Thanks for the input mate.
That wasn't difficult was it? Finally someone who could reply to the thread in a mature manner rather than "feck you Plan M you Irish hating cnut!"
Why don't the Irish support their local teams?
- Thread starter Plan M
- Start date
Thanks for the input mate.
That wasn't difficult was it? Finally someone who could reply to the thread in a mature manner rather than "feck you Plan M you Irish hating cnut!"
I replied on the first page, Plan M you Irish hating cnut.
Those English bastards!
I like the Irish! Especially Irish ladies, our HR lady in work is from Southern Ireland and she's incredibley fit - she honestly could pose for a lad's mag and blow away the competition.
She's wasted in human resources.
Why don't you post on a local forum board?
I do, Redcafe is an irish forum. Besides, i'm not the one moaning about people not using their local resources
you're missing the point... there have been lots of these threads asking specifically about the Irish, but very few asking fans from other areas why they dont support their local teams. I can only conclude that either its jealousy or deep rooted bigotry
I already answered your question on page 1 from both perspectives!
No GB, you are the one missing the point. I'm not moaning in any way shape or form about Irish people supporting United/Celtic/Liverpool.
Like I've already said, this thread has obviously offended you and a few of the other Irish lads and didn't intend to do that so please accept my apologies.
We're just going around in circles now anyway, Fadas reply was enough to explain why many Irish people do not follow Irish footy so that's enough for me.
If you want to follow English, US, Italian, German or even bloody Polish footy, be my guest - it doesn't piss me off in any way, shape or form.
But don't tarnish me as "anti Irish" because that's not fair, I have no problem with Irish people in any way.
I have a problem with a lot of Irish, jester hatted, Keano shirt wearing arseholes I used to meet at games myself Plan M so don't worry about it.
People are people in my eyes mate, I've met wankers from all over the UK and other countries. I'm a lot of things but I'm not a racist.
There are lots of reasons, for example, Wexford, where I'm from, has only had a team since 2007 and it gets quite decent local support, lots of people would be in a similar position with no local team.
Growing up there was no coverage of Irish 'soccer'. If you were watching it on TV you were watching the English league.
Because a lot the younger kids heroes will be international players as most kids do, I remember when i was 7 or 8 my favourite players mostly being united players playing for england. The players of the irish national team never play a professional game in ireland and instead come through english or scottish youth sides, i suspect that the amount of attention that is then paid to english or scottish leagues puts intrest in them.
All the best Irish players play in England. It's as simple as that. Also, the country is too small to sustain a decent standard professional league. Football also has to compete with both Gaelic sports and more recently rugby.
Some do support their local teams anyway. I went to two matches today, junior matches, but I'd go to see as many games as I can.
The fact that all the best Irish players play abroad and the fact that Gaelic Sports are so popular are the main reasons why most people don't have a massive support for the Irish league. Plus the standard ain't great, obviously, and never will.
Exactly, When you decide to support a team you have no idea what your getting into, I can safely say when i started supporting United I didnt realise how good they were or big in comparison to others, would see more shirts and i suppose kind of knew they were good but you dont realise the difference at that age.
Bang on.
Exactly. I started supporting United when I was about 5. I supported them because my da and my grandad did.
Isn't the question akin to asking 'why don't the English support their local American-Football teams?'
I dont see the similarity?
How many English men have gone on to play top level American Football?
I started supporting United because of my dad too. I've supported the club since I can remember, and Liverpool were the team on top at that point.
A lot of my wee friends when I was younger used to walk around in their grey Liverpool tops when 'Candy' was their sponsor. We used to play football in the field near our houses, I was usually the only one in a United top.
That pretty much sums it up, it is & all ways will be very hard too for a league to take off in a country with a small population 2 separate Football Associations & the sport playing 3rd fiddle to GAA & Rugby when scouts from every club in England are coming over on a weekly basis just waiting to pluck every single player thats showing an ounce of promise, at very young ages too.
The Man Utd link, well when so many of the best footballers this Island ever produced played for Man Utd it was only normal that some sort of a relationship between club & country would develop. I myself started supporting Man Utd because the player i used to admire the most when i was a young lad Paul McGrath was playing for them i grew attached to Man Utd & still am today & try to get over to see & support them as ofton as i can. A lame excuse for an Irish lad to have started supporting them according to fred, but i couldn't give a feck really.
What a thread.A few Oirish seem to be getting incredibly defensive over this; don't.
I think the thread originally wasn't really meant to bash OOT fans (although it's a bit weird he only focussed on you paddies) but it deteriorated into a quality caf clusterfeck of a thread.
I was brought up much closer to Maine Road than Old Trafford, but have never felt any passion, nor will I ever, for Manchester City. These types of discussions have been had so many times and are incredibly tedious, but as long as somebody supports the team with their heart, then you can't really question the logic of it.
I presume you were stirring it up Spoons?
Well, most do. Some haven't made their way over there from here yet, and some over here are better than some over there but just don't go/have gone and didn't do well for whatever reason. I know thats nitpicking, but still.
I'd rather have my balls removed than support Liverpool!
Fun thread. Some people get super, super defensive about questions like this, as we're seeing here. I'm not sure why, what's wrong with supporting a team just because they play fantastic football and their games are highly accessible on television?
If Ireland had a strong league with some big name teams, the numbers of Irish that supported British clubs would be slashed, bit of a no brainer
The only thing I don't get are those (a minority?) of Irish which talk of hating the English, or at least make regular snide remarks, but support our football teams?
If Ireland had a strong league with some big name teams, the numbers of Irish that supported British clubs would be slashed, bit of a no brainer
The only thing I don't get are those (a minority?) of Irish which talk of hating the English, or at least make regular snide remarks, but support our football teams?
