FAI troubles

**seanfhear** · 18/12/2019, 3:37 PM

Originally Posted by brine3

FAI has to go bust. Feck it, lets re-join the IFA and their league.

John Delaney Unites Ireland.......inadvertently !

**wexfordned** · 20/12/2019, 5:12 PM

Shane Ross and Brendan Griffin durimg the week were a perfect example of the majority of football fans in this country.

LOI is irrelevant to them and all that matters is how this affects the senior team. It's gas how a thread on survival of FAI has barely 100 posts but a thread on players who might be eligible for Ireland team because of some family relative has over 3k posts.

**tetsujin1979** · 20/12/2019, 5:28 PM

It's 3,000 posts in a little over ten years.
Or about 300 posts a year
Or about one a day.

This thread is less than a month old and is averaging about three replies a day.

**Stuttgart88** · 20/12/2019, 6:13 PM

And there are other threads on Delaney & the Governance of the FAI. WexfordNed didn't contribute to any of them.

**wexfordned** · 20/12/2019, 6:22 PM

Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

And there are other threads on Delaney & the Governance of the FAI. WexfordNed didn't contribute to any of them.

I do apologise for not publicising my work.

Unlike the majority of football fans in this country I have been worked in LOI and junior soccer teams. Its not as glamorous as watching Liverpool/Utd/Arsenal etc. or looking at a english/Scottish/welsh footballer because his granny was born in Galway, but what can you do?

**Closed Account** · 20/12/2019, 8:35 PM

Originally Posted by wexfordned

I do apologise for not publicising my work.

Unlike the majority of football fans in this country I have been worked in LOI and junior soccer teams. Its not as glamorous as watching Liverpool/Utd/Arsenal etc. or looking at a english/Scottish/welsh footballer because his granny was born in Galway, but what can you do?

Sounds like you're a good Irish supporter and are rightly annoyed about the current situation. But maybe you're ire is misdirected here. The select group of people who post here are not a/the problem in Irish soccer and I think you know that.

**elatedscum** · 20/12/2019, 11:20 PM

Originally Posted by wexfordned

Shane Ross and Brendan Griffin durimg the week were a perfect example of the majority of football fans in this country.

LOI is irrelevant to them and all that matters is how this affects the senior team. It's gas how a thread on survival of FAI has barely 100 posts but a thread on players who might be eligible for Ireland team because of some family relative has over 3k posts.

Do you really think Shane Ross is actually a football fan? Don't know anything about Brendan Griffin but Shane Ross doesn't strike me as someone who really cares about the game at all and this all seems like a game of politics and political point scoring to him.

Number of posts are reflective of very little. The eligible players thread is a catch all for hundreds of players spanning a decade, probably plenty of debate surrounding Grealish and Rice and plenty of simple factual posts about players which clock up numbers but aren't substantive.

This thing is such a mess and so complex that it takes time to construct my thoughts in a coherent way.

Originally Posted by wexfordned

Unlike the majority of football fans in this country I have been worked in LOI and junior soccer teams. Its not as glamorous as watching Liverpool/Utd/Arsenal etc. or looking at a english/Scottish/welsh footballer because his granny was born in Galway, but what can you do?

No offence to you personally but I’ve always found that attitude to be totally ignorant. I don’t support a LoI club, I didn’t as a kid and as a consequence there was never any honest passion there but I go to plenty of games every season. I go see every Dublin side. I’d like to go to some games further afield (Dundalk, Derry, Cork, Waterford) but it’s not easy to make it work… Equally I’ve been to every underage Irish match in Dublin for the past 4 years (except the Italy game a few months ago) and most full international matches and I’ve been involved in more schoolboy, junior and intermediate games than I can count. As for TV, I’ll watch mostly Premier League, Champion’s League, LoI (if I’m not at a game - televised games generally Friday nights), international and a bit of Bundesliga (as a 15 year old, I trained with a Bundesliga side and I made friends there through a host family who still have a connection to the club, so I’ve always supported them to a certain extent from that point onwards).

Anyway, I make no apologies whatsoever for supporting a Premier League team. The dynamics of the situation mean the best players leave this country, generally to go to England. Plus, I was given my first jersey on my 6th birthday and since that moment the connection hasn’t deviated or lessened.

I make no apologies for framing my appreciation of the national league around the national team and around the players more-so than the teams. I wouldn’t chastise others for the choices they make. It’s a ridiculous inverse snobbery.

