Originally Posted by
Supreme feet
Of our current squad, 18 out of 25 players were born in Ireland. This doesn't include the injured David Meyler, the overlooked Andy Reid, or the self-exiled Stephen Ireland, all of whom are Irish-born. Of the expected starting line-up in Armenia, only Liam Lawrence and, if selected, Kevin Kilbane will be English-born.
I don't have overall stats for every player that has represented Ireland in the last 20 years, but out of the better/more influential Irish players to have debuted in the last 20 years, I give you Roy Keane, Denis Irwin, Gary Kelly, Kenny Cunningham, Shay Given, Steve Finnan, Stephen Carr, Ian Harte, Richard Dunne, John O'Shea, Andy Reid, Glenn Whelan, Kevin Doyle. You might also consider Stephen Ireland. In short, the vast majority of our most important players have been Irish-born.
We had an Irish-born majority in our 2002 World Cup squad.
Out of our 1998 European Youth Championship-winning squad, Liam George was the only English-born player (apart from the London-born, Dublin raised Stephen McPhail).
Out of our last team to compete in the World Youth Cup in 2003, only Darren Potter and David Bell were English-born.
Of the current Irish U-21 team, only four players (Kiernan, Onyebanjo, McCarthy and Mason) out of eighteen are UK-born.
As we can see from the patterns in underage and senior teams, it's nonsense to say that 'most' of our players are English or Scottish-born.
It's not aidinho's opinions I have a problem with; we can argue the merits of McGeady vs. Lawrence all day, it's pretty subjective. It's the sweeping, prejudiced, narrow-minded generalisations, with no thought or resources whatsoever, that are clearly designed as wind-ups, that get my goat.
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