Identifying with a Sport and Nationalism are just as irratio

[MichaelNugent]

Well at least Bohemians and Leeds United's claim on your support is finite!

But it can sometimes seem like an eternity

[MichaelNugent]

I remember posting in another blog several years ago about the competing demands on my emotions of following an Irish team (Bohs) in an Irish league, an English team (Leeds) in an English league, and an international team (Ireland), and the dilemmas when permutations of these different teams played against each other, including when a League of Ireland selection played a friendly against the proper Ireland team. I won’t bore you with the details of my inner torment, but one poster commented with this analysis:

You do know, of course, Michael that supporting a bunch of overpaid, under-performing lads thump an inflated sphere around an incongruously marked field really doesn’t say anything about anything. Other than highlight the poignant fact that society forces lads to “grow-up” and be responsible. Football is the secret door you lads keep to hold on to some semblance of childhood. Women use romance for pretty much the same effect.

Watching football allows you to regress to a time of carefreeness to a time when Kenny Samson/Dalglish/Rodgers* was a mercurial genius who really cared about the game and loved his club just as much as you. You adopted your club because your Dad did or didn’t or because you found those shiny Admiral shirts fashionable or because they had the best chants or because … well the point is you got to choose something for yourself for the first time in your life. It was your first love choice. (For me, it was Donny Osmond but I’m not embarrassed. Much!) You didn’t get to choose your nationality.

And anyway, the thing is, back then, you’d no real sense of nationalism – except in the sense that the Men from U.N.C.L.E thought rise in nationalism a ploy used by the Men from A.U.N.T.I.E. to ensure world domination. So it is difficult to correlate football with any sense of national identity.

(*) Apologies about the Kenny’s, my big brother used to adore someone called Kenny but I can’t remember anything other than he used to wear a no. 7 on a very cute arse.

[HarryO'Criosna]

Is there a bit too much being read into this? Taking pleasure only in things you have personally been involved in would make for a fairly joyless existence. Supporting your local team or whatever is, as has been pointed out, pretty much a tribal thing and likely related to how we evolved as social animals. On some level we're pre-programmed to look after our own. At the same time though I wouldn't be at all nationalistic...its great if we win the 6 Nations or whatever but that's about as far as it goes.

What does strike me as completely irrational is the Irish practice of choosing a soccer team from some city in England which you have never been to, and have no connection with, and deciding that you will now support that team, and travel over there, buy the shirts etc. while your local soccer/rugby/GAA club struggles to keep the grass cut. I know one guy who supports Hull City, because he lived there for years, and I can respect that, especially given that they are almost entirely devoid of glamour. But the rest?

And don't get me started on the fecking Glasgow Celtic supporters...that's the whole lot (football/nationalism/religion) rolled into one distasteful bundle.

[chemicals]

Well at least Man utd ,liverpool, Arsenal etc -can be actually proven to exist -so that's one up on God for starters