In recent weeks, as yet another Irish Rugby World Cup fell asunder, there was much gnashing of teeth and back and forth about how Irish fans behaved in Japan. They were derided as losers by some football hacks; the word “cringe” being bandied about all over the shop. Their perceived sins included the following:
- Singing “Stand Up for the Japanese” hours after the minnows humiliated the Irish, keeping them scoreless for 40 minutes;
- Laughing and cheering into the camera behind Joe Schmidt during the closing stages of the total trashing by New Zealand; and
- Singing “Fields of Athenry” during the semi-final we weren’t at.
And this whole thing was framed by poor oul Breffni’s “stacked full of lads, total cornage” interview which comprised a better satirical performance than anything Paul Howard could ever conjure up.
Of course, as the likes of Miguel Delaney and Ewan McKenna set out their stalls, which may be summed up as heavy criticism of this self-aware group staging a contrived performance of the “Irish Fan Abroad” – a self-parody of over-friendly, over-gregarious, uber-craic merchants, with little if any evidence of critical analysis of what was going on on the pitch, to the extent that their apathy to the on-field shambles was enough for some to call out what they saw as a loser mentality. Some Rugby fans hit back and many looked at Irish soccer fans in 2012 and 2016 for cannon fodder. The thing is, they were right! To an extent.
The Anatomy of Irish fandom at major tournaments has gone through a number of stages, which may be summed up something along the lines of the following:
- 1988 and 1990 – Let’s call this the “We’re not the Fucking English” stage. The Scots had this as well, starting mainly at Mexico ’86. In order to demonstrate your difference from the thugs and hooligans that followed England as clearly as possible, you behave in the polar opposite manner. We did this in Germany and Italy. I remember sitting in a public square in Palermo with the Dutch fans and the Caribinieri were circling on motorbikes waiting for things to kick off. All we were doing was singing “England go home”. We were different. And we made sure the Italian police knew this.
- 1994 – USA was party time again off the pitch but qualification and great results were becoming business as usual. Irish fans tore up the east coast in 1994, but there was a growing sense that tournaments were becoming the norm rather than the exception. So while Ireland may have come to a virtual standstill again for this World Cup, it was no Italia 90. We had already arrived and the world knew us. No need for theatrics.
- 1996-00 – Disappointment. After qualifying in 3 of 4 attempts, we missed 3 in a row. A new generation awaited their turn.
- 2002 – Japan and Korea obviously priced a lot of people out of travelling, but large numbers still flocked to the far east. Back in the big time, but again, compared to 1990, there was no sense that the Green Army in 2002 were exceptionally different than others. I’m sure there were big nights out. I’m sure there was as much craic and banter as ever, but this seems to have been a very different experience as we looked to reestablish ourselves on the world stage. Perhaps the civil war which preceded the tournament had an impact and the tentative nature of our progress and elimination.
- 2004-10 – Another era of disappointment, during which of course, smartphones were invented, YouTube, facebook, Twitter, multiple news sources, memes, virals, Joe.ie, Balls.ie and a million new ways to record and share your life were all developed. And it was a combination of this with absolute hunger for another tournament, which gave rise to the latest incarnation of the Irish soccer fan abroad, which has now since been co-opted into Rugby.
- 2012. Rubbish on the field. Brilliant off it. The stirrings of a new breed of Irish performance fan were first felt. Whether it was the “Careful Now” banner being held up as Croats and Poles went to town on each other in central Poznan, or the many clips that were “doing the rounds”, it certainly felt different. It was very funny at times, and it was new, which is very important here. I’m not including the “Fields of Athenry” in Gdansk in this, simply because it does not belong here. That was a spontaneous lament. None of us enjoyed it. It was miserable and it was bloody appropriate too. We were honoured by the Mayor of Poznan afterwards and such awards seem twee now, but in Poland, a combination of the Irish recession; the relationships built through migration from our host country to ours in the preceding few years; the 10 year wait for a tournament for Irish fans and a 22 year wait for one in Europe; plus the futility of Trap’s approach; gave rise to this real nailing down of the “best fans in the world” tag. And at the time, yeh sure I welcomed it. Why not.
- 2016 – It began to grate here. Countless crap fed through the channels above with every day of the tournament chock full of “look at us, aren’t we gas” bolloxology. Changing a tyre; singing to a baby; helping a nun cross the road was it? Utterly inane self-conscious nonsense. I was only there for one night (yes that night. In Lille) and it seemed we were all too banjaxed from the heat in the bowl and the journey back on the Metro, to actually have a mad one. Central Lille, apart from the main train station where an epic “Fields” rang out – wrong song choice but whatever – was oddly subdued. But the entire fortnight was full of cringeworthy nonsense. And it wasn’t needed to distract from the football. 2 and a half decent performances there, unlike the zero we got in Poland. There’s even an article out there titled “11 Moments From Euro 2016 Which Endeared The Irish Fans To The World”. Fuck off.
- 2019 – Now the eggchasers have it. Singing support for the team that just hammered you is utterly fucking unforgiveable. Wish them well for the rest of the tournament. Tell them you hope they win it, as I did to the Croats, Spaniards and Italians I met in Poland, but sing them a song with a smile on your face? Where’s your Fucking Pride indeed!!! Smile and laugh into the camera as you’ve been slaughtered by NZ?? Many clowns compared this to Gdansk, as we sang with Spain 4 up. No comparison can possibly be made in sport with deeper ignorance. I was disgusted by that sight in Japan, and my feelings were vindicated by my Rugby supporting friends who felt the same way. Unreal and absolutely a loser mentality. A soccer crowd would’ve been seen mouthing vulgar abuse. And YES! That would have been better!
So we are where we are, as they say. A lot of people are of the view that these people are just enjoying themselves and put up a few straw man arguments along the lines of “would you prefer they were crying or trashing town squares?”. No I wouldn’t. Or ask, is there a proper way to support your team? And who decides that? Which is obviously not the case, as all fans are different.
But it would be nice to hear of an incident involving Irish fans at a major tournament that wasn’t vaingloriously videoed and shared incessantly online as a proof of how fecking upyaboya great we are. And that doesn’t conform to the weakest paddywhackery cliches imaginable. I acknowledge that this is part of modern culture – something has not been done if it has not been videoed – and perhaps these things always happened everywhere we went and we just didn’t have the means to record it. I don’t think so and I believe that the technology has in fact played a major part in this. What has happened now is a vicious circle has formed whereby each upload feeds the beast and as this beast gets hungrier and hungrier for more bants and more craic, the boys have that little bit more work to do, and they do it. They know they’re gas craic. They video themselves being gas craic. It looks gas craic. Aren’t we all gas craic. Let’s do something else gas craic now. Maybe even more gas craic than the last gas craic thing we did.
But let’s cut the shit. We are not special. We are just another team in another tournament (hopefully) and maybe our enjoyment of it should be more closely linked to the performance of those teams. As it once was in soccer at least.
A Yard of Grass 