Interesting thread, lads, and a lively debate.
Hello from a Sunderland supporter, by the way (and a special hi to anyone from Tullamore - lived there seven years).
Of course Quinn is not an 'enemy' of football in Ireland - what he is is a legend to Sunderland supporters, and he himself has simply said he fell in love with the club and was moved to come back to rescue it. It's all about Sunderland, that's all.
His aim - and he's worked hard at it these last few months, going to pubs and clubs in the area to meet the fans - is to bring Sunderland fans back to the stadium. If in addition some fans from Ireland want to come too, then that's great - but in all honesty it's never going to be a major focus - the 40,000 in the stadium are nearly all going to be local fans.
Regarding the question earlier about how fans here regard the Irish interest, I think 99% of fans think it's great - the more the merrier. I've met a few Norwegians who fly over for the odd game. There were 200 Trinidad & Tobago fans up for the Wolves game (we have 3 T&T players in the squad) and they had a great time - their carnival 'dancers' were especially welcome!!! Most Sunderland folk are very easy to get on with - it's a friendly part of the world, and I always think there's a pretty easy rapport between people there and people from The Republic, and more than a few can trace Irish relatives as quite a lot of families came over to the North East for work during the famines. I can't verify it, but I remember my dad telling me that back in the 30's, during some elections, the Sunderland labour party adopted green as their colour rather than the normal red - just to try to capture the catholic vote. Politicians never change, eh?
What's happening at our club is astonishing just now - we've never in my lifetime (and I started watching them in the 50s) had everything in place - stadium, chairman, manager, board - it's what Niall has called 'a magic carpet ride'. We're loving it - and it's a big carpet if you want a ride...
Are you coming on to us?Originally Posted by stampp
Cheers for coming on anyway stampp, all the best with your club anyway, you'll find most of us don't begrudge Sunderland a bit of success and hopefully you'll be joined in the Premier by Sheffield Wednesday next season
Are you coming on to us?
Cheers for coming on anyway stampp, all the best with your club anyway, you'll find most of us don't begrudge Sunderland a bit of success and hopefully you'll be joined in the Premier by Sheffield Wednesday next seasonNot so sure about Wednesday - the late form team for the play-offs may just be Stoke. We're just trying to breath normally until after Saturday... the fat lady is still in the wings, gargling...
Cheers Staamp. I spent 3 years living in Newcastle, used to do voluntary work at a youth club in the centre of Sunderland, and have been to your Stadium quite a few times (incl for the game against Norwich in December). My next door neighbour in Derry also used to be former Sunderland player John 'Jobby' Crossan. So I have a positive view of the club.
But I guess you're missing the point here. It's not about how welcoming the Makems are, and to be fair you'll find that talk of Norwegians and Trinidadians going to watch you will be viewed as a negative thing by many on here.
The point is this. Irish football is a great product, but one that is over-whelmed by the wall-to-wall hype and media coverage of the English game on our doorstep. That has held-back our game significantly. You would doubtless be disappointed or even baffled to meet Sunderland people who support Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal. Because there is a good local product on their doorstep that they can actually have a genuien affinity and identification with instead.
Likewise - we are disappointed by the short-term borrowed interest a number of Irish people have in Sunderland AFC. Just because you now have an Irish Manager and Irish owner. Meanwhile - there are 22 senior clubs in the Eircom League - all with Irish owners, managers, players, locations, addresses, tax bills etc etc etc. But the giddy goons who are atrtracted to Sunderland like moths round a bright light will never see what is under their nose. They're intoxicated by the hype and glamour of English football, and for them borrowed interest and reflecting in the glory of a team from a place you couldn't even locate on a map is of more interest than supporting your own.
So no-one here has a problem with Suinderland or its fans. Some clearly have a problem with Quinn - but it is not a view I subscribe to. The one thing you'll find that unites the vast majority on us here is disdain for the fools in Ireland who chase after the bright green light of Sunderland now. Just like they chased after the bright green light of Leeds under O'Leary, or Man U etc in the past. They'll be gone form your club once that green light dims or is switched off - and they'll be busy fluttering after whatever the new bright thing with a tenuous Irish connection is instead.
Enjoy it whilst it lasts - but think for a moment how much it would annoy you as a football fan if you were in our shoes. The English don't all chase off following German, French or Scottish clubs. Anyone Irish with a genuine interest in the game shouldn't either.
I don't know, two of our last three games are at home against Coventry and Norwich, and we should take 6 points there, and the decider for us will be at Birmingham, and we could do Sunderland a big favour there I reckon
There are other sections on this forum to discuss overseas football!!I don't know, two of our last three games are at home against Coventry and Norwich, and we should take 6 points there, and the decider for us will be at Birmingham, and we could do Sunderland a big favour there I reckon
The thing is though Steve - this thread is about Niall. And it's hardly Niall's fault that some Irish businessmen want to invest in this business, because Niall has gone back to the club he loves and started to make it successful again. Start a thread about the businessmen instead? And even then - it's a global economy, and other EPL teams are being bought out by Americans, Russians, Israelis... why should you expect Irish business people not to be interested too? This is the reality today.
PS - I watched Crossan play!
jesus can we not have two or three posts without someone jumping up and down?
I think the thread should be titled
Irish Bandwagoners - Irish Footballs Number 1 enemy
One (long) question for you Stampp;
If Southampton were bought out by group of businessmen from the North East, appointed a manager from the North East and started to do well, would you be p!ssed off if thousands of people from the North East started to support Southampton and travel in their thousands to the south coast to see them every week when, alternatively they could be supporting their local team?
Sorry, I'm not normally nationalistic at all, but that really gets me.
