OK – hands up if you have always seen James Brokenshire and the British Secretaries of State who preceded him here as honest brokers, referees between the two warring factions in the north of Ireland? You, sir? Ah – you were just scratching your ear. All right. Nobody saw Mr Brokenshire or the others as neutral. And yes indeed, Virginia, that’s why they’re called the British Secretary of State.
There was a time when I’d have felt a jolt of disappointment at James B’s failure to turn up for the Irish national anthem when he attended a Gaelic Football game in Newry last Friday. I used to think it would be good if all and any impediments to opening up the GAA to our unionist neighbours were removed. I even used to believe it would be a good idea to suspend the playing of Amhrán na bhFiann and the flying of the Irish tricolour at games, so that unionists could become part of the fun and spectacle and excitement that nationalists and republicans enjoy. No more.
The change came when I asked Trevor Ringland would removing the Irish national anthem and the Irish tricolour mean that unionists would then be open to playing in and/or attending games. He replied – on air – with a lukewarm “It might help a bit”. In other words, it doesn’t matter what you do, unionists still won’t be interested in GAA games. There’ll always be an excuse not to.
That’s a little saddening and a little disappointing, but there’s no point in beating your head against the white cliffs of Dover. People have a right to decide what games they want to play or attend. So if nationalists/republicans aren’t busting a gut to attend Windsor Park and yell their heads off for Northern Ireland, and unionists simply don’t want any involvement in Gaelic games – fine. It’s no big deal. I’m not much into archery or synchronized swimming myself.
So let’s simply get on with enjoying those games we choose to follow. And let’s hope James Brokenshire learns not to think of the nationalist/republican population as a bunch of buck eejits who are overly concerned over what seat at what game he inserts his slim buttocks.
My own spectator sport of choice would be rugby. I didn’t go to a grammar school, however I had a friend who went to RBAI and played the game. My friend and his father kindly took me to my first game at Ravenhill when I was around 17 and from that I caught the bug and have been a season ticket holder ever since.
Perhaps that’s the way to show the GAA to people who wouldn’t traditionally be exposed to it. Maybe a avid GAA supporter should ask their Unionist/Protestant/whatever friends, colleagues or neighbors if they’d like to attend a game with them.
I agree with you Scott, I very recently got the rugby bug too. I started watching the 6 Nations over the past few years and I’ve been hooked ever since. I started watching the Rugby Champions Cup and was cheering on Ulster but unfortunately our form has been poor and we got knocked out, so Munster and Leinster are getting my support in the Quarter Finals which start after the 6 nations ends. Indeed the Irish teams are formidable in the Champions Cup, I just hope Ulster/Connacht get up to the standard of Munster/Leinster in the future.
Its a shame Irish soccer, in both leagues, cant replicate the success of Irish Rugby. I really do think we’re in with a real chance of winning the 6 nations this year, the final game between Ireland and England in Dublin should be the decider.
What most people don’t realize though, is that many of the Rugby players in the Irish national team use to play Gaelic football and have even applied their GAA skills to Rugby. England coach Eddie Jones has recently got his team to practice some MMA moves, yes I kid you not.
The only way GAA would get more popular with people from the Unionist community (but how do we know if they’re Unionists or not??) is if they go with Nationalist friends to a GAA game or if more education of the GAA is promoted.
Great stuff jude
We need only be proud of a culture and traditions. And what a very proud culture we have.
And then he insults the people off Derry and all other victims of British terror with his remarks about British solderer’s and the on-going attempts to have them held to account for their action’s here in the north
Well I do care where he parks his very British backside , it was a premeditated and calculated insult to half the population in the 6 , to the GAA and to the Irish Nation as a whole to remain in the control room whilst Amhrán na bhFiann was being played before the Dr McKenna match on Saturday. Every time he opens his pompous ,but ill-informed mouth it results in a very biased diatribe. ….his ramblings on the Historical Enquiries being one of many. By such actions he gives succour and solace to the very basest morons in Unionism .
I agree with you, but I blame the GAA for facilitating his wait in the control room – they should have invited him to his seat in time for the national anthem, and had he refused, they should have told him his behaviour was insulting and unacceptable.
