I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
“I’m not Irish as such, but I’m a Catholic boy and it’s in my blood through my dad’s mum".
I going to have to go back to school as my reading of that is; he doesn't identify himself as Irish, but he's Catholic and his Dad's mum is/was Irish so he can play for us.
If I wanted to say I wasn't born in Ireland I'd use the phrase "I wasn't born in Ireland (as such) " but that's just me.
Anyways I've said my piece now and let my feelings known. So this is my last post on the subject.
You are reading way too much into this. Do you think many of the English born players who have represented us down through the years have stood up and said they were actually Irish apart from the obvious, Kilbane, Breen, McCarthy. I bet the likes of Morrison, Lawrensen, Holland, etc though themselves as English men playing for Ireland. Most of them would have played for England if given the chance. I bet this did not stop you from cheering them on when they were sweating their arses off for the cause. At least this chap declared at a young age and did not have to be asked to do so. That’s good enough for me and I will support him 100%.
I'd agree wholehearted with your posts on this thread.
The 'most ill informed post' accusation is not one to be thrown around lightly. This type of "Irishness" thread always throws up a few candidates, sometimes justifying the absence of rationality in a creative interpretation with a 'Im just expressing my feelings' excuse.
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To be honest, if he wants to play and is good enough then i dont see the problem, however if its a stop gap and hes just taking the mick, then he can fcuk off. A problem i have is Irish people who ill wish on England and the English National team, yet when the weekend comes they wear their Liverpool, United and Arsenal tops and refer to these Teams as "We" and "Us". Thats a pain in the arse, these are also the people who wont go to Eircom league games, and will sneer about their local EL clubs. (In case i hurt anyones feelings, i knoe not all people who follow English football turn their noses up at the EL, but there is quite a lot who do..)
Més Que Un Club - More than a Club
Talk about a sly silly little dig.
The issue isn't about second or third generation Irish playing for Ireland. I've already said I wholeheartily welcome them. It's about whether these players are "committed to the cause". Kieron Westwood said he'd "consider" playing for the Republic. That's all well and good but I personally wouldn't need to consider about playing for Ireland.
Nobody here had mentioned the name of Kieron Westwood before he appeared on your TV screens last week. He makes a few saves for Carlisle United and all of sudden we get the usual lyrics posted about a lower league player in England that should get a "call-up".
Brian Murphy hit the nail on the head with his comments. What Westwood's call-up says is if you want to play for Ireland, go across the water and make a few saves in front of the Sky Sports cameras. If somebody posted a thread in the Ireland section of foot.ie about an LOI player deserving of a "call-up" that thread would be threated with disdain by the vast majority of posters. However if somebody else comes along and states there's a player making strides at Torquay United it's a whole different story. Like Flawless said in his post there're hoardes of so called "Irish football fans" puked up across the country telling everyone in earshot how they are "Man U til I die" or I'm "Liverpool til I die". These are the same people that go out of there way to sheer at the English national side and at players who play at the same clubs at which their "hearts" lie. There're all "football fans" that pay countless sums of money buying trips to the UK but wouldn't dream of watching the football that's played on their doorsteps.
Sometimes you have to take the long-sighted prespective rather than the shortsighted and the case of Kieron Westwood is a perfect example. It sends (another) signal that LOI players will constantly be overlooked in favour of players that highlight their availibilty after they realise they'll never get to play for their nation of choice. It's another kick in the teeth for the development of domestic soccer and like it our lump it we need a strong domestic league if we consistently want to qualify for major tournaments and we wouldn't need these continuous whinging threads about journeymen not getting their games with their respective British clubs as we'd be in a position to pick players playing regularly in the LOI.
It was stated in the LOI section of this forum that Norway has picked an international squad containing 16/18 players from Norwegian clubs. What's wrong in encouraging the development of our own league so that we can be in a position to do this as well. Yes it might "just be a training camp" for the most of you but it's still a training camp for the national team and a strong source of recognition for any previously uncapped player. A lot people take a great source of pride in their inclusion in such training camps. And rightly so. That's the "type of Irishness" I want.
The whole Catholic boy thing was a tongue in cheek comment in fairness to him.
I don't know what to make of this. I think myself that when a player has a choice of playing for two countries they will almost always play for the best team that they will be able to get selected for, like alot of the African players who have played for France in the past. On the one hand I would nearly say fair play for admitting it that he is not Irish(or fully Irish.......) and on the other hand I would prefer to have people who would always see Ireland as their one and only national team playing for us. He is as qualified as many of the guys who have played for us down the years, he has just put his foot in it with that comment.
While my previous posts on this indiacte that it is no more than a holiday camp, I do accept your comments and others, that it should be a great source of pride for anyone to be called up, and maybe a number of EL players should have been called up, like a number of U21s were.
Maybe I'm wrong in assuming that EL managers would not be happy to lose 1 or 2 of their best players for 2 weeks and possibly 3 matches for this.
With our away game scheduled for next June against Bulgaria, maybe Trap will organise another week away and if arranged earlier enough a break in the EL season could be planned now to facilitate the calling up of say 4 players for the training camp.
