Don is an American and very proud of his country. Although not so proud that he would actually live there (the irony of me being proud of my country is not lost on me). I want to watch Ireland’s games at the World Cup in the company of somebody from the country against which we are playing. Rugby is a deeply illogical game and having somebody to banter with is the only way of making it even mildly entertaining.
We played the yanks on September 11th, a day that is important to them for obvious reasons. Don got emotional during the minute silence before the game. I thought it might be a good time to bring up some of the conspiracy theories that surround that day. I don’t mean the ones about the towers been brought down by preset explosives or the van load of Israelis who were seen cheering as the towers collapse. I mean the one about how America used the events of that day to press their crazy date system on the rest of the world. Days are followed by months which are followed by years and that’s the logical way to express a date. So why does the world talk about 9/11? Let the Americans call it that if they want. But to the rest of us it should be 11/9.
I think this is a slippery slope and soon we will not just be using their date format, but we’ll scrap metric and return to pints and gallons. I think there is also room to speculate that the London bombings in 2005 were orchestrated to happen on the 7th July so that the English could talk about 7/7. This allows them to simultaneously keep their American paymasters happy by using the Yankee date format while pretending to the rest of the world that their using their format too.
After Don had dismissed my theories with a disdainful look, we turned our attention back to the pre match entertainment. The Auckland choral choir stepped up to sing the Irish anthem. Except of course it wasn’t the Irish anthem. It’s a made up song designed to not upset anyone but in the process pleasing no one. “Ireland’s Call” is a dirge that would not be out of place in a Michael Flatley musical.
To make matters worse, the Auckland choir decided to only allow its female singers to participate, which made the aforementioned call sound like a screech from a pack of banshees who had just had boiling water poured on them. The male members of the choir followed with a powerful rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” which was almost enough to encourage me to buy a helicopter and head off to some Middle Eastern country on a bombing mission. The contrast between the two anthems could not be starker.
Don, like many Americans, has some Irish blood racing through his veins. It’s mixed with some German, Cherokee Indian and lots of cocaine, if his bulging eyeballs were any guide. When the fine ladies of Auckland had finished butchering Ireland’s Call, Don looked at me with a quizzed expression. “That’s not the song they used to play at the end of the night in Dropkick Murphys in Boston”, he said. I sighed, because I knew that I was about to set off on an explanation of Ireland’s twisted nationhood for the thousand time since I arrived on this fatal shore.
I should say upfront that I voted for the Good Friday agreement which was the definitive Irish solution to an Irish problem. That agreement allows people in Northern Ireland to choose between British and Irish citizenship. I might be wrong, but I think this is the only place in the world that allows this duality. You can be in Ireland all your life but choose not to be Irish. As a country of course “Ireland” doesn’t actually exist. Geographically, it is an island off the North West coast of Europe. But politically, in terms of the United Nations and all that, it’s made up of the Republic of Ireland and a dysfunctional province which is part of the United Kingdom.
Many Australians think Ireland is part of the UK as the media likes to use those two letters as shorthand for anything in that far off neck of the word. This pricks my national pride as it is only Northern Island that is part of the United Kingdom, but we southerners don’t help the confusion by using the shorthand of “Ireland” to represent our part of the country.
Don’s eyes were drooping as I continued with an explanation of dominion status in the 1930s. None of it matters of course, except when it comes to sport. Ireland has two soccer teams which reflect the political structure of the Island. It sends one team to the Olympics which is drawn from the whole island but only includes those who have chosen to be Irish. The only sports in which we present an All Ireland team are Rugby, Hockey and Cricket. Which are of course, the old middle class garrison games of British occupation.
None of these teams fly the Irish flag or play the Irish anthem before games. To complain about this sets you out as a petty minded nationalist. Yet these teams participate in International sport. Which of course contains the word “nation” at its heart. Sport between countries is all about nationhood. The feeling of representation that it brings and the pride in being from a particular place. We Irish are the only participants at the world cup that come from a compromise of two countries. And that compromise dilutes us all I think.
But they wear the green and at the end of the day that’s enough for me. I think we have a good chance of winning, even though Don thinks it has already been fixed that New Zealand will lift the trophy. He likes a good conspiracy theory it must be said.
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