Lifestyle & Sports
20 Oct 22

There’s big problems in football that make singing ‘Celtic Symphony’ pale into insignificance

It has been a fascinating few weeks in football – not least here in Ireland, with the women’s national team claiming their place in the World Cup for the first time. So how come we let a singalong after the match overshadow not just the extraordinary achievement involved, but also far greater social and political issues affecting football across the globe? Emma Starr reflects…

It’s been a huge couple of weeks in football.

Garth Brooks’ mega concert series in Dublin is huge. The National Ploughing Championships. Galway Races. But I’m not sure that even something as legendary as the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival qualifies.

This, however, was genuinely HUGE!

A quick recap for those skippers who have the attention span of a goldfish: the Irish women’s national team made history with their qualification to the world Cup in 2023, by beating Scotland 1-0 in Glasgow; Liverpool found their form with a 7-1 Rangers win and a 1-0 defeat of Manchester City; Barca crashed out of the Champions League and lost the Classico against Real Madrid; and the men’s SSE Airtricity League’s final matches were rescheduled to the same date as the Women’s Cup Final.

Coincidence? I hope I don’t sound paranoid when I say: “I think not.”

Actually, there’s almost been too much to talk about. Gone are the days when you would just train during the week, play a match at the weekend, and go about your business, spending time with your family on Sundays, working 9-5 in a shop, or whatever.

With all the controversies, big happenings, huge turn-outs, and ups-and-downs in the national leagues – in Ireland and across the world – the game of football is turning into so much more than, well, just a game.

PROTEST AGAINST MISTREATMENT

You’d need to have been living in a parallel universe not to know that the Irish women’s national team claimed their place in the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand last week, through a brilliant, late Amber Barrett toe-poke into the bottom right corner of the Scottish net.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 𝐌𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓! 🇮🇪

Amber Barrett sends us to a first ever FIFA Women’s World Cup 💚#SCOIRL | #COYGIG | #WeAreOne

pic.twitter.com/rqROLKZ1o8

— FAIreland ⚽️🇮🇪 (@FAIreland) October 11, 2022

Watching the clearing header from Niamh Fahey, the weight of the pass from Denise O’Sullivan, and, the marvellous combination of strength, pace and composure from Barrett offers a salutary lesson: women’s football in Ireland has come of age. It’s no wonder that the entire country had started to back this team.

In fact, it struck me that the level of Ireland’s play looks better than – dare I say it – the giant currently ranked #1 in women’s soccer. That’s right: my own old stomping ground, the United States of America.

Here’s the rub: as one team has made a dramatic leap forward in terms of organisation, confidence and skill over the past few years, the US Women’s National Team currently looks like a group of teenagers, devoid of tactics, formation and spirit. Talk about a regression! This, incidentally, is a team that boasts some of the best technical players in the world. But they have “issues”: a lack of the management necessary to put the right players in the right positions, to make tactical changes where necessary, and to use the bench effectively. As a result, the USWNT have lost two matches in a row – for the first time since high-waisted mom jeans made a comeback in 2017.

Plus, they lost their second match to the Spanish National Team, drawn from a squad that has been gutted recently, losing FIFTEEN of what had been their core group. Yes, you read that right – 15 players have resigned from the Spanish national team in protest against the mistreatment they received from their manager, Jorge Vilda.

So, with national teams across the world currently in flux, it seems like the ideal time for the Irish to continue growing, learning and developing — right into a Top 10 FIFA ranking, if they get it right.

MEANT NO MALICE

Not that everything is entirely rosy in the garden here – or at least not as far as the media are concerned. The more successful or popular you become – think low-rise skinny jeans and Adidas tear away tracksuit bottoms! — the more the scope for controversy increases. And so it proved with the Irish women’s soccer team.

Thus, their historic and culture-changing qualification for the World Cup was overshadowed by a song that was sung after the match. You know the one.

Written by Brian Warfield of The Wolfe Tones, ‘Celtic Symphony’ – with its “Ooh, ah, up the ‘Ra” refrain – is typically belted out by a certain class of bar-room balladeer in pub sessions around the country. It was hardly a surprise when the argument was made that singing the song was disrespectful to victims of violence in Northern Ireland. But it is, you’d have thought, hardly seismic stuff, all the more so in that it happened spontaneously.

Numerous players have apologised and stated that they meant no malice by singing the song. The Irish team manager, Vera Pauw also acknowledged that it was wrong and apologised on behalf of the team and the FAI. Despite this, some journalists couldn’t help but rub their paws together at even the smallest chance to embarrass female footballers who were celebrating what was a genuinely momentous occasion.

It was all more than a bit unfortunate – though hopefully it is now water under the bridge that can quickly be forgotten about.

Oh, what a feeling!#SCOIRL | #COYGIG | #WeAreOne pic.twitter.com/iP7Dv1AGIo

— FAIreland ⚽️🇮🇪 (@FAIreland) October 11, 2022

WE DESERVE RESPECT

Meanwhile, the wider footballing world is awash with real controversy. The US National Women’s Soccer League has all but imploded over the past year, with numerous coaches, staff members, former managers, board members, and club owners being sacked after allegations of widespread abuse in US women’s football were found to be true.

And then there’s the fact that the FIFA World Cup for men is taking place in Qatar – a place where human rights are abused ’round the clock; and that Newcastle United is now owned by a branch of the regime in Saudi Arabia, which is openly assisting Russia in its brutal invasion of Ukraine and locking up anyone who offers the merest hint of dissent – including sentencing an American citizen, Saad Ibrahim Almadi, to 16 years in prison for tweeting in a mildly critical way about the regime while at home in the United States.

So perhaps we might be better saving our ire for things of far greater significance than a post-match singalong!

Finally, in case you hadn’t noticed, our own Women’s Football League is anything but boring right now. After last weekend’s matches, the top four teams are still all within three points of one another – meaning that a visceral Judgment Day is likely approaching. Top contenders – Wexford, Peas, my own club Shelbourne and Athlone – could all still have everything to play for at 5:20pm on October 30th.

It happened that way last year, with just two contenders – and Shels snatched the title from Peamount’s grasp. This year could see another really compelling final day shoot-out!

Which leads me to a related question: why did the final league matches of the men’s Airtricity League get rescheduled for the same day as the Women’s Cup Final? You’d think – what with women’s footy matches around the UK breaking records in terms of attendance, tickets, publicity, merch sales, and basically everything else surrounding the game – that the powers that be here would see the women’s game as something that should be promoted and celebrated.

Instead, it feels like a deliberate attempt to downgrade the women’s game.

The bottom line is that women’s sports teams are too often told to be grateful for what they have – and to forget about what is fair, right, or might put them on the same level as the men’s teams. We should be happy that we even have a cup final, that we have a pitch, and that we have people coming to the match.

Right?

Wrong.

This condescending narrative hinders the progress of women’s football here in Ireland – as it still does in other parts of the world too. It denies fans the opportunity to see some great football. It deprives investors of a return on their investment. And it is a disencentive to women in general from participating in football.

The Irish women’s football league deserves a special day for its Cup Final. We deserve to play in the best stadium (that could sell out). We deserve to have a national team with full support of the country.

We deserve respect. End of story.