[Football] England Vs Ireland

[Guinness Boy]

well hopefully Southgate will be gone by then.

You have to admit that watching England is painful at times and the whole set up has a negative feel for it from the top down in the FA.

The Denmark game was painful and Southgate wouldn't be my top choice of coach TBH but then I didn't stop supporting Brighton when Hyypia was coach or during the negative vibe of the Archer reign. Neither thing with England is anywhere near as bad as those two things.

I'll just keep supporting my national team. I still like watching England games and have "go to more" on my list, post covid, as I kept putting them off before.

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

You have to admit that watching England is painful at times and the whole set up has a negative feel for it from the top down in the FA.

You should try watching Ireland - and if you think the FA is bad you haven't seen the FAI in action

 

[Robinjakarta]

Frank O'Farrell - played for West Ham and Preston from the late 1940s - early 1960s. Became manager of Man Utd after Matt Busby following a successful stint with Leicester - there is a fascinating documentary about O'Farrell's time as Man Utd manager.

If anyone is interested - this is the Frank O'Farrell documentary

A really informative and interesting post, so thanks JRG. Anyone certainly is interested in this cracking documentary with following Busby later somewhat mirrored by similar with Ferguson. I'm not a Man Utd fan at all, but some of this is reflected, almost word for word in some areas by Eamon Dunphy's book A Strange Kind of Glory - a very readable account of Man Utd history from pre-Busby to post-Docherty. Recommended reading for those interested.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Giles is open about being an enforcer - he doesn't glorify it but outlined why he ended up playing in that way. In the early 1960s he was playing for Man Utd against Birmingham when Birmingham's enforcer, Johnny Watts, scissor-tackled him, destroying the ligaments in his ankle and breaking a bone in his leg. The tackle nearly ended Giles' career. After being out for months and subsequently transferring to Leeds (Busby said it was the biggest mistake he ever made) Giles was the victim of a similar tackle from Eddie McCreadie of Chelsea - from then on Giles was going to get his tackle in first and you knew if you went near him, he would destroy you. As a small, gifted passer of the ball, Giles had to be as tough as nails to survive. These days Giles is utterly condemning of anyone who tries to hurt another player - and Roy Keane was particularly singled out for his tackle on Haaland.


Geldof is a poser - a guy from a privileged background who went to the most expensive private school in Ireland - he knows nothing about the RC hierarchy and life under the hierarchy and the state and his musings are nothing more than the pangs of a liberal conscience. Read Paul McGrath's 'Back from the Brink' to get a real sense of what life was like.

I disagree with your assessment of the attitude of Irish people towards the RC hierarchy and the state. I come from a poor working class background in a small rural town in Ireland and grew up and went to school in the 1960s and 1970s. The primary school was run by the Nuns and the secondary school by the Christian Brothers - both of them sadistic ********. Nobody who was in school with me had any reverence for the RC hierarchy or the state. When these people weren't sadists they were paedophiles and we knew who were the sadists and who were the paedophiles. In primary school we had to rote learn the RC 'catechism' - the parish priest would come into the school to quiz us - when we got a question wrong the Nun would batter us (and we would get battered again later for embarrassing the Nun) - we eventually realised as 7 year-old kids, that they would keep asking us questions until we got one wrong - so we stopped trying to learn and just took the beatings. In secondary school we kept away from the paedophiles and displayed defiance to the sadists. The paedophiles could suss out the vulnerable kids - if you had an older sibling (in my case a cousin) then you were somewhat protected from the paedophiles - the 17/18 year olds would gang together and even beat up the paedophile priest/brother if he went near a sibling. Those without older family members in the school and who were vulnerable were the ones who were targeted. With the sadists we just stood up to them and defiantly dared them to hit us. I was a quiet kid, didn't cause any trouble in school but got hit at least once a day, every day. I was luck with my group of friends - there were four of us but one of the lads was 6ft 4in when he was 14 and built like a tank. He was a gentle giant but the Brothers were afraid of him so they tended to keep away from us. When they wanted to hit him they would stand on a desk to get above him so they could get a good swing with whatever weapon they were using. He never hit back but would look at them and they would back off. By the time we were finishing school some of the students had enough. Eight kids from my year were expelled in our final year for attacking different Brothers. I learned nothing in school - and was always told I would be a waster and never amount to anything (I wasn't the only one - the Brothers were mostly from privileged backgrounds and had contempt for working class kids). I often ducked out of school in my last two years - I loved reading and would usually end up in the local library - the librarian would call the cops and they would threaten my father for not making me go to school. My father knew that he couldn't make me go to school and didn't want me to be part of that environment anyway. I was self-taught for all my school exams and ultimately ended up with a PhD, a string of academic publications and I work as a teacher.

