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Aaron Connolly, until his last late retirement from an Irish team, was confident this week that he hoped to score a goal for his country in Thursday night’s friendly for a variety of reasons.
but they may not be what many of your country’s most devoted followers might think.
His main determination would have been to rediscover his own goalscoring loss, closely followed by his team’s ambition to renew theirs.
That it could have come against England should be something else. And, for some, it is.
In particular, those who desperately yearn for an Irish team, seeking a new identity, somehow also find a way to get the ball into the back of a rival net.
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Ecstasy: Ray Houghton scores against England in Stuttgart in Euro 88. PHOTO: SVEN SIMON
Even then, a goal against England would hardly negate the fact that a goal against Slovakia would have proved far more valuable.
A cursory glance at two more neighbors we should be paying a little more attention to, Scotland and Northern Ireland, who are participating in the respective European Championships play-offs that same evening, tells us a lot.
For others, however, a game against England provokes something much more primitive.
Mick Byrne getting equipment off the bus. “We’ll do them for yiz today guys!”
Ray Houghton’s head. Kevin Sheedy’s left foot. Niall Quinn padded upper. David Kelly’s aborted strike. The memorable 0-0 victory (sic) four years ago. Or was it five?
The family struggle – well, if nine times in 40 years represents an intense rivalry – to defeat the noisy neighbor.
And more, the political context of that sporting struggle, so often fused with blurred lines in the sports arena, the bloody anthem, the emblems, the flags.
And who can forget the songs, bombastic dirges from both sides that celebrate rival fans’ affection for ancient battles?
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A small child is taken to safety after riots broke out in 1995
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We will miss those melodies that fill the empty stands, as well as the boos that would have cascaded over the melodyless hymns.
The old rioters in the crowd, perhaps even the ones who were once elected by a former FAI executive director in a Dublin bar, would have been brought in for the occasion, while the English do not need Ireland as opposition to sing ” No Surrender “or other songs. They denigrate the good guys in the IRA.
In the context of a fixture that had reason to be abandoned prematurely because of the violent destruction that cancer from English vandalism wreaked on the old Lansdowne Road stadium, an extension of secular imperialism, the jingoistic occasion has rarely sat comfortably.
The false patriotism that spreads to some international teams, and this pair in particular, squeaks when placed in a sporting context, with all manner of delusional hangers wrapped in the folds of the flag.
There are so many genuine fans of the national team, the Irish we have met on countless trips abroad, the staunch opponents of the Delaney regime when others are silent, and the English, mostly from lesser-known clubs in the league, who are They refuse to associate with the Neanderthal wings of their country’s rabid followers.
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Jack Grealish and Declan Rice
fake images
Many have abandoned their support for the international side, not just Ireland, either disillusioned with those who play the game or run it, often both.
Those who stay are too often drowned out by the rude elements, which only accompany them to the pissed off, grooming, and pathetic abuse.
For those of us who grew up experiencing a culture in which our schools were enthusiastically spreading a culture of virulent antipathy towards the English, just as the English were groomed with an interested presentation of their superiority, the resonance of prehistoric grudges grates.
The enduring irony that so many perceived fans of the Irish national team can combine their supposed affection with a heavy cleavage on the flags of English clubs remains a confusion to these eyes.
There will be those who, if allowed into Wembley Stadium, or their local lodgings, would gladly spit bile and fury at an Englishman this week, or indeed a former Irishman playing for England, and yet cheer on their clubs.
While the memory of the 1995 Lansdowne riots remains, so does a summer friendly that year between UCD and Liverpool, and the racist abuse that a red-clad Dubliner did to a young Jason Sherlock for having the nerve to win a free game. kick that Packie Lynch would convert.
Of course, a variety of opinion-formers and pointed academics tell us that Ireland has matured as a nation and it is an argument that has merit when extrapolated to a variety of social areas of life.
But in terms of the Irish selection and those crawling up from under the lice-riddled woodwork to stick to it, we agree.
Those who have played for Ireland and experienced horrendous personal abuse, regardless of the racist abuse, can also question, not to mention those who once sought to represent Ireland but were later persuaded to change their allegiance.
The fact that players like Declan Rice and Jack Grealish decided to deviate from a perceived path of fearless patriotism into a path of financial convenience exposes the international game to ridicule that is later compounded by those who seek to criticize them.
Nationalism that depends on hero worship is insanity of the first order; Shaw likened it to a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy. Added to a dozen pints of beer, it can be toxic.
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Irish goalkeeper Mark Travers throws himself at Aaron Connolly’s feet during yesterday’s training session at The Hive in Barnet. STEPHEN McCARTHY / SPORTSFILE
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The hateful patriotism that seeks to transform a simple soccer competition into something much grander may have dominated in the past, but it would be expected that this was a different country.
Darren Randolph, another racially abused in this great country of ours, is probably the only player on the team traveling to Wembley who was alive when Ray Houghton and his merry band of Scottish, English and Irish colleagues kicked the ball into the English net in 1988.
When we spoke to Connolly this week, we had to remind ourselves that the Wembley Stadium in which so many old childhood dreams were formed, of playing under those famous twin towers, became redundant as they had been demolished before that he was born.
“Personally, I haven’t grown up saying I want to play at Wembley because obviously when you’re an Irish kid, you don’t grow up thinking, ‘I’d love to play at Wembley.’
And neither did he grow up dreaming of bringing down the great infidels of the evil empire in the shadow of his imperious home; the facts of Houghton et al are as relevant to the former Castelgar pitcher as those of Joe Connolly.
“Maybe I get a bit lost, since I really don’t understand most of what has happened or happened. I’m not going to go back to the story of something I really don’t understand. “
Just a few years ago his predecessor and county man David Forde said: “If there’s a game I want to play in, it’s England and it’s England at Wembley.”
But maybe it doesn’t mean so much anymore. Nothing bad. This week, the build-up has been strangely subdued, perhaps induced by a pandemic. Or simply due to a feeling of tiredness.
It is all a case of ancient history and deserves to be condemned to remain there.
The true sign of maturity would be for Irish football fans to resist the recurring addiction to comparing themselves to England, regardless of what happens at Wembley.
It is countries like Finland that you should be concerned about. That and the desperate search for someone to put the ball, not just in England’s net, but in any net.
For now, however, the sound of silence will be a blessing. And when these camps meet and the “fans” are present, perhaps those who think it is fun to sing songs about death or launch abuse will be quiet.
Or, just stay away and let the rest of us enjoy the game as it is.
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