I remember walking into the spare room in my grandparent’s house moments after Ireland had just exited the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
I had bought the official jersey, the t-shirt, the tournament pullout and for the first time into an Irish team’s chances at a major sporting tournament.
I held a genuine belief that Ireland could win the World Cup after a number of strong Six Nations campaigns and I was fully invested in the team in a way I simply hadn’t been with an Irish team before.
But then it all went wrong. They struggled against Namibia, they scraped by against Georgia and they lost to Argentina and France in a very forgettable campaign.
When the final whistle sounded at the Parc des Princes after the Argentina loss I had to leave the room and experience my first genuine Irish sporting heartbreak, of which many would later follow.
This team, this group of players that I had watched and became emotionally attached to had let me down when they were supposed to deliver for us all.
Like a temperamental 13-year-old, when they lost I wanted nothing to do with them. I walked to the spare room and took the jersey off and put it back in the drawer.
Ireland had been eliminated and the tournament was over as far as I was concerned so I immediately wanted to remove any connection I had with the team’s dismal run in France.
I changed into a t-shirt, came back out of the room and went back towards the living room where my grandad and dad looked at me like I’d just robbed the newsagents up the road.
“What are you doing?” they asked.
“Why’d you take the jersey off?”
In my 13-year-old mind this wasn’t a big deal at all to me but to them it was.
“You support the team through and through. Win, lose or draw. You don’t just support Ireland when it suits you or when they’re winning. Go back in there and put that jersey on.”
And that was it. Just like that. I learned this was different.
It was clear to me then that this was not like supporting Manchester United or Liverpool. This wasn’t a team that you just followed in Italy or Spain or whatever team was big at the time in America. This was Ireland. It chose you. You didn’t choose them.
The next decade was filled with heartbreak. The entire Steve Staunton era, the Thierry Henry handball, the 2011 and 2015 Rugby World Cups, Euro 2012, the last minute loss to the All Blacks in Dublin, the Denmark game, which you can just refer to simply as the Denmark game, because how many other times has Ireland been mercilessly pumped like that in an important game.
It was ‘Irish by birth and Munster by the grace of God’ for a reason. It was tough work being an Ireland fan. A stressful job.
Preparing yourself for constant misery and hoping against hope that this would be the time that we defied the odds.
And occasionally we did. We beat Holland and Portugal to get to the 2002 FIFA World Cup. We beat Wales to win a Grand Slam. We beat the world champions in football and rugby within the space of a year and watched people celebrate and crowd Garda cars on Camden Street at 4am and we fucking loved it and would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
But each time Ireland failed to qualify for a World Cup, England did. They were always there and had seemingly rotated through Slovenia or Slovakia in the qualifiers on a bi-annual basis while we ended up with the likes of France, Holland, Portugal, Germany and Italy, only to blow it continually against the likes of Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and Denmark.
My country wasn’t there but the complicated, loud and confident next door neighbours were and they couldn’t wait to tell you how this was the tournament where ‘football was coming home’.
For decades we had to listen to people like The Sun’s James Robinson who fortrightly held beliefs like – ‘England would have won three World Cups in a row if we’d played 3-4-2-1′. They were dead serious too. We know these people. They’re still banging on about Paul Scholes and the diamond.
To be fair, there were Irish people on my street that insist to this day that Ireland would have won the World Cup if Roy Keane hadn’t left the team in Saipan, but the consistent failure of Ireland to qualify for World Cups, and the ridiculous groups that we’ve been drawn in (i.e. Spain, Croatia and Italy at Euro 2012), pushed those people further and further into the back of the room alongside the GAA conspiracy theorists and fans of The Script.
Watching England build themselves up and lose, often in the most spectacular fashion possible, became enjoyable, an event you could look forward to every two years.