Bloody Mark Lawrenson
No
Agreed. Like I said - it's the starry-eyed Irish people who are at fault here. The magpies of European football (no Geordie pun intended). Quinn is just doing his job, and doing it well.
As for Crossan - he runs a sports shop in Derry, technically does a bit of scouting for you still (though not much), and is a big Derry City fan and match commentator. Did he get his ban from English football when he was at Sunderland btw ?
First part - no, not at all. My club has been managed by English, Scots and Irish. Do I care? Nope - as long as they're good - and Roy is starting to look very, very good. So why should I care if a Mackem manages Southampton? In fact Southampton is managed at the moment by a former Sunderland player who is still held in high regard by some of us more 'mature' SAFC supporters. So what?
Second part (and I know where you're coming from) - it would just never happen because of the history of this club. We've been going since around the 1880's, so a lot of fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers have been supporting the team. A few on the periphery my defect to the mags up the road in lean times, or get some fun going along to support a minor local team like Darlington or Hartlepool, but basically it's about whether we are successful or not - local people will go if we are successful, and not go if we are rubbish, but few defect.
I understand your frustration about Irish support crossing over to see us, or Man Utd, or Celtic, just as I'm sure in the North East that the directors of Hartlepool and Darlington are frustrated that thousands of potential fans from those towns travel to see Sunderland or Newcastle instead. It's simply human nature - the attraction of the bigger clubs for some. It's a fact of life - an open market. And getting back to the thread title - nowt to do with Niall, who is doing his job - well - as Chairman of Sunderland.
You misunderstood my first part - the bandwagoners I refer to are the Irish people who have suddenly become Sunderland fans.
On the second part, I realise that the scenario I put to you is hypothetical but even so would it p!ss you off if it happened?
If it happened - yes of course. Sunderland is an old working class area and the football club is very much part of the 'family' - you don't choose your family. But do the Irish clubs have that history of generation after generation of support to cement fan's roots and loyalty? I think not. If you then add in the 'big club' attraction it's easy to see how it happens. What's the solution in a free market? It's the same question for Darlington - make the club more successful, make the matchday experience more affordable and more fun... But you can't force people to support their local team, and you can't rail against people like Niall for working for other teams if that's what they want to do - especially if they have long and deep associations with those teams.
Anyway - I'm becoming a board hog! I'll bugger off and so some work! Good craic.
Why would you think that? Of course we do. Nobody has a problem with Sunderland FC at all just the muppets from here going to another country to "support" a foreign club and then having the temerity to slag off their own league without seeing the incredible hypocrisy.
http://www.safc.com/news/?page_id=11819
KOH
The likes of Bohs, Shamrock Rovers, St. Pats, Linfield, Glentoran would heve that. Not how I became a Bohs fan but I'd say the majority of our support would have that kind of thing. Other teams would have it to a lesser extent I suppose but wouldn't have been around for as long and/or have replaced other clubs in their area that have folded.
TO TELL THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY
The ONLY foot.ie user with a type of logic named after them!
All of this has happened before. All of it will happen again.
If the free market is going to have its way, we should get ahead of the bandwagon curve right now, save ourselves a few years' grief and northern English weather, and go follow David Beckham and his American buddies.
A rather naive question about Irish clubs there Stampp. Of course Irish teams have generational support. We're not Australia or America - competitive senior association football has been around in Ireland since the late 1800's. The island even gave the game key developmental things like penalties and corner kicks.
And your point about Darlington FC facing competition from Newcastle or Sunderland completely misses the point about the nature of that competition. People in the North-East of England by and large support teams in the north-east. Many will support the biggest/best team in the area at any one time, and many will also support their local club regardless of how they're doing. But few would consider supporting teams out of their area - particularly not unglamorous teams like Blackburn, Bolton, Reading etc, without having some sort of connection to those places/teams. And those who live in, say, Darlo, but support Newcastle - most wouldn't aggressively and dismissively look down their noses at Darlington. They'd actually like to see the team do well - because, even if it's not their first team it's still their local team.
In Ireland, the complete oppposite happens. People have wholesale turned their backs on Irish football. They sneer at the local league and their local teams, and treat anyone who follows them as either curiousities or in-breds. Instead - they pick a team in England or Scotland who is good at any point of time, or which has a very tenuous Irish connection. Most Irish Sunderland fans would genuinely struggle to pin-point the town on a map. Many will never visit your ground or your city. Few still would be able to relate to a town that's history and identity is thoroughly different to that of Irish towns (i.e. an English colliery town). Yet they still claim that they love your club. They still play out the pantomime of hating Newcastle - not because of local rivalry, but, well, because that's what Sunderland fans do, isn't it ? They will want anyone to beat the England International team - because they're Irish of course ! - but they fail to see how supporting an English league team over Irish ones at a club level is absurd.
So by-and-large when English people turn their back on their local team, they don't become anti that team and they don't stray too far from their area when selecting another club to support. They certainly don't go off and support Italian or Spanish teams - even if Madrid and Milan will always be more glamorous than Darlington and Sunderland. And that's because English people understabnd that football is all about identity.
There was a time in Ireland when we did have very big crowds, widespread generational support etc. But the 70's/80's saw that die. For a variety of reasons - but to some extent due to the saturation coverage of English football that started then. Now it is easy for an Irish person to follow Sunderland without having to leave their armchair ina different country.
So the goons you have off following Sunderland now are just big game hunters. They're not 'football fans'. They don't truely understand what the game is all about. And because it is impossible to be genuinely passionate about a club that you have absolutely no connection whatsoever to, they are not there for the long run. They'll drop you like a hot stone when results dip and there's another shnier club to swear undying allegiance to. So that's why I said to enjoy the sound of Irish accents round the Stadium of Light whilst you can. They'll all be gone within 5 years....
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