Fair Play died Nov 18th 2009, Stade Francais.
great post ifk. I have to agree - my original disagreement was on your attacking of what he said, which i think is innoccuos enough in the greater context. Compare to Clinton "come and get me Sven" Morrison and you can see where im coming from.
On ability, however, i totally agree that there are far superior candidates out there and i fully agree with the overall jist of your post.
Ive been posting a lot of what you said on here (the bolded bits) for a while concerning the success of the domestic league and its relevance to the success of the national team.
Maith an fear.
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
Now we have judgements made, about a 2 or 3 generation player based on an innocuous quote, to determine his level of commitment to the cause.
Save us from this insanity.
How does the commitment scoring system work?
I guess Dean Kiely is okay, he is safe. Even if he is a shadow of his former greatness. When or how did he pass the goalkeeper Irish commitment test? Was it before or after he played for England?
Or is it now that we just assume he is Irish because he is Irish.
There are some very valid and noble points in ifk101s post though some of them are some way beyond the subject here. Also none of them lessen by a jot Westwoods eligibility to represent us ...not if he considers himself Irish, not if he doesn't, not if hates the Irish, thinks they're redheaded freckly inbred tinker tarmaccers who deserve all the mick-slapping that can be heaped on them.
With that as the bottom line -it simply becomes a question of those in charge managing and exploiting the pool of players available to Ireland to our greatest advantage. If that's the situation then there's a case to be made that a goalkeeper who it is highly likely will be playing at a higher level next season* should be encouraged and welcomed into the fold. The Irish born and Irish based keepers will be no less eligible thereafter. They are disadvantaged for sure but that's the situation they find themselves in.
*If Leeds United are promoted on Sunday I wouldn't be surprised if Westwood was top of McAllisters shopping list. He's the only player I've seen in that division that I would think could displace Casper Ankergren. Even if they don't come in for him I think it's been said on here that the Carlisle supporters broadly reckon he'll be off soon.
" I wish to God that someone would be able to block out the voices in my head for five minutes, the voices that scream, over and over again: "Why do they come to me to die?"
I'd be inclined to disagree with your last comment. Your claim that teams getting promoted find it very hard to stay up for one year is debateable to say the least. In every season since 2000 at least one promoted club has stayed up, and possibly this trend stretches further into the past; I didn't bother to look at every season, feeling those facts alone are enough to disprove your claim. In any case, the league those clubs are being promoted into is the wealthiest and very arguably best in the world, so to go down from it is no disgrace, and very few promoted clubs do as badly as Derby did this season.
The Championship is not a shocking league. For as long as I can remember, it has been amongst the top 10 European leagues for average attendance, and the highest of any European second tier; it is a competitive league from top to bottom and practically every side in it has multiple full senior internationals.
I don't personally think any Irish side could survive at Championship level for longer than a season or two; even Colchester have higher gates than the top side in Ireland, and they are widely regarded as being one of the most 'punch above your weight' clubs at Championship level for a long time. Furthermore, although a handful of Irish league players have made it in the Championship, many who have tried have not succeeded. These are top players in Ireland. I think that if the leagues were genuinely comparable you would not have this sort of failure rate.
Disagree with me if you want to on that, but it's my honest opinion.
"Life is like a hair on a toilet seat. Sooner or later you are bound to get pi$$ed off."
"In this league, a draw is sometimes as good as a win" - Steve Morison
how can you comment on a league that (i presume) you have never seen? Not necessarily saying i agree with the original poster but i just wonder how you intend to validate your opinion?
Attendances is not a valid argument against the quality of some of the footie on show in Ireland. Similarly, the championship being in the top ten leagues in Europe for attendance does not make it one of the ten best leagues in Europe. By a long long shot.
For the record - in my opinion, there are some exceptionally good players and a handful of good teams in the leagues here that would yo-yo between Championship and first. Naturally, there are others that would be in the Conference or lower.
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
I have seen quite a few games involving Irish sides, actually, particularly recently as I have started to take an interest in it (as well as reading/posting on here). It's not particularly difficult to get access to live matches and highlights clips if you are genuinely interested. Matches are broadcast on Setanta and occasionally on the internet, neither of which require me to do much more than minimal work to access.
Now obviously I wouldn't claim to be an authority on the league. However, having watched hundreds of Football League games I most certainly know about the English league and it was that comment about the Championship being shocking I was taking issue with. My views on Irish football were simply an opinion and I was clear on that, unlike livehead, who stated his opinion as though it were fact.
As for my argument, attendances and ticket prices (basically, matchday income) are linked to football quality. Certainly, it's not the be-all and end-all, but generally, the more money you draw in on a Saturday afternoon, the better your team is likely to be, especially in the modern era where it's not particularly difficult to sign players from foreign countries, even for clubs lower down the Football League ladder. From what I understand, the Irish leagues (north and south) are roughly comparable with the English League Two/Conference in this area. I'm not necessarily suggesting this automatically disqualifies any Irish side from having a Championship-standard team ever, but it would probably take considerable investment to reach that standard, as at present, all the best players over in Ireland are getting cherry-picked by Championship and SPL clubs.
"Life is like a hair on a toilet seat. Sooner or later you are bound to get pi$$ed off."
"In this league, a draw is sometimes as good as a win" - Steve Morison
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