There was Ronaldinho’s lob of David Seaman in 2002. The Wayne Rooney red card and penalty shootout loss at the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Frank Lampard’s disallowed goal at 2010 FIFA World Cup. Luis Suarez single-handedly demolishing them at the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which, saw a group stage exit before they then comically kept the main man on for another two years only to watch them lose then to Iceland at Euro 2016 in an even more spectacular fashion.
That Steve McClaren clip on YouTube will live forever.
The Germans have a word for this type of enjoyment – schadenfreude – pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune. The Irish have a phrase too – ‘good enough for them’.
It also helped when they had guys like John Terry and Ashley Cole on their team, they became easy targets to root against for even easier reasons.
But Gareth Southgate’s team is different, or at least that’s what we’re running with this summer.
Firstly, he is different. He’s raising awareness for racial abuse, he put all his players up for media duty when the clamour was for Raheem Sterling, and his unfair vilification by the British tabloids, was at its highest. He’s measured and likeable too which helps.
As is Sterling and how he handled his targeting from the British press. Danny Rose spoke candidly about his issues with mental health and is one of the most honest players in football. Harry Maguire just seems like one of your mates that had been drafted into the national team on short notice, while Jamie Vardy was literally a guy that had been plucked from non-league football this decade.
And still, when Yerry Mina equalised for Colombia we went nuts in our office. Completely undeserved, completely against the run of play and for a team completely full of utter shithouses that we have no connection to, and yet we celebrated, because to some degree it’s all we’ve ever known.
Irish people tripping over each other to profess support for England – and criticising those who don’t – is the worst type of virtue signalling. We get it, lads: you’re over it. They’re sound.
We all have English friends, like – it’s just that their football team can fuck off.
— Gavan Casey (@GavanCasey) July 3, 2018
I get the counter-argument to the begrudgery. Irish people with English friends support English teams with English players. Why support those players only to yell against them every two years? Why not be happy for your foreign friends? It’s understandable.
If you’re reading this and you’re one of those people I’m happy for you during this time.
Dive into the BBC’s coverage. Go follow Gary Lineker on Twitter. Celebrate with Ian Wright as he ascends into pure joy from England winning a penalty shootout. Fuck it. Book the next two weeks off and fly yourself over to London for the parade. Bask in it. Every single minute of it.
But stop and think of Martin Johnson and Mary McAleese at Lansdowne Road for a moment. Think of Paul O’Connell slagging off Prince William when he said to the former Ireland captain that ‘it would take some organising to come over to Ireland for a trip’ before O’Connell fired back ‘some of your ancestors hadn’t much problem coming over to Ireland’. Think of Amhrán na bhFiann at Croke Park for the first time and Jerry Flannery’s tears.
Think Ray Houghton’s strike at Euro 88. Think Roy Keane on Matt Holland.
“For me, Matty is as English as David Beckham. He played for Ireland and he obviously has the roots. But he played for Ipswich in a play-off final in 2000 and he was singing ‘God Save the Queen’ at the top of his voice. I don’t think he could have sung it any louder. Some of the other Irish lads saw him too so, at the next couple of international matches, we were going ‘Turn that rebel music up a bit.'”
Some of our greatest moments, the moments that have John Hayes nearly falling off his seat with laughter in the Prince William example, have come at the expense of the English. There’s a little bit of a rebel in us. The divil as Tommy Tiernan would call it.
Last week ‘Football is coming home’ was played through our office speakers at work and a shortwhile later after the song was finished another person put on The Wolfe Tones ‘Come out ye Black and Tans’.
We work with English people in our office, and many more throughout the wider Maximum Media network. I don’t want these people to leave this country but I did enjoy the change of tune, if only for a laugh during a slow day.
Irish society is rapidly changing. Maybe it’s now cool to cheer for England. To show that we’ve moved on. That we’ve grown. That we’re a new nation that will not be held back by history or the horrible deeds committed by others long ago. That we’re turning a new page.
But this is sport, if it’s not for completely irrational, childish, petty grudges against teams like England then we may as well all go back to the real world.
And who wants to do that?
