I don't get itDepends on what those beliefs are doesn't it?
I mean, guy posts shit like
and then complains about sectarian abuse?
What did he think the replies would be?
James McClean: 'Does being abused for being Irish and anti Irish abuse acceptable?'
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I get your point but nothing seems to help. He's made lots of statements and interviews over the last few years which would make a reasonable person understand his position.
I agree with his point. Something should be done.
I’m just saying he needs to engage his own brain a bit more too - he just got fined by his own club for posting that balaclava picture. He’s not helping himself.
The balaclava that he is wearing is associated with the IRA. Therefore the insinuation is that he’s teaching his kids about the IRAI don't get it
I think if a Jewish player played for Galatasaray and refused to stand the same as everyone else in the stadium for the local anthem, or if an American footballer did the same while playing in the Iranian league, then they would obviously get dogs abuse after because the nations have a history together. Thankfully Irish and UK relations are mostly great these days but the history is still enough for a section of muppets to use as an excuse to dump their hate onto if they can find a reason to. And McClean gave them a reason and the ammunition they are begging for to target him as their current focus of hate. But I'm sure they have someone from each team who they target every game but just perhaps not as passionately as they target McClean.
Being a target of hate due to being from a country that has a history with another country, it's a little different bit different to racially abusing someone, which is falsely implying that one race is superior to another. I think racially abusing someone is a little worse.
Obviously McClean faces levels of hate that can't be good for anyone's mental health no matter how much you earn, but the tsunami of hate was always gonna come his way when he refused to stand like the other players from other nations did for the English anthems. Maybe the league should have found a way to protect him from this scenario before the anthem and poppy thing took place but as far as I can recall he's the first player in the PL to refuse to put his hand on the poppy and stand proud for the anthem, so it was a situation the league hadn't dealt with before.
But if McClean is seriously affected by it all, he'd probably be better off going to the MLS or China to escape it. His career is coming to an end anyways and I'm not sure Stoke is a higher level than the MLS.
Being a target of hate due to being from a country that has a history with another country, it's a little different bit different to racially abusing someone, which is falsely implying that one race is superior to another. I think racially abusing someone is a little worse.
Obviously McClean faces levels of hate that can't be good for anyone's mental health no matter how much you earn, but the tsunami of hate was always gonna come his way when he refused to stand like the other players from other nations did for the English anthems. Maybe the league should have found a way to protect him from this scenario before the anthem and poppy thing took place but as far as I can recall he's the first player in the PL to refuse to put his hand on the poppy and stand proud for the anthem, so it was a situation the league hadn't dealt with before.
But if McClean is seriously affected by it all, he'd probably be better off going to the MLS or China to escape it. His career is coming to an end anyways and I'm not sure Stoke is a higher level than the MLS.
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He tweeted “The Broad Black Brimmer”. Was his favourite song and Sunderland stopped him using social media maybe that’s what it was?
Sunderland really started this all by handling it badly at the very start. They didn’t need to draw attention to it, but when they did they should have allowed him to speak about it in a controlled manner. But they didn’t so he took to Twitter and it all went wrong from there
No, i mean that’s just a song.
I distinctly remember reading him saying that because he cane from the Creggan, and with Derry’s history he would have been in the IRA in a different era. But I can’t find it and can’t remember where I read it so I’ll have to drop it
He doesn’t get abuse because he’s Irish. He gets abuse because, rightly or wrongly, people don’t agree with how he goes about displaying his opinions.
Wouldn’t surprise me if he did, he doesn’t deserve the abuse but he doesn’t particularly help himself either when the IRA killed lots of innocent people on English shores throughout their bombing campaign.
I don’t remember saying that that’s the only factor.
But do you think him being Irish doesn’t play a factor in the now almost decade of abuse he’s received?
Why did the abuse towards him initially start in your opinion?
Because it’s been well documented It was going on for 2-3 years before he ever released any statements or posted shit on Twitter.
He is right. The FA are a bunch of cowards. Also corrupt and immoral so expecting anything from them might be misguided.
You know why the abuse started towards him. It started with Northern Ireland fans for obvious reasons. It became bigger when he didn’t want to wear a poppy and started trying to antagonise people.
Why does John O’Shea not get abuse? He holds his opinions because of where he is from but he’s not getting abused for being Irish.
