That Football Game

Donegal Democrat

Its hard watching them win. Every true Irishman has something in his genetic makeup that rebels against the thought. Anyone but them. Anyone but those arrogant bastards.

Its not that we actively hate them. Most of us would be hard pressed to even dislike them. Truth be told, we quite like them. They are after all our neighbours, and in recent years, we’ve even seen them buying houses in the Irish countryside, living among us.

And lets face it, even before they started moving here, most of us lived among them. We’ve all worked there at some point in our lives, though of course the entire time we dreamed of the day when we’d have enough money saved to move back home.

Some of us returned with husbands and wives we found there, a few even married among them and settled there. Your heart goes out to them, knowing their kids will grow up with that accent.

So its not that we dislike them. Most of them are the salt of the Earth, as decent a collection of human beings as you could hope to find anywhere on the planet. How can you dislike an ordinary fan, whose only sin is shouting for his team. Sure don’t we do the same ourselves?

But its the arrogance that gets you. Every team goes through good patches and bad, but the rest of us don’t have that same imperial swagger. Something about it just sticks in the craw. I mean there they are, still three tough games away from taking the cup home, and already they’re talking like they’re unstoppable, when lets face it, they’re far from the best team in the competition.

So yes, it was hard watching Dublin beat Laois on Sunday.

[If you’re wondering what the joke is, England beat Ecuador 1:0 on the same day Dublin played Laois.]