Oranges038
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- Oct 19, 2020
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I'm not saying people would scoff (yes, I'm sticking with that word dammit) because it's wrong, they'd scoff because it's lame. People make fun of the UK's national obsession with WW2 as is, so for the manager to use that as motivation before as pointless a game as you could imagine would rightly be mocked as David Brent style management. This is no different, it's a cringey approach to take for such an utterly low stakes but still professional game.
I mean they'd be perfectly within their rights to play their players the Any Given Sunday "inches" speech too but that would still be a laughably clichéd Junior B football style approach to getting your players psyched for a game.
Yeah, the Twitter morons would be out in force no doubt about it.
I'm not saying people would scoff (yes, I'm sticking with that word dammit) because it's wrong, they'd scoff because it's lame. People make fun of the UK's national obsession with WW2 as is, so for the manager to use that as motivation before as pointless a game as you could imagine would rightly be mocked as David Brent style management. This is no different, it's a cringey approach to take for such an utterly low stakes but still professional game.
I mean they'd be perfectly within their rights to play their players the Any Given Sunday "inches" speech too but that would still be a laughably clichéd Junior B football style approach to getting your players psyched for a game.
Yeah the twitter morons would be having a field day alright they seem to love this kind of thing, I'm not on it but I see the occasional threads and I am glad I'm not. The man would be sacked over the twitter response more than whether or not it would be right or wrong, it's the outcry of idiots on twitter with nothing better to do and crap newspapers that will be listened to. This stuff should never be leaked out of the dressing room and staff definitely shouldn't be running to a rag of a paper about it. That is childish school yard behavior. If he felt so strongly against it, he should have stated his position tendered his resignation and left quietly, this just smacks of someone trying to get one over on the manager for whatever reason.
I was in a dressing room where that inches speech was played before a game, it wasn't great or particularly well received but nobody moaned about it being the reason why we lost the game. I also played for a GAA team where one lad would say the same thing every game just before we left the dressing room, "Let's go out and bate these *team name* c**ts". He was dead serious, loved the parish pride aspect of it, now can you imagine if James McClean or one of them said that before this game, would the same lad have piped up and said, no no James, you can't say that?
"Love of a country is a hard thing to measure but if you see a player on the TV who played for Ireland, singing 'God Save the Queen' in a play-off final, you might just say, 'Oh, right. Maybe he's not really all that Irish'. Matty Holland would be an example. 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'."
If they want to come on board and they qualify, then great, as long as they've a feel for it. I think, in the past, there were one or two players who probably declared for Ireland as a career move - and I can understand that, too.
"They did well for the country, but I look at some of them now and I wonder if they've been back to Ireland since. So I think the attitude should be, 'Listen, if you're going to come on board, get a feel for it - have a warmth for the country but don't just do it as a pure career move'."
Roy Keane sums it up quite nicely above, for me.
The problem we have is that GAA and Rugby (becoming more and more popular since the early 00's) are hurdles standing in the way of the national team. Having Leinster in Ireland, the equivalent of having a Barcelona or Real Madrid, is unfortunately lost on me. I hate the sport. Despise it even. Lots of potentially good Irish football players are lost to both these sports. Particularly Gaelic football, as the skillset transfers quite well between the sports. Not so much Rugby in terms of skillset, but young kids picking up Rugby at a young age instead of falling in love with Football. Which they're entitled to do. But as an avid Football fan, I would sacrifice success in both those sports for the benefit of Football. There is only one "Beautiful Game", for me.
The real difference here is that these lads had thicker skin and could see the funny side of things like this and it helped them build a bond and a bit of comradery in the team and squad. They joke about things like this and not go moaning to the newspapers or jumping onto twitter or unfollowing someone on Instagram over it. I'm not against anyone coming to play for Ireland if they are committed, but I think the Grealish and Rice debacles have become a sort of joke about this approach now and other players are reluctant to do similar and head down the same path for fear of getting the same treatment.
Agree with the bolded part and was just about to post this.
As for the lack of players, the real problem with soccer in this country is that while there are many great clubs around the country in most areas, a lot of people love it and watch it and play it, but it's always going to be a second or third choice for the majority. So when it comes down to playing sports the most talented players choose to stick with either Hurling or Gaelic football, you even have rugby been thrown into the mix in the last few years. I know of several who had chances to go to England but were encouraged to stay for the chance of playing minor county football.
For these sports the scholarship opportunities through colleges are and universities are different, the payers know they can make a name for themselves at home, and it encourages the players to stay and get a good education while playing a sport they love. With soccer the best don't stay long enough to make it this way, as the view is that you have to move to England at 15/16 to get in with some youth team. Plenty of players over the years have shown that this is not always the best way, look at Roy Keane, Kevin Doyle, Shane Long and Seamus Coleman, they are just a few. The FAI and LOI should actually put more focus on developing players at home and improving the structures within the country for discovering and nurturing talent.
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