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Let’s Go Out There And Slay ‘Em

History beckons for the Irish players at Euro 2012. Better still, we seem to be going there in pretty good shape. Let the games commence!

Niall Stokes, 31 May 2012

So this is a good team, which has the potential to flower just at the right time – and to do very well indeed. Or of course, the wheels might just come off the wagon. But we won’t even think about that – until just before the kick-off in the opening match against Croatia.

And if we do well, one suspects that sport will again reveal its value to this country, in terms of both raising national morale – and winning friends and potential tourists from all over Europe. It is a thought worth bearing in mind, following the somewhat spurious controversy over Enda Kenny’s promise to Katie Taylor that he’d organise a grant to install proper dressing-rooms in Bray boxing club, where the world champion and Olympic gold medal hopeful trains.

The truth is that local authorities have on occasion squandered money in the most ludicrous fashion, for example putting ‘ramps’ on roads all over the place, when that money would have been so much better spent on building proper dressing-rooms in parks where young children play sports of one kind or another through rain, hail and sleet in the winter.

The failure to provide basic facilities at grass-roots sporting level has been shameful. If the commitment made by the Taoiseach to Katie Taylor can be the springboard to a proper prioritisation of investment in the kind of simple structures that make all the difference, for example enabling young players to get dressed in comfort rather than huddled underneath the trees in the rain – then it will be a good thing.

The Irish football team are about to embark on an adventure, which has the potential to enthrall and inspire the nation in the most extraordinary way. But most of the players went through indignities as kids that never should have been allowed. They succeeded in spite of official neglect. No matter how they fare, in the long run we owe it to them – and to their brilliant achievements as professional sportsmen – to do better for the new generation setting out now with the ambition of conquering the world in fifteen or twenty years time.



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