When Roy Keane was sent home from Japan with a flea in his shorts, it was assumed that his replacement, if any, would also be male, able-bodied, aged roughly between 18 and 35, and capable of playing football. This, as will be obvious to all but the most politically dissolute readers of this newspaper, is a deeply sexist, healthist, ageist, professionalist and sportist notion, writes John Waters
Membership of the Irish team should be open to all, without reference to such outmoded criteria, and I am saddened that the Equality Authority has failed to draw attention to this departure from egalitarian principles.
Why was no consideration given to the possibility of Roy Keane being replaced by a male, brown-eyed, middle-aged Caucasian from Roscommon? This columnist would rather have fancied a trip to Japan and a chance to, as they say, pull on the green shirt. It is true that it is 25 years since I last kicked a football in a competitive context, but this is precisely the kind of narrow thinking we need to get away from, and which the Equality Authority exists to deconstruct.
The notion of playing sport to win is a dangerously exclusivist and masculinist idea. Anyway, while it is true that I could not kick s--- off a rope, I have still, I believe, a marginally better chance of scoring a hat-trick against Argentina than a homosexual couple has of making a baby, and the Equality Authority does not regard this as an obstacle to parenting.
The reactionaries, of course, will argue that membership of a sporting team is not a fundamental human right. But this is not what it says in the UN Declaration on Human Rights, which asserts that everyone is equal, regardless of colour, sex, language and other marks of difference.
It follows that to deny anyone the opportunity to play football for Ireland, on the basis of being too old, too stiff or too Australian, is grossly discriminatory. Moreover, since soccer is the last repository of patriotic fervour, to deny someone the right to play for Ireland is to deny them access to the only approved outlet for patriotic energies, which is both undemocratic and unjust.
As a progressive-minded citizen, I have more general and growing concerns about this World Cup business. The very idea of a competition between geographical entities on the basis of nationality is something that, in every other context, liberal pundits would roundly denounce. And yet, many of my usually impeccably correct colleagues are happy to act as cheerleaders for what is no more than a reactionary carnival of racism, sexism, ageism, sportism, and whatever-you're-having-yourselfism.
At the very least, it is time to apply proper, progressive-minded procedures to the selection of the national team. First of all, we need to stop referring to it as the "national" team, lest such references give offence to the large number of non-nationals now living in Ireland. Secondly, it is time we stopped referring to this geographical entity as "Ireland", as this may give the impression of racial or national cohesiveness, which is oppressive towards those who do not recognise themselves within such an embrace.
Rather than the present narrowly-conceived system, whereby players are selected on the basis of nationality or sporting ability, the World Cup should be a showcase for our new, multicultural and tolerant society. The squad should include at least one octogenarian, one heterosexual female, one transsexual, one transvestite, one lesbian-fascist, one vegetarian, one member of the Travelling community, one Nigerian, one Native American, one brown-eyed, Roscommon-born non-athlete, one one-eyed Panamanian trick-cyclist, and so on.
The carpers will say that a team so selected would have little hope of success. Well, precisely. In the new equality-proofed dispensation, success along old-fashioned lines will not matter - in fact, our next project should be the elimination of competitiveness, which is a social construct. The important things are participation, equality of opportunity, non-judgmentalism and the elimination of discrimination.
Even now, in schools around Ireland, young men are being reinvented along the lines I describe. The Exploring Masculinities programme, which remains part of the curriculum for teenage boys, attacks existing ideas relating to professionalism and athletic ability, debunking the present emphasis on success as a measure of worth.
As things stand, one might be forgiven for thinking it acceptable to take pleasure in the progress of the team of professional sportsmen representing Ireland in Japan. You might feel also that the 10,000 or so dedicated fans who have travelled to support the team are themselves a cause of national pride.
Happily, those to whom we have delegated the education of our children think otherwise. There is much criticism in the programme of the idea of men being paid large amounts of money "just to play football!" and, in one of the modules, students are invited to consult a list of places visited by the Irish soccer team since Jack Charlton became manager and ring up their local travel agents to see how much it costs to travel to these places.
"Given that the majority of supporters are men," the manual asks, "can we estimate the cost of their travelling on those left behind?" It is reassuring that, as a result of exposure to such progressive ideas, our children will soon be liberated from current obsessions with the alleged connections between ability and participation, passion and celebration or achievement and reward.
jwaters@irish-times.ie