I could be wrong but there is no American football league in England. There is a Fooball league in both Eire and Northern Ireland.
And I used to be a London Monarchs fan. I went to the world bowl at Wembley in 1991!
Anyhow a leprechaun owns the club. Watch what you say about the Irish or he might steal all its money.
Because there's lots of generalisations and criticisms that go with being an Irish Utd supporter and some of us get sick of them and sick of answering the same questions over and over again which are all basically boil down to the same thing, justify why you support Utd, prove that you're not just a gloryhunter. We get it from opposition fans, and we get it from other Utd supporters, it gets really old.
I know thats not the outright aim of this thread but its pretty much what comes to mind for a lot of Irish supporters when asked these sort of questions.
Even you're point about nothing being wrong with supporting a team because they play brilliant football has the assertion that if they're not playing brilliant football then we wont support them.
The assertion is accurate though, there's a reason such masses of Irish supporters aren't say Bolton supporters. I agree with Fred, there's a bit of a myth about 'historical links' peddled at times, I just don't see what's wrong with admitting you're watching a team because they're good and successful? Doesn't mean you'll then abandon them if they don't do as well, but its clearly a huge factor in coming to the club in the first place
Personally I have 'historical links' with United, in that I support them because that's the way my dad brought me up, and how he in turn was brought up by my grandad. How did my grandad come to support United? He just happened to work in Manchester and his mates went there so he joined them. Later in life his mates went to City, so he joined them, and family born beyond that point support City. No worthier reason that that... who cares?
I know there might be generalisations, and you'll always get your Red Issue types demanding everyone competes for their 'worthyness' as a supporter... feck em. If that's so important to them, leave the small minded twats to it. It doesn't do anyone any good to get so defensive when lets be honest, the thread starter wasn't talking down those lines at all
You are being too general. In my family we have a Spurs, United, Everton, Chelsea, Leeds & Villa fan.
None of us give a fiddlers feck about Celtic and we universally hate Liverpool.
A better question may be.... why didn't we have some contraception sooner. Especially before the Leeds fan.
A few Oirish seem to be getting incredibly defensive over this; don't.
I think the thread originally wasn't really meant to bash OOT fans (although it's a bit weird he only focussed on you paddies) but it deteriorated into a quality caf clusterfeck of a thread.
I was brought up much closer to Maine Road than Old Trafford, but have never felt any passion, nor will I ever, for Manchester City. These types of discussions have been had so many times and are incredibly tedious, but as long as somebody supports the team with their heart, then you can't really question the logic of it.
I'm pretty sure he was only basing it on us becuase he knows about the other "home nations" leagues a bit, and teams that get followed. I certainly wouldn't take any offence.
So, in essence, loads are glory hunters.... but you have really have "historical links" so that accusation could never be levelled at you. Gotcha.
It's a fairly simple answer, illustrated perfectly by the photo of the Celtic supporter in this thread, they're fecking idiots. No need for the question mark regarding whether it's a minority of Irish that are bigots.
So, in essence, loads are glory hunters.... but you have really have "historical links" so that accusation could never be levelled at you. Gotcha.
Erm, I'm not quite sure you understood the context of that second paragraph, or indeed why historical links was in inverted commas
But hey whatever, you got me
Not really relevant to this discussion or the right forum to discuss this one, is it?
You can object to English govt activities around the world and particulalrly if you live next door to it while still supporting an English team & not "hating" English people generally.... it's not mutually exclusive.
I rarely hear people here saying they "hate" England or English people. Many like to see England lose football matches but that goes for the whole of the world (and loads of English club football fans) cos the media are so up themselves, many of the squad are easy to hate as they're cnuts & your tabloids are laughable. But I would say that is more in the spirit of having a laugh than a general dislike of England.
Manchesters links to Ireland are a bit of a myth? Right, go read up on it Brad because its not. They actually do in part explain why there are so many Irish United supporters, and also why there are so many Irish Liverpool supporters, I also know a good few Irish Everton supporters, again due to historical links, family working there or whatever.
Another side of it is the history of Irish players at Utd, as has been said, most Irish people follow the national team and ended up supporting the team their favorite player played for. That might have been a generation or two ago and have provided the spark for Utd support to become the family tradition. You have kids in Ireland whose Dad passed it down to them and their Grandad passed it to their Dad, why did their grandad support Utd to begin with? Who knows, who cares, the point is the current generation didn't wake up one day and decide to support Utd.
Obviously there are cases where people did just decide to support utd because they were successful, personally I'm like you, it doesn't bother me a jot, but its not the case for everyone, I don't know anyone that just 'decided' to support Utd yet its the prevailing generalisation, and I consider it a bit of an insult when everyone is tarred with the same brush, particularly as, like you say, it implies that I and others like me would walk away if the success faded. My Dad supported Utd right through from the 50's, he's seen his fair share of runs with no success, my earliest memories of Utd are from the early 80's, we weren't exactly setting the world alight at the time yet still all my mates were still mainly either Utd or Liverpool supporters.
If its all about the glory why are there so many people my age and older who've supported Utd since they were kids?
As I say of course its true in a lot of cases, but its also not true in a lot of cases, its a simplistic generalisation, and as with all generalisations its not accurate.
It has nothing to do directly with the thread but you asked why people were being defensive.
I'll field that one B, as it appears someone else has just said you're talking through your hole.....
Erm, I'm not quite sure you understood the context of that second paragraph, or indeed why historical links was in inverted commas
But hey whatever, you got me
Go watch Wexford Youths next season Eyepopper...I'll send you a card and a box of chocolates if you do.
The Irish World Heritage Centre's in Manchester. Anyone from Manchester'll know the links between Ireland and Manchester.