As for grannies, we're a nation of emigrants, it’s a huge asset to us. We need to explore why it is that Zaha chose to play for Ivory Coast but Steven Gerrard chose to play for England. Why players with American parents or grandparents are choosing the US over Germany or Turkish-German kids picking Turkey but there are very few lads choosing Ireland over England when they’re given the choice. Yet when I meet English people with Irish parents or grandparents, they’ll often say they feel Irish more than they feel English. I also don’t really understand it. If I had a child or grandchild who grew up or was born outside Ireland, I couldn’t imagine him not playing for Ireland if he was good enough. My attachment is so strong that I know it would pass through to him. So I find it hard to comprehend how rare it is for players to make the same decisions.

I really want the national team to succeed. And if Andy Robertson and James Maddison and Harry Kane considered themselves proud Irishmen, we’d be in a much better situation than we are now. So when Ryan Johansson chooses Ireland over Sweden or Joe Hodge chooses Ireland over England or Conor Noss chooses Ireland over Germany or Anselmo Garcia McNulty chooses Ireland over Spain or Michael Obafemi chooses Ireland over Nigeria, that really means something - it points to hope for the future. Equally, Ethan Ampadu choosing Wales or Josh Ireland or Liam Delap choosing England, those are feel like little blows.

There’s a whole different battle regarding improving the players we develop here, but they’re not mutually exclusive. We can win both.

Anyway, keep up the work at LOI and junior level.

But honestly, there are many ways to love the beautiful game…

**Fizzer** · 21/12/2019, 9:00 AM

Brilliant post e-scum

**John83** · 21/12/2019, 9:10 AM

Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

It's 3,000 posts in a little over ten years.
Or about 300 posts a year
Or about one a day.

This thread is less than a month old and is averaging about three replies a day.

Just to add to that, the site now has a fraction of the traffic it had ten years ago.

**Colbert Report** · 21/12/2019, 3:51 PM

Originally Posted by John83

Just to add to that, the site now has a fraction of the traffic it had ten years ago.

Yeah, why is this? I remember this place buzzing any time there was an Ireland match coming up.

**irishfan86** · 22/12/2019, 1:23 AM

The reason why we get less traffic here is the evolution of the internet. The next generation coming up doesn’t use forums. They use various forms of social media.

Basically they just participate in discussions/debates by Tweeting things with hashtags — those hashtags act as a sort of massive thread connecting thousands of interactions at once.

I prefer the forum format because the discussions generally seem to be better. Would be nice to get a bit of fresh blood in but what can you do?

**Stuttgart88** · 22/12/2019, 2:07 PM

Originally Posted by wexfordned

I do apologise for not publicising my work.

Unlike the majority of football fans in this country I have been worked in LOI and junior soccer teams. Its not as glamorous as watching Liverpool/Utd/Arsenal etc. or looking at a english/Scottish/welsh footballer because his granny was born in Galway, but what can you do?

you made the point that there was relatively little criticism or scrutiny of the FAI. When that point is fairly rebutted just have the decency to accept it.

Lots of us here have also worked in and supported domestic football too. You're nothing special in that regard.

**geysir** · 23/12/2019, 10:55 PM

And what glamour is there in watching Arsenal these days?

**wexfordned** · 24/12/2019, 7:32 PM

It's ok. Everyone can validate themselves saying I objected to the FAI because they liked some post in the past. No wonder Irish football is f**ked. At least individuals on on other MB like YBIG can accept they screwed up and allowed Delaney do what he wanted.

To all the idiots here who have refused to criticise Delaney/FAI I hope santa brings everything you deserve as so called Irish football fans

**Stuttgart88** · 24/12/2019, 8:28 PM

That’s about as disingenuous a post as any I can remember on this forum, and there have been many.

**Closed Account** · 24/12/2019, 8:29 PM

Agreed.

**Stuttgart88** · 24/12/2019, 8:47 PM

Let’s recap the last few posts. You said that it’s bad the the Eligible Players thread has more posts than the FAI Troubles thread. It was then pointed out that over the time the Eligible Players thread has been alive there have been multiple threads critical of the FAI and Delaney. You didn’t contribute to any of the FAI threads so while not a big thing in itself it doesn’t put you in a good position to be critical of others.

I don’t recall any threads on YBIG examining the weakness of the FAI’s governance. I did my best to start a proper analytical look at how the FAI was being run. Who was it that wrote to the then Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Leo Varadkar, in 2014 asking for an Oireactas Inquiry into the running of the FAI? Who was it who wrote to John O’Mahoney TD (now Senator) in his capacity as Chairman of the Oireachtas Committee for Transport, Tourism and Sport listing multiple causes for obvious concern at the FAI? I’ll help you answer, it was a foot.ie poster not one from YBIG.

As said above, why direct your ire at foot.ie? It’s been one of the public places where criticism of the FAI has been consistent and targeted. We’re all on the same side here so why the confrontation?

By all means have a dig at “barstoolers” who turned a blind eye to Delaney and the FAI’s failings, but I think you’ve come to the wrong place if you think this forum is the place you’ll find them.