Then they were within their rights to ask him to leave!
“it was a premeditated and calculated insult to half the population in the 6 , to the GAA and to the Irish Nation as a whole to remain in the control room whilst Amhrán na bhFiann was being played before the Dr McKenna match on Saturday.”
Or alternatively, and more plausibly, it is a premeditated and calculated insult to half the population in the 6 for the GAA to insist on using the Southern anthem rather than an all-Ireland anthem.
If an all-Ireland sport used the British anthem before its matches across the island, would a Southern Irish minister attending a game in Dublin be expected to observe it? If he didn’t, would he be condemned?
Do you really expect anything different? After all, he is a unionist.
On the ball as per usual, Esteemed Blogmeister, though one needs must don the rags of a mendicant and beg to differ with you on one not at all unimportant point: that of synchronized swimming.
With all the drug-mugged sports being exposed for the shams they are, synchronized swimming remains pure, contoured and alluring. Oh, that side fishtailed posish !
Indeed if anything The Perkin has become such an addict that one is reduced to watching this quiet splashionable sport on telly while keeping an ear out cocked for the knock in the door. The dreaded knock of the Holder of a Urine Sampler. Who probably doubles as a Share-holder of Ryanair.
If would be a veritable venial, bordering even on a mortal synchrynozity itself if anything were to mar the unblemished sport of the true mermaid.
Synchronized swimming is to the Summer Olympics what Curling is to the Winter version: one’s other favourite Olympic sport.Curling for those whose sporting horizons might be sadly underprivileged is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice towards a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles, so it is.
Indeed, if one were a political purist one might have called for it to be blended with hurling, thus giving to the Olympics the hybrid sport of:
-Churling.
But only a chauvinist could propose that on account it would put us Paddies at an unfair advantage, being the original nation of churls that we are. The same argument, of course, applies to the sport of synchronized skimming. The latter was due to be introduced to the forthcoming Empah, oops, CommonWealth Games, but of course, the Wood Chip Chappies and Chappettes have put the kibosh on that one.
(As Kitson, the low intensity linguist might have frankly put it: kibosh is derived from the Leprechaun – caidhp an bháis: the skullcap of death).
The first sentence of your last paragraph, EB, particularly resonated with one.:
-So let’s simply get on with enjoying those sports we choose to follow.
That might be easier said than done north of the Black Sow’s Dyke than it is down here in Southey.
For it recalled the George Hook programme on Newstalk fm on Australia Day last week.
Now the Best one can say about George is that he is far from being the Worst of the Liffeyside meejia, but on sporting matters he is the equivalent of the map-strapped chap who thinks Paddy Fields are part and parcel of Paddyland.
In short, Hookey is a rugger plugger who believes (implicitly) in the immutable sporting doctrine that Ireland is a Tokenshire when it comes to the (gulp) British and Irish Lions. And that’s just for nonstarters.
For Downunder Day he had a few Ozzies in the studio as guests. When the topic turned to sport with all the inevitabillty of a duck-billed platitude Hookey the Host expressed his wonderment on first visiting the Sub-Continent of Sheila for an Irish rugger team tour.
And how A-mazed he was that it got hardly any column inches in the local media. Indeed Hookey sounded distinctly like a less than jolly swagman trying to find even a mention of the test matches. It was akin to finding even a drop of water in a billabong under the shade of a coolibar tree during the dry season.
It turned out to be news for Hookey that Australia turned out to have three big footie games – Ozzie Rules, Rugby League and Rugby Union – of which his beloved rugga was a distant third. And that Bruce in Booragong couldn’t be bothered having a Captain Cook at the games of choice of Lachlan in Looranoo or indeed, for that matter, of Josh in Jingalup. And indeed, vice versa (x 2).
-Not like here in Ireland, where everybody plays rugby !
Eh?
Perhaps Hookey like the MASSIVE (what would they do without the M-word) madge of the monochrome media in the Free Southern Stateen might do well to get out a little more and dwell a spell among the Paddy Stinks and Mickey Mucks.