Turkey and Iran are corrupt countries who are in no way comparable to the UK. Women in Iran don't even have basic rights. Those are just terrible comparisons.
McClean was born in the UK and lives in the UK, a western country with expectations of equality. If an Indian born in the UK and living in the UK was abused and received death threats for 9-10 straight over their views of the Bengali famine would they have gave the ammunition?
McClean didn't initially give any ammunition, he was abused for years before he publicly said anything. You're straight up blaming the victim at this point.
A history with another country which is rooted in the belief that English are a superior race to Irish.
"Margaret Thatcher came up to me and she said, ‘I’ve got one thing to say to you, my boy ... you can’t trust the Irish, they are all liars’, she said, ‘liars, and that’s what you have to remember, so just don’t forget it. With that she waltzed off and that was my only personal exposure to her "
"They (the Irish) live on beasts only, and live like beasts. They have not progressed at all from the habits of pastoral living. ..This is a filthy people, wallowing in vice. Of all peoples it is the least instructed in the rudiments of the faith. They do not yet pay tithes or first fruits or contract marriages. They do not avoid incest."
"I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country...to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black one would not see it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours."
"James Anthony Froude, a discipline of Carlyle's and a professor of history at Oxford described the Irish as being "more like squalid apes than human beings"
"In much of the pseudo-scientific literature of the day the Irish were held to be inferior, an example of a lower evolutionary form, closer to the apes than their "superiors", the Anglo-Saxons. Cartoons in Punch portrayed the Irish as having bestial, ape-like or demonic features and the Irishman, (especially the political radical) was invariably given a long or prognathous jaw"
He has never refused to stand for the British anthem. The league still hasn't dealt with it because the league doesn't play the British anthem and he has never refused to stand for it. You're just making stuff up at this point.
If Sterling/Abraham/McGoldrick/Wright/Kaepernick etc. are affected by it all, they'd probably be better off going to a different country to escape it. You hear how fecking stupid that is? Once again, blaming the victim.
Why even bother when you haven't a clue?
Lads the fact of the matter is if the word Irish, Fenian or Catholic was replaced with black, jew or muslim there would be absolute uproar, huge campaigns from the FA, arrests made and bans and fines handed out.
So tell me why does Matic get zero abuse ?
Yeah and isn't that correct ? The chances of myself being in the IRA if I was a teenager during bloody Sunday would have rose 10 fold . Everything what he says is correct but he's saying it to British people who have zero idea what it's like to live in a country that's been invaded and who's Army murder your family
I'm Irish I'm not Republican at all but I love rebel songs . It's part of our culture . Kevin Kilbane born and raised in England is as staunch a Irish man as you could wish to meet . He was raised listening to rebel songs . So according to these morons at football games he's in the RA as well ?
Remember when The Mail brought up Sterlings private life to justify the abuse he gets?
Good times.
Good times.
It is very sad to see how many people not only do not realise they're racist/bigots but they rationalise and justify their views and find way to blame the victims. And it's in all levels of society. Not much to smile about these days if you really think about the world we live in.
I’m not saying he’s incorrect but he’s working in England. Know your audience. Like I said, not helping himself.
I would imagine because Serbia and the UK don't have the history that Catholic neighbourhoods in Derry have with the UK, and the fact that Matic doesn't post videos on his Instagram of himself in balaclavas
Sure if we're going all the way back to the 80's, 40 years ago, different era, different times, then we might as well throw in the times in the 6th century when Irish Vikings arriving on ships ransacked monasteries in England for their gold and other valuables before fleeing.
I like McClean, wears his heart on his sleeve, gives 110% always despite limited talent, but maybe he could take a leaf out of Shane Duffy's book and just keep silent, be happy he's earning a bloody fortune every weekend in a country he has a bit of history with, and when he's been blasted with all kinds of terrible insults, maybe he can visualize spending his tens of millions in any one of the many places on earth where he can move to where's he's guaranteed he'll never face another racist insult or discrimination directed towards him or his family ever again. Which the same thing perhaps cannot be said for a retired black athlete who may always encounter a degree of racism no matter where they choose to live whether USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, China etc
I'm talking about the abuse and threats he received for years from fans in England. It was going on as i said for years before he released any statements or antagonised anyone on Twitter. It started and continued because he's an Irish man who had the audacity to choose not to wear a poppy. And that gave the bigoted knuckle dragging element of English football fans all the justification they needed to spew vitriol (much of it anti-Irish) at the guy every chance they get. And the FA haven't helped the situation by turning a blind eye.
