can't wait for the day I can go there to see a soccer match.
© Irish Independent
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/
Last edited by BohDiddley; 20/07/2005 at 11:22 AM. Reason: chopped a not
To be honest, all that does is prove that he's never been inside Old Trafford.
It seems convenient that on their one outing to an eL game they always hear or see something deplorable I've never seen once. Not to say there's no racism in the stands at games but I've personally never heard a racist comment.
Last Autumn, which el club played "European opposition" with a coloured referee, in a sparsely attended game?
This guy has simply made up some bullsh*t to have a dig at the eL whil;e talking about the GAA.....
Interesting to see that he "proves" his long time ManUre credentials by claiming his mammy made him a fan in memory of the Munich air disaster. Not a bandwagoner then......
Or outside it before a game for that matter.Originally Posted by Passive
Nasty place at the best of times!
Have Boot Disk, will travel
I don't believe for a second he even went to an EL match and if he did there was never any racial abuse that he sems to think went on, especially not in Shels, no matter what you think of us, we don't have any racial chants!
Do we know an e-mail address for this príck??
Actually, Corless is a pretty decent and level-headed guy. I wouldn't go along with your description of him as a sharp pointed object. I just think he is misinformed.
It may well be that he heard some racist comments at an EL game. I never hav, unless we count the odd (minority) spot of anti-orange sentiment.
Slightly related to the subject of footballing ignorance, he was also on Newstalk 106 yesterday as a follow-up, and he brought up that old one about not calling football 'soccer'. Now, I used to subscribe to this trendy notion, until I was put right by an old-timer who exposed it for the posturing nonsense that it is. Soccer has been called just that since long before the Americans and GAA commentators got their hands on it. Didn't the old Goal and Shoot mags call it soccer?
Goes back to the time when the game was first called Association Football, and the name soccer came from there.
Or is this just another old story?
Indeed soccer is a term invented by the English. It was to differentiate it from rugby football I think. Association football being the official name they took soca out of association and it eventually turned into soccer. That's what I think I have read.
Does anyone actually remember a coloured referee at any of the Irish European games last year? I'd assume we're talking about Shels or Bohs as I doubt he'd leave Dublin to see an eL club. And it would have to not be the Deportivo or Lille games as they were not at an eL ground. That would leave Bohs v Levada Tallin, Shels v Hajduk or Shels v KR Rekjavik.
Thats fair enough Boh, but I don't appriciate him slagging off the EL, and lets face it, encouraging people not to come along, he's an idiot and I'll repeat what I said earlier, I don't believe he actually went to this "game," and is writing stories he has heard went on!!! If anybody knows an e-mail to contact him I'd be grateful, I don't know how to go about finding it!!!
I think he's just talking bull **** to slate the EL. I was at a European match this season with Macedonian officials and I heard no racism what-so-ever. Also if he had actually gone to a European match it would've been packed.
He's not exactly innocent himself, referring to the attendants as "non-whites". Another muppet insulting our league, just like that "teenage kicks" gob****e.
Extratime.ie
Yo te quiero, mi querida. Sin tus besos, yo soy nada.
Abri o portão de ouro, da maquina do tempo.
Mi mamá me hizo guapo, listo y antimadridista.
Thats what I meant by him making this sh*t up.
Uriah Rennie reffed our game against Neijmegen at the Cross alright, but that was in July........
And all the games you mentioned were fairly well attended, none could be called "sparse".
Even if there was, does anyone here believe that there were racist chants?
We all know there are sometimes comments made in the heat of the moment but such chants would not be tolerated!
By the way, who is he referring to here?
Have Boot Disk, will travel
That would be Cork City - Nantes:
Referee: Uriah Rennie (England)
Assistant Referees: Kevin Pike and Roger East.
Kom Igen, FCK...
I know what you're getting at but that would be considered sectarianism, not racism. If you go up to a foreigner who doesn't have the same religion and you insult him about where he is from, you're a racist but if you insult him about his religion, you're a sectarian.
If this is what he's basing his remarks on he's even more of a gob****e.
Extratime.ie
Yo te quiero, mi querida. Sin tus besos, yo soy nada.
Abri o portão de ouro, da maquina do tempo.
Mi mamá me hizo guapo, listo y antimadridista.
I sincerely doubt Rennie was racially abused and that this "journo" actually went to Turners Cross.
Have Boot Disk, will travel
I was just wondering if he had actually imagined it entirely. It is of course deplorable if it happened however it is not rife and certainly with the amount of people in his beloved OT I am sure a few people say things best unheard too.
Surely that match was packed tho?
Extratime.ie
Yo te quiero, mi querida. Sin tus besos, yo soy nada.
Abri o portão de ouro, da maquina do tempo.
Mi mamá me hizo guapo, listo y antimadridista.
Autumn ?? That game was played in July.
"Must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love you knowing nothing."
http://worddok.blogspot.com
That game was a sell-out. Definitely not sparse attendance.
Cork City: Making 'Dream Team' seem realistic since 2007.
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