I was in a taxi on the way home from the Ireland and Holland match on Friday night.
“Where were you at tonight?” the nice taxi man elevated small talk to taxi talk.
“I was at the Aviva for that Ireland match,” I was just about to ask him what time he was on ’til before he cut back across me.
“Are you from up north?” he asked.
“Aye,” I replied in my broadest Derry accent.
“How did yous do tonight? Did yous win?”
“No,” I said. “We drew with Holland.”
It’s been one of the most disappointing aspects of moving to Dublin, realising that so many of your countrymen and women don’t recognise you as their countryman.
However unconscious it is or accidental, a lot of Irish people see 26 counties and they see the divide that the border draws. Some don’t even realise that there are Irish men and women who identify themselves purely and exclusively as Irish in those six counties and that it isn’t a choice, it’s just who you are.
Just a few weeks back, my own girlfriend – and, Jesus, I hope she doesn’t read this – saw my passport for the first time.
“Oh! You have an Irish passport?” she was genuinely surprised.
“Yes,” I was perplexed. “Because I’m f**king Irish!”
We’ll see how it goes from here.
I’ve written about this before.
For me, Northern Ireland wasn’t a team that I ever identified with because I was never Northern Irish. I grew up Irish, I grew up supporting Ireland, I grew up wanting to play for Ireland and there was no choice in that. There was no politics, no religion, no bitterness in that way of life. That was just the culture of the area I was born and bred in.
So there was never even any hate towards Northern Ireland, it was genuinely inconsequential. There was no sympathising with them either because, plain and simply, they were just another team. They were ‘they’, like the rest of them. I supported one team, I identified with one country and I didn’t care about anyone else.
I can’t speak for them, but as Derry men, Darron Gibson and Eunan O’Kane were probably the same.
Attending the same school as Gibson, growing up in the same city, knowing some of his family and friends overlapping in the same circles as a lot of us in that small town do, it’s the same as most places and people in Derry – Irish. Okay, maybe not everyone is the same, I can’t generalise and assume Gibson always thought that way too, but a lot of us are similar. Most of us are born Irish.
Eunan O’Kane is a Banagher man. He grew up in the rural parish steeped in GAA and everyone around him would’ve identified similarly.
If they were anything like me, choosing between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would never have even been a choice.
Now though, the pair missed out on the 23-man Euro 2016 squad and a few Northern Ireland fans are enjoying the irony.
That’s what you get for turning down the north. You thought you were too good for us and now we’re headed for France and you’re going to be sat at home. That kind of thing.
The exact same way we hound Jack Grealish for switching allegiance to England.
Darron Gibson and Eunan O'Kane, who turned down Northern Ireland to play for the Republic, among those left out of squad
— Adrian Rutherford (@arutherfordNI) May 31, 2016
But it was never a case of turning down Northern Ireland. It was a case of wanting to play for their country.
Gibson and O’Kane are Derry men, they’re Irish men. Like Shane Duffy, like James McClean – the same man who plays with the passion of 50,000 Lansdowne spectators combined – they would’ve grown up Irish and they would’ve grown up wanting to play for Ireland – to represent their country.
If they had a sniff of that, the thought of Northern Ireland wouldn’t even have come into their heads.
Yes, both played with the north at underage level because of the school system they played in and because of where their clubs competed. That’s not their fault. It’s the system’s fault. It’s our fault for expecting anything else of them.
But, when they were given the choice, it wasn’t a choice.
Just like Jack Grealish – an English man with English parents who was born and raised in England – jumped at the chance to play for his country – and it was only that, a chance – Eunan O’Kane and Darron Gibson wanting to play for their country should not even be an issue.
People from up north are Irish.
So either fix the system to reflect that earlier, make them commit sooner, or just stop making a big deal about Irish men wanting to play for Ireland.
It’s who we are. It’s where we’re from.