That might enable them to see just like in The Land of Oz, when the Rugby Union team dons the Downunder shade of green gansey not every cobber suffers from the collywobbles if the opposing side happens to wallop the Wallabies.
Mind you, the charmingly disarming Section 31 atmosphere of starched uniformity in sporting circles or, rather ovoids, south of the Black Sow’s Dyke is such that the following appalling vista is just one on a lengthy lista.
If a bogger who follows the Bogball – call him, say, at random, let’s see, mar shampla, Con Cushen – were to lift his head above the parapet and announce to the generality that he couldn’t give a toss whether the Call Boyos of Ireland suffered a loss, drew or – God forbid – won, swift would be the reprisal of the Boss Class.
To the effect that (gasp) Return to Have your Say Protocols would be enforced , strictly, so they would.
But WHY would we want to attract Unionists to GAA games for any way? I don’t get it. How would we even know if a person is a Unionist or not in the first place? The odds are there are bound to be at least a few Unionists who enjoy the GAA and turn up and watch it, despite the Irish flag and Irish national anthem. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to attract more Protestants to the GAA, but that must not entail giving up things which make the GAA what it is: an IRISH organisation, that promotes Irish sports, culture, language, Nationalism, etc. There must be tolerance of the GAA and its values, not intolerance. Hence more Education about it.
I really do think its going way too far, even to the point of insulting, to suggest we remove the Irish flag or Irish national anthem just so we can appease a few Unionists to attend a GAA game. On principle, its wrong. Even if removing the Irish flag/anthem did bring Unionists flocking to the GAA, it’s still wrong and shouldn’t happen. Aren’t we meant to be promoting tolerance of Irish/British flags and emblems in our society? How is removing Irish emblems, in a society which needs more reflection of Irishness, promoting tolerance? Its doing the opposite, its pandering to the intolerant. If someone cannot stomach seeing an Irish flag then the GAA aren’t for them. At Unionist parades there’s Union flags, that’s to be expected. If you cant handle seeing emblems of Britain then a Unionist parade obviously isn’t for you. Its just common sense.
Brokenarse is far from impartial. We’re actually seeing the British Government trying to help the DUP out of the hole it dug itself into, in reference to RHI. We seen the Tories at the Westminster Election in 2015 refusing to stand in Fermanagh/South Tyrone in order to help Unionists there too. The British Government are very one sided and its becoming more and more obvious. Indeed a Labour MP bashed Brokenarse today for refusing to respect the Irish national anthem at a GAA game and quoted Queen Elizabeth and the Irish President both standing and respecting the Irish and British national anthems when played. The truth is Brokenarse over the last few days has deliberately snubbed the Irish Anthem and deliberately insulted the Bloody Sunday families. Indeed the Irish Government has felt the need to come out and say they would not support any amnesty for British soldiers, given Brokenarses article yesterday.
PS: Arlene turned up at a meeting on Brexit today despite not being First Minister anymore. Michelle O’Neill was there because she was Health Minister but she stated that “Arlene is not First Minister anymore and should not be here”. It shows the DUP has absolutely no respect for the rules of power sharing and really do think they rule the roost. Stormont must stay down if that DUP attitude continues. In fact I think it should stay down permanently. We must look at other options.
PPS: An Taoiseach has recently said that Irish Unity must be talked about in the Brexit meetings. Indeed a Fine Gael TD was on Sunday Politics yesterday and said that “We’re all connected, North and South, that’s just the reality and that’s our future”.
Ryan
“But WHY would we want to attract Unionists to GAA games for any way? I don’t get it. How would we even know if a person is a Unionist or not in the first place?..”
And the rest of the first two paragraphs.
You are quite right, of course.
There is no need for the GAA community to make Gaelic Games more attractive to anyone – there is no requirement, necessity or obligation on their part. If as a Protestant/Unionist I decided to attend a GAA game I would accept the culture and tradition for what it is. If I don’t want go, I don’t go and that shouldn’t concern you in the slightest. Even if I declared I didn’t like Gaelic Games why would you or anyone else be bothered; and if you declared you failed to see the point of Ulster-Scots why would I be bothered (in-fact I don’t get Ulster-Scots myself, and I’m sure those that do don’t give a rip what I think).