There was little or no reverence for the state of the RC hierarchy among anyone I knew growing up. The RC hierarchy, the cops, the judiciary and the state worked hand-in-hand in maintaining hegemonic control. If a kid made a complaint about a paedophile priest or Christian Brother, the family would be ridiculed and, more often than not, the kid would be dumped into an industrial school / reformatory - run by the same Christian Brothers. It suited the state to allow the RC hierarchy to have control over these institutions and the education system (and the health system) as it absolved the state from responsibility, ensured that the RC hierarchy had a vested interest in maintaining the political establishment and made it more difficult for ordinary people to complain about these institutions and the people who ran them. I remember one lay teacher in a convent primary school (not the school I attended) who was a known paedophile. As kids one of our pastimes was to rob apples from apple trees in peoples back gardens. Our parents knew what we were doing - but we were told that whichever garden we went into we were not to go into that particular garden of the house of this paedophile. Nobody dared to complain about what was happening in this RC run convent school - not out of reverence but out of fear. I found out later of one mother who made a complaint about this teacher molesting her daughter - she was arrested by the cops, and a local judge ordered her incarceration in a psychiatric institution (where she spent the rest of her life). What happened the teacher? - they made him principal of the school and gave him a nice quiet office where he spent another 40 years abusing children. It wasn't until he was long retired that he was charged with molesting dozens of children but the reality was that his victims could well have run into the hundreds - he pleaded not guilty and was given a six year sentence when he was convicted - the judge was lenient because he was in his 80's by the time he was brought to court. People were terrified of raising complaints - you would be harassed by the cops, you could be institutionalised by the judiciary, their kids were brutalised by the sadists in the schools - if you tried to pull your kids out of the school the cops would bring parents to court, the priests would refuse admission to the child to a different school. Some families moved but the abuse was widespread and you didn't know if you were sending your vulnerable kid into another dangerous situation. There were more than a few families who emigrated to Britain, not because of poverty and unemployment, but to keep their kids safe - but that is a difficult thing to do if you don't have any money, have vulnerable elderly parents/grandparents etc.

The sadistic beating of children in school was widespread - it was in part a mechanism for control, to brutalise people that you want to keep in line. The paedophelia was not as widespread - but to demonstrate that it was a serious problem - more than 1,300 members of the religious orders in Ireland were reported as paedophiles since 1975 (and you can be sure that there were a lot more that weren't reported for a variety of reasons). I was fortunate that I was never subjected to such abuse - but I know of at least 3 paedophiles who were in schools I attended, and 2 more outside of the school environment. I also know at least half a dozen people who were victims of abuse - all of whom ended up as alcoholics, with drug addiction, one committed suicide and two ended up in prison - and there are probably other people that I knew who were victims and nobody has ever been aware of. So the lack of criticism among some Irish people is not out of reverence to the RC hierarchy or out of loyalty to the Irish state - it was out of fear. Sometimes people who emigrate look back at their home country through rose-tinted glasses. Fortunately that is no longer the case - you will find very few people now who have nothing but distain for the religious orders (who continue to hide paedophiles and to hide their financial resources to avoid civil suits against them) or for the Irish state. The Irish state continues to protect the RC hierarchy - indemnifying them against civil lawsuits - continuing to allow them control 98% of