Apologies if posted somewhere on here already, but this is how some English view us supporting their teams. Some eejits on there but a few valid points made in amongst some of the rubbish.
http://forum.football365.com/index.p...75943bfdbe66b2
As Irishmen we dilute our sense of nation by depending on the English to bring us our balls
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.
joesoap i send your post about rugby in limerick and got this back from a mate. he made one very valid point: actually two!
every sport has bandwagon jumpers. Limerick rugby will never die out. If tomorrow the IRFU abandoned their structures, the Heineken cup was no more and the players returned to the clubs people would go back and support the clubs. When I was growing up, I'd go to local matches in Thomand Park (Shannon, Young Munster or Garryowen) and there were as many if not more people at those matches than there are going to Munster matches now (Heineken Cup included).
Conclusion:
- this is more or less the end of the rugby season so it's only natural for things to wind down
- I think it's only natural for people to go through a low after the highs of last year.. it doesn't mean that your not a Munster fan. Being a Munster fan is something you're born into like being Irish
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
How many English people support Milan? They're as English as any British club is Irish, and even have a St George's flag on their crest, but any self-respecting English person would laugh at the notion of switching allegiances from even a Conference club to one of the giants of world football.
The Irish who support British clubs above their own will always find an excuse and I love the 'Irish connections' one in particular. As if no Irish club wouldn't have more 'Irish connections' than any British club.
Funny how Liverpool, for example, only grew green wings when they started becoming successful. Before that Everton were the 'Irish' club on Merseyside.
The English are a very tolerant people and even many of them find it absurd that Irish people support British clubs ahead of their own.
Having said all that, we're just going around in circles here.
Anyone got a spare Champions League Final ticket?
I see your point but the fact is we have more in common with our neighbours be it from music, culture and even Soap Operas!
For a lot of us we discovered the club we support from an early age, I was 10and well before I could get to a LOI match. I don't really buy into the Irish thing like you but again its a reason for some people to support a club in England.
I think we all agree that bandwagon jumpers and those that switch clubs cannot be seen as true football fans. Then again I respect their right to do so, its a free country.
On the point of English supporters I've noticed more and more Chelsea and Arsenal shirts in Nottingham over the years so the bandwagon effect is not exclusive to Ireland.
Agreed. When I was at a game in Ibrox a few years ago, after the game one thing which struck me was the hundreds, literally, of coaches, all around the ground, taking Rangers "fans" back to small towns around Scotland, where the managers of the local teams must be tearing their hair out.
The idea that only the Irish choose other clubs over their local club is just wrong. Its not a commendable practice, but it is not exclusive to the Irish.
What parochial element of our game ???![]()
Football is the most global game in the wolrd. Our clubs partake in cross-border and European tournaments.
There's nothing parochial about undertsanding that swearing allegiance to a team you picked at random as a child is ludicrous, especially when you don't do the same when it comes to international football.
You say parochial, I say consistent....
As a fan of English football (I've been going regularly to Old Trafford since 1974 but Shamrock Rovers is my true love) I find it sad that Nottingham people would support clubs other than their own. And it certainly doesn't justify Irish people being equally mercenary from a greater distance.
If I was born and raised in Nottingham I'd support either County or Forest first and have nothing but contempt for those who didn't do likewise. Why put a distant club first when there's one on your doorstep?
I wouldn't regard myself as a mercenary quite frankly, if I hopped between clubs then yes I would be.
Clubs like Forest have support well outside the city and county boundries I know the people I go to games with come from all over England, there are also Norwegian, Swedish and Belgian Branches to name three.
It still all comes down to personal choice and people having the freedom to spend money as they see fit. Being dictated to and told your lesser by certain supporters makes absolutely no difference to me or the other thousands who support clubs outside this juristiction.
As I said before its no different to the GAA Taliban having a go at soccer supporters for chosing a foreign game over THE national sport.
It's unreasonable to slag people off for having an English team since they were a kid as if they did it on purpose. You don't really make that choice when you're five or six.
For the vast majority of our generation the commercial wave of Liverpool and United and Everton was where the ganging-up and the tribalism and the slagging was, in much the same way (but without the match-going, obviously) as Drums and Bohs and Shels and Rovers captured the imagination of the previous generation. Most of our fathers never passed it down; blame progress or highlights or administration or a betrayal of heritage or whatever.
A tiny amount of us were aware of the native league because of unbroken family tradition and some others happened upon it in our early teens through schoolmates or what have you; for most the English football scene was too ingrained by that stage (and maybe their families already had an English-football history) and League of Ireland never registered.
Now, if most of your childhood and youth was spent investing massive amounts of emotional capital (gloryhunting) into Liverpool's fortunes what are you meant to do when you start going to Bohs matches, just stop caring all of a sudden and tell yourself your childhood was wrong? How warped would that make you? Starting afresh and building a brand new 'only team for me' in your teens? You'd be like some kind of capricious, not-well-in-the-head stalker.
90% of the lads behind the goal in the Shed when I started going to Dalymount (early '90s) would follow the English football to some extent as well (not to mention The Scottish Club). During some of the more boring matches or at half time there would even be terrace-dividing "Liverpool/United" chants akin to the good-humoured "Celtic/Rangers" chants you'd get in English grounds in the '70s. And then all would join together and sing "you can stick your English football up your arse". A bit confused. But honest. These were lads who loved their Bohs, put their hard-earned where their mouths were, and went to every away match they could. (I wouldn't find their other 'casual' antics so funny nowadays, though, to be fair.)
I think it was one of the UCD posters said a while ago that League of Ireland in Ireland is like the Irish language in Ireland; it's a brilliant parallel. Unfortunately, there are cognate sections -- recent converts, in many cases -- within the two 'movements' whose puritanical zeal is unbecoming and makes demands that are at odds with reality.
"You're Irish, support an Irish team" = "Cad ina thaobh go labhrófása, Éireannach, teanga an tSasanaigh?"
It's not as simple as that, sure, and people need to stop implying it is. (Or else at least start speaking Irish when they're telling people to act like proper Irishmen)
Here's an interesting twist. Sunderland are setting up a pitch for hurling:
http://www.unison.ie/sportsdesk/gaaf...=13&si=1823477
Well done Erstwhile Bóz for making a very sensible and valid argument. Have to agree with pretty much all of what you said.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Tallaght Stadium Regular
Are your cousins that way inclined too Steve?What is it with Roscommon fellas and hard rock....?Unfortunately, I dont know too many others in ros that are, as I always got slagged about my taste in music, and anytime i would put it on the jukebox i was met with a chorus of "turn down that sh1te/turn off that sh1te".
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That does remind me though of when I lived in teh states and this dublin lad I lived with was convinced that country people like hard rock cos they were backward and it was 10 years behind anything else......
erstwhile, great post. You now have taken the mantle from myself as being the most informed, sensible and fair poster on this site. Well done.![]()
Last edited by paul_oshea; 03/05/2007 at 10:10 AM.
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
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