IT is no disrespect well, it is not intended to be anyway to the soccer writers of our national newspapers nor indeed to the League of Ireland clubs but can it be that our sporting writers would prefer to be reporting on the titanic struggle between Bray Wanderers and Longford Town, or the gripping encounter between Cork Whoever against Lough Swilly Pirates, rather than on a Dublin team playing in the English Premiership?
Is that what the soccer fans of Ireland want that club soccer in this country will continue to be played before expanses of damp unpeopled concrete, where the winning goal, scrambled in at the last minute, is applauded solely by the ecstatic woofs of an orphan dog on the terraces?
It is true that all sorts of sensitivities are involved here the idea that the Irish capital might be playing in the English Premiership does seem a violation of national identity. But that is taking national identity" to an exquisiteness too far.
For Dublin to become the home of Wimbledon Football Club, renamed the Dublin Dons, without, dear God, one Vincent Jones, is simply recognising a straight fact the club, football most Irish people take an interest in is English football. The jerseys and scarves, which Irish boys and girls are buying, are not those of Shamrock Rovers or Bohemians or Cork Whatsournamethisseason no they adorn themselves in the shirts of clubs from English cities which they would be hard put to find on the map.
The Fans have Spoken
It is not what commentators or journalists want the football fans of Ireland have spoken, and in all sorts of ways. There is a Manchester United shop in Dublin each weekend hundreds, maybe thousands, of people go to watch English club matches live. In any working class, pub on the East Coast, the television is unfailingly tuned to Sky to catch live English soccer.
The teams which Irish youngsters ache to join are not Home Farm Everton or Shelbourne, nor even clubs where they will learn to play football at its most intelligent and sophisticated, such as Juventus or Inter. Instead, they wish to join clubs from the mundane English cities where a generation ago their grand uncles worked on Wimpy and Laing sites Liverpool and Leeds, Birmingham and Newcastle, Manchester and London.
If they are lucky these kids will get apprenticed to a good English club and if they are luckier still, they will manage to stick it out in a strange city with strange accents, in a team with strange, uncaring ways and run by strange, uncaring coaches. More likely, they will grow ill with homesickness and will long for the congenial ways of Ireland and the affable ways of the Irish and they will yearn, with a power they never suspected possible, for their parents, and the brothers and sisters they always thought they detested.
They will return to Ireland apparent failures but they have not failed, because they never got the change. It is only the rare plant which can be uplifted from its roots and transplanted to another entirely different soil, and prosper, there. Boys are even more sensitive than busy lizzies only they never admit it.
Great Riches
Those who do survive from our tiny, tiny soccer playing population go on to bring great riches to their clubs, and to the cities those clubs belong to. Manchester has been vastly enriched by all the Irish youngsters who have turned out for United and City. Aston Villa, Arsenal, Blackburn, Liverpool these are cities which pride themselves on their football teams, and the Irish have made their contributions there.
Back home in Ireland are all the lads who didn't make it. But they might have done had they been able to stay in Ireland and develop their skills in an Irish club playing at the right level which fine nursery clubs like Home Farm were, of necessity, not doing. Many things are tested while you exile a youngster in a strange city away from his loved ones over the weekend when he needs them most, and few of these are related to football.
But the issue is not just what's good for up and coming young footballers. It is also chat is good for Irish sport, for Irish sports fans, for Ireland's image. Everybody knows Ireland needs a soccer only stadium to house the thousands of fans who would follow a Dublin club as avidly as they currently follow English clubs.
If Dublin Dons were successful, Irish soccer fans would not merely be seeing Newcastle and Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur fortnight after fortnight, they might also be seeing Juventus and inter, Real Madrid and Ajax and Benfica is that not an Irish soccer fan's wildest, most demented dream, from which he and, yea, even she wakes up in tears that life is so very different?
Unique Relationship
It need not be. It is possible for Ireland to have a team playing in the English Premiership (though I hate the precious affectation of that word premier what is wrong with the good old, word first?) if we have a little imagination. Canadian clubs play in the American Football League. Welsh clubs play in England. Monte Carlo plays in the French League. It is true the comparisons are not like with like but then there is nothing like the relationship between Irish soccer fans and English soccer. It is unique.
What about English soccer fans? Good question. Fire a hoses, cattle prods and passports into Dublin city centre, maybe. In fact, it need not be that bad. We have controlled points of entry in the way that English cities do not I do not believe the Garda Siochana could ever again behave as incompetently as they did that dreadful night 18 months ago, when Lansdowne Road was reduced to its component parts by English followers gnawing, their way through the grandstands.
Most, soccer fans arriving here will be in out, for afternoon matches. Most of them will not be able to afford overnight stays as for the National Front types, no doubt they can be turned into foundations for a relaid Naas dual carriageway to the new football stadium, if they turn up again. Roll on, the Dons.