FP struggled with the pathetic and pointless exercise — other than from the point of view of the FAI and its generously rewarded, ManU-loving staff — that was the ritual humiliation of the League of Ireland at Lansdowne Road last week.
To be honest, lately I’ve pretty well lost the appetite for recording the unbelievably shallow and brutally disloyal phenomenon that is the mass of Irish footballing fandom.
I’ve almost persuaded myself that the mature option would be to let them get on with it and put on their English shirts and their embarrassing English working class accents.
So seeing one of the most lavishly-funded sporting organizations in the world toy with an Irish selection who had barely trained together, all the while cheered on by an army of red-shirted, prideless Irishmen and their kids, and by FAI stewards, came, depressingly, as no surprise.
But Simon O’Gorman of extratime still has something to say. He writes:
The fracture between the Irish football public and Irish domestic football is profound. Would one single person have been persuaded to attend a League of Ireland game if the result had been any different? And if they had come, would they have stayed?
Wednesday night’s game showed us a huge community of football fans who have not only voted to support another league, but have done so to the absolute exclusion of the league that struggles to survive in their own towns and cities. As a nation we love football but so many of us want it wrapped up in gold or not at all.
Read the full, brilliant piece here.
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