I can actually remember we had this same conversation on this topic before almost verbatim mate, so i don't think we'll achieve much by repeating ourselves.
But my point is this the guy is getting constant abuse, much of it anti-Irish abuse and it's been going on for years. The fact he may or may not be a twat is irrelevant, the abuse is disgraceful and its just as disgraceful that the authorities in English football don't seem too fussed in doing much about it. I just can't imagine any other scenario where a professional footballer was getting abused about his race/religion/nationality and people would react to that by saying ''oh well he's brought it upon himself because he's a twat''.
Do you see my point mate?
I've no idea if O'Shea's ever received any anti Irish abuse or not. Do you know for a fact that he hasn't?
Another one to add to the blocked list
Yeah he should just know his place is what you're saying right?
John O' Shea's a good boy who wore the poppy and didn't antagonise the knuckle-draggers by daring to have opinions.
Yes I see your point but you don’t help it by saying it’s because he’s Irish. It isn’t, which is why you don’t see the countless other Irish players in the game getting the abuse. And it wasn’t going on for years. He was banned from Twitter by Sunderland for it three months after he first refused to wear a poppy
I don’t know for a fact that John O’Shea’s never been abused for being Irish, just watched him play hundreds of times and never heard any reaction from the fans when he touched the ball. You’re the one who compared it to racism so it’s up to you to show how it is. Who are the other Irish players receiving abuse?
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Or try to wind people up with glorification of terrorist organisations.
I've no doubt Harry Maguire gets called a slab head manc scumbag and even spat at by rival fans from the same country as he is from every week. Maybe he should come forward too to say how hurtful the whole thing is that he is being discriminated because he's from Sheffield. Imagine the abuse Harry Kane gets every week from rival fans due to his speech issues? But Kane knows its probably best not to speak about the abuse as he knows that will only multiply the abuse the following week.
Speaking up is a good thing in some situations. McClean has spoke up multiple times already. But every single footballer in England faces rival fan abuse and insults every week. It's part of the game and will never fully go away. I'm not saying it's OK at all, but you can argue that McClean has brought some of his abuse on himself.
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I know I’m Irish as well, but it just doesn’t sit well when you’re being so provocative about the British at the same time.
When did he do that and when did the abuse start?
This is straight out of the Jimmy Hill book of opinions on bigotry and racism.
There is literally no point reading anything else you're going to write if you that's the comparison you're going to make.
As long as people like you keep justifying it, it certainly won't.
I never claimed the abuse didn’t start because of him not wearing a poppy. In England anyway. In Northern Ireland it was for obvious reasons. He first refused to wear a poppy in November 2012 and was tweeting about his favourite songs in February 2013.
That’s a bit naughty on your part. I’m not a fan of Mcclean but being from Derry I can understand. 40 - 50 years may not be in his lifetime but it’s in the lifetime of his parents who would have lived in an era of British paratroopers shooting civilians dead on the streets of Derry. So i understand where he’s coming from.
I also understand why he chose to play for ireland rather than NI. (I don’t understand why he played for NI underage levels though given the strength in his beliefs).
the only thing I’d say against him, is that he invites some of the nasty comments by going on twitter etc and making posts which could be provocative. Eg. The balaclava post. It’s maybe why some of the Irish players keep their distance from his posts
it doesn’t excuse the bullets and death threats, nothing does.
Because he was happy to use them to further his career. It’s why I’ve never believed he’s just principled.
But you did bring up John O' Shea which wasn't relevant as he toes the line. Matic on the other hand doesn't get anywhere near the level of abuse.
Apart from that tweeting about his favourite song has been characterised by you as trying 'to wind people up with glorification of terrorist organisations'.
He admitted himself he was a bit naive about what he could and couldn't tweet back but I think that is a stretch.
He was brought up as an example of an Irish footballer. The abuse McClean gets was being compared to racist abuse of black players. I’m asking where the other Irish players getting abused for being Irish are.
You choose to give McClean the benefit of the doubt on his intentions there. I think there’s enough evidence on McClean to see exactly what his intentions where with that tweet. Do you think some dog from Derry doesn’t know exactly how people would react to that tweet? Was he still naive when he posted pictures of himself wearing a balaclava and talking about history lessons?
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