Engerland!

One of life’s little pleasures is to receive a message out of the blue from a long lost friend. This happened to me around Christmas 2001, when one of those old fashioned airmail envelopes arrived at my parents’ house. It was from a friend that I worked with in Luxembourg several years earlier who had found an old letter from me when she was moving house.

For younger readers, that’s how we used to communicate with each other in the 90’s. You might have somebody’s landline, but we were rarely home in those dance filled days, so the best way of getting a message to them was through an old fashioned letter in the post.

Anyway, we started using a new- fangled communication method called e-mail and even got to meet on one occasion. She was English and a devout Christian, so we spent most of our day together in St Paul’s Cathedral in London, mouthing sweet nothing’s to each other in the whispering gallery.

My memory is hazy, but I think I might have harboured romantic intentions, but obviously not strongly enough to do anything about them.

Our email exchanges continued up to the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea. Ireland and England both qualified for that competition and she mentioned in an exchange that she’d be cheering for Ireland in our match against Spain and said she presumed that I’d reciprocate when England were playing Denmark. I replied that 700 years of history prevented me from supporting England in any endeavour.

I was then subjected to what would now be called ‘ghosting’. I haven’t heard from her since.

I mention this because it highlights the sensitivities English people feel towards the lack of support from Ireland for their national football team.

There are some in Ireland who see this as our problem. That we have a national chip on our shoulder or that it shows common currency with the extremists who supported the IRA during the troubles. They argue that a modern, self-confident country wouldn’t feel the need to dislike their neighbours. The people who put forward this point can be found arguing for Ireland to re-join the Commonwealth and proudly display mugs with the image of Princess Diana on their mantle-pieces.  

I think this argument misunderstands the nature of sport. That it is all about liking one team and having a rivalry with another. It also misunderstands the nature of International sport. The key part of this word is “nation”. We fly flags, sing national anthems, kiss badges but then try to pretend that the events have nothing to do with the history of the countries involved.  

This is a particular problem with England. They have a colonial past and have left a trail of misery across Africa, Asia and Ireland. And in the old Empire countries that were populated by European settlement, they have made themselves unpopular by using the young of those countries as cannon fodder in their various wars. I’ve lived in Australia and New Zealand and they choose England as the country they would most like to see lose at sport, if only because the English patronised and humiliated them in the early days of the Empire.

There is an assumption that if you hold a sporting bias, then you must hate the people who support those teams. I support Louth in Gaelic Football, Wexford in Hurling, Carlton in AFL and Arsenal in English football. As a result, I dislike Meath, Kilkenny, Collingwood and Tottenham Hotspur. I know many people who support these teams and while I enjoy winding them up and they like winding me up, I don’t dislike them as people. Some of them are my best friends.

Only my English friends seem to have a problem with this sporting rivalry. It’s ironic, when they have no problem laughing at German losses.

I wonder what the reasons for this are? I sometimes think that English people have a soft spot for Ireland. That we are the young cousin, that despite a few rebellious years, are still fondly looked upon. They love our sense of humour, admire our music and flock to our pubs.  And maybe they can’t except when that beloved younger cousin laughs at your pitfalls.

But maybe it’s just that old fashioned lack of proportion that sometimes happens in sport. I mentioned that I’m a Wexford hurling fan. While we have an enmity towards Kilkenny, it’s not reciprocated. They have ten times as many titles as Wexford and as a result they see us an irritant and not a rival. Even more frustratingly, they’ll patronise Wexford fans on the few occasions we beat them. We’d much prefer it if they hated us.

England must feel the same towards us. We had a few good years in the 80s and 90s but they don’t really see us as a threat. We struggle to make tournament finals whereas they are always looking to win them.

This doesn’t happen in Rugby. Ireland are on a par with England, if not better, and as a result, no English fan expects support from Ireland.

I might be wrong of course. Maybe I do harbour some deep seated republican sympathies. I bristle at Ireland being included in the “British Isles” for example and particularly when people describe it as “just a geographical description”. I also get annoyed when commentators talk about The British Lions instead of their proper title of British and Irish Lions.

Rationally, I accept that I come from an island that has a long intertwined relationship with its neighbour. My surname, for example, has English roots. There is a lot at play. History, politics and the normal rivalries that come with sport. I try to take all this into account and to be as fair-minded as possible. But that didn’t stop me emitting a guttural roar and leaping out of my seat and punching the air when Harry Kane smashed that penalty over the bar against France. 