This nonsense of changing our own communities to make others (who don’t identity with our communities in the first place) more inclined to attend not only makes everyone’s culture less than it once was and fails to respect and tolerate others.
In short, me, or you or anyone having to apologise for a particular cultural identity is a nonsense and a sham.
Surely we are mature and intelligent enough to respect and disagree, and disagree and respect, and generally wise up and quit slagging each other off?
As you said, “Common sense.”
God Save the Queen.
I agree with you PF.
If the GAA or Unionist parades were told to drop certain flags and certain emblems, all that is going to do is cause a lot of people to be upset and it will do nothing at all to attract Nationalists to Unionists parades and Unionists to the GAA. It will also stoke up the perception of a “Culture War”.
I understand the motives of people who suggest such things, they think it would make the GAA/Unionist parades more cross community, therefore more acceptable and more tolerated. But that’s just in theory, not in practice. These people will end up doing more harm than good.
My logic is: let Unionists celebrate their culture and let Nationalists celebrate theirs. The only issue I have with Unionist parades is near contentious areas, I oppose all contentious parades, both Nationalist and Unionist. But if those issues are sorted then Unionists can parade 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, for all I care. Vice Versa for Nationalists.
were would the jobs for the boys come from,if we all thought like that.
“But WHY would we want to attract Unionists to GAA games for any way? I don’t get it.”
Who is ‘we’?
The GAA might want to attract unionists in order to fulfil its self-declared role as national sport and thus include all the peoples of Ireland and not just nationalists. I’ll turn the question round and ask ‘why would the GAA not want to attract unionists?
“but that must not entail giving up things which make the GAA what it is: an IRISH organisation, that promotes Irish sports, culture, language, Nationalism, etc.”
This doesn’t make sense. Surely as an Irish organisation the GAA should be using all-Ireland symbols rather than only those of part of Ireland?
“On principle, its wrong. Even if removing the Irish flag/anthem did bring Unionists flocking to the GAA, it’s still wrong and shouldn’t happen. Aren’t we meant to be promoting tolerance of Irish/British flags and emblems in our society? How is removing Irish emblems, in a society which needs more reflection of Irishness, promoting tolerance?”
But the GAA would simply be replacing exclusive Irish symbols with inclusive ones. What would be wrong with that?
“Its doing the opposite, its pandering to the intolerant. If someone cannot stomach seeing an Irish flag then the GAA aren’t for them.”
But nobody’s suggesting that Irish flags should be removed, only that inclusive ones are used.
“At Unionist parades there’s Union flags, that’s to be expected. If you cant handle seeing emblems of Britain then a Unionist parade obviously isn’t for you. Its just common sense.”
But ‘unionist parades’ are overtly unionist political events and are taking place in the UK.
“Indeed a Labour MP bashed Brokenarse today for refusing to respect the Irish national anthem at a GAA game and quoted Queen Elizabeth and the Irish President both standing and respecting the Irish and British national anthems when played.”
But those anthems were played in appropriate contexts. The anthem at the GAA match was entirely inappropriate.
Stop talking nonsense MT.
“Stop talking nonsense MT.”
I haven’t begun therefore it’s not possible for me to stop.
A very poor way for you to admit you are unable to address the points raised. You’d have been better simply to ignore them as you usually do when stuck.
Your cheeky back answers are nothing but the worst trolling Iv’e ever seen apart from the GCHQ and FSB internet brigades.
Thanks for that insightful and interesting contribution.
You’re quite wrong about unionist bigotry parades taking place in the United Kingdom MT, have you ever been to Rossnowlagh on the 11th, or is it the 12th? Anyway, one of those hate filled days of kultur. Same thing in parts of caravan and Monaghan.
That should of course read ‘Cavan’
Well, the odd caravan has been seen at a 12th field too.
‘But the GAA would simply be replacing exclusive Irish symbols with inclusive ones. What would be wrong with that?’
(This auld copy and paste thing could catch on, anyway, here goes)
Why MT?