So how did you react to Ireland's loss to Cyprus?
Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 11:56 am
I thought I'd raise this topic just to see how the soccer team's loss has affected people and if they really matter to the average Irish person any more outside of the pale and the garrison towns.
I got to grow up at a time when Irish soccer was beginning to hit the big time, and as a kid it was obviously a great laugh while it was going on. I won't lie in that as a teenager my interest in GAA was fairly limited. Ferbane/Belmont was not a good club to be in if you were utterly utterly useless since you never got a game, and while going to the county championship matches were always a great day out, that's all it really was to me, at least until I was old enough to make my own way to games and could get to see more of it. Once I was in a position to follow GAA and take part again at a suitable level, from then on I was happy to nail my colours to that mast, and so it has been ever since.
However the guts of a decade living in Dublin means that I have also become completely disillusioned with Irish soccer and all it entails. One significant milestone was the World cup match with Spain in 2002, where I was delighted with the scheduling as it took a load of cars off the road and lightened the traffic for my trip to Nowlan park from Tallaght for the Leinster semi with Kildare, while the actual result in Korea was utterly immaterial to me.
In recent years, this has reached the point where I'm actively wishing the whole thing would just go away - and I couldn't help but be delighted when I heard the result on Sunday morning. I'm not particularly proud of this, because I am aware that amidst all the olé olé brigade and buried underneath a sea of plastic shamrocks and inflatable green hammers there are a few genuine supporters lurking who will have been gutted by that result, and for them I'm genuinely sorry, but for the rest.....
I know I'm an extreme viewpoint, and as an actual game I've nothing against soccer. I'm playing five a side tonight, and have played organised OWL when I was at home - however the professional game really does nothing for me, and as for that team that supposedly represents me? Well to the best of my knowledge, out of Ireland's population of 4 million or so, roughly 1.5 million live in small towns of 5,000 or smaller (a lot more would say they come from there), and that's not counting areas like North County Dublin which can be rural enough in places too. And out of that 40% of the population, we've had two token goalkeepers from Donegal that have ever played for our "national" team, no-one else that I'm aware of. They don't represent Ireland, they represent urban Ireland, which is not me.
But what's the general feeling? Am I turning into one of those bitter and twisted "backwoodsmen", or do a lot of you feel this way, but like me you don't say it out loud because of the inevitable offence that some people would take?
I got to grow up at a time when Irish soccer was beginning to hit the big time, and as a kid it was obviously a great laugh while it was going on. I won't lie in that as a teenager my interest in GAA was fairly limited. Ferbane/Belmont was not a good club to be in if you were utterly utterly useless since you never got a game, and while going to the county championship matches were always a great day out, that's all it really was to me, at least until I was old enough to make my own way to games and could get to see more of it. Once I was in a position to follow GAA and take part again at a suitable level, from then on I was happy to nail my colours to that mast, and so it has been ever since.
However the guts of a decade living in Dublin means that I have also become completely disillusioned with Irish soccer and all it entails. One significant milestone was the World cup match with Spain in 2002, where I was delighted with the scheduling as it took a load of cars off the road and lightened the traffic for my trip to Nowlan park from Tallaght for the Leinster semi with Kildare, while the actual result in Korea was utterly immaterial to me.
In recent years, this has reached the point where I'm actively wishing the whole thing would just go away - and I couldn't help but be delighted when I heard the result on Sunday morning. I'm not particularly proud of this, because I am aware that amidst all the olé olé brigade and buried underneath a sea of plastic shamrocks and inflatable green hammers there are a few genuine supporters lurking who will have been gutted by that result, and for them I'm genuinely sorry, but for the rest.....
I know I'm an extreme viewpoint, and as an actual game I've nothing against soccer. I'm playing five a side tonight, and have played organised OWL when I was at home - however the professional game really does nothing for me, and as for that team that supposedly represents me? Well to the best of my knowledge, out of Ireland's population of 4 million or so, roughly 1.5 million live in small towns of 5,000 or smaller (a lot more would say they come from there), and that's not counting areas like North County Dublin which can be rural enough in places too. And out of that 40% of the population, we've had two token goalkeepers from Donegal that have ever played for our "national" team, no-one else that I'm aware of. They don't represent Ireland, they represent urban Ireland, which is not me.
But what's the general feeling? Am I turning into one of those bitter and twisted "backwoodsmen", or do a lot of you feel this way, but like me you don't say it out loud because of the inevitable offence that some people would take?