I measure out my life in World Cups - Part 3

I last updated my World Cup odyssey in 2010, when I was living in Australia and France were embarrassing themselves in South Africa (karma, huh?). I wrote two installments of this tale in that long Melbourne Winter and it’s time to update the story now. Twelve years and three world cups have come and gone.

2010 became Annus Horribulis. By the time I’d written the second part of this story, I’d already had a bike accident that broke an arm, an eye socket and my cycling confidence. My Mother died two weeks after the World Cup final that year. I can’t remember where I watched that game.  I’m guessing at home but the shadow of my Mother’s impending demise hung over it.  I flew back to Ireland to say goodbye to her then flew back again a week later for the funeral. Those were carbon-unfriendly times.

Later that year, I had a visit from the Big C and paid the ransom of my left testicle to get it to go away.

By the time the World Cup in 2014 rolled around another seismic event in my life was taking place. I was made redundant in April of that year and my departure from Australia was put in train. By the time of the final in July, we were in a hotel in Abu Dhabi on our way to Edinburgh. I watched the match at 1pm in the morning in the courtyard of the hotel. It was Ramadan and while Abu Dhabi is not a big drinking place at the best of times, during Ramadan it is like a Presbyterian wake.  They set up a ‘bar’ in the courtyard for which you had to pre-purchase tokens. I bought $50 worth of vouchers and that entitled me to four small cans of Seven Up. That was the strongest drink you could buy and made me realise that ‘bar’ has a different meaning in the Islamic world than where I grew up.

If nothing else, it convinced me that I would never attend a World Cup in the Middle East. Thankfully, with the controversy that is going on in Qatar right now, that is never likely to happen again in my lifetime.

2018 took place in Russia. Another country I have no intention of visiting. I was living in New Zealand at this stage, but cunningly booked a month-long visit to Ireland that allowed me to watch games in real-time, or at least at times of the day when drinking is socially acceptable. International sport is tailored for the European market. That means that games are usually on in the middle of the night or early morning here. That’s made me realise that I enjoy sport much more when I have a beer in my hand.

I watched the England v Croatia Semi-final with my Dad and we took guilty pleasure in England’s defeat. I was in Glenbeigh, County Kerry the following weekend when the final took place. It was a beautiful summer’s day, made better by the fact that I was in a pub.

Eight days later my Dad was dead. He passed away in the early hours of the 24^th July. Eight years to the day since my Mother’s death. My father was a very thoughtful man and I’m sure that he hung on past midnight so that we’d only have to pay for one anniversary mass each year that would cover both of them.

I’m now onto my 15^th world cup. Don’t remember the first one (thankfully, as England won). But I reckon I’ve watched all of the others, in six different countries.

This year, the games are in Qatar. I’m glad Ireland didn’t qualify. We’re rubbish at the moment and would only embarrass ourselves. But the thought of thousands of Irish fans unable to get a drink of beer is unimaginable. It also means we are not faced with the moral dilemma of playing in a tournament mired in corruption and played in a country that fails to respect gay people or migrant workers.

I read about this a lot in the woke European media that fill my newsfeed. It reeks of hypocrisy of course. Take England for example. As Irish people would know, they don’t have a proud record of treating their own migrant workers well. No professional footballer in England has felt comfortable enough to come out while still playing. This is because of the negative culture towards LBGT culture within British sport.

The underlying problem is that the whole world is not moving at the same pace when it comes to what we define as human rights. In fact, some of the world is moving backwards. America has recently allowed for abortion to be made illegal in many states. It also allows for armed militia to shut down gay bars.

Africa, Asia and South America are well behind Europe when it comes to liberalising reproductive and sexual rights. There seems to be an assumption that the World Cup should only be held in countries that match the social and moral structures of Western Europe. This is the same message that 19th-century colonialists gave. Only white men should be in government because they are the ones with the education and culture to manage the task.

It’s a great danger to say that we’re better than everyone else, that we exist on a higher plane. By all means campaign for changes around the world, but if we boycott countries we don’t like, then we’re at risk of excluding most of the world.

Anyway, I’m boycotting much of this world cup because the games are on in the middle of the night here. I will get up early to watch the final though. It’s a 4am start here. But I have to keep up the tradition of watching every final. I just hope that no seismic event in my life happens at the same time. There is a lot to be said for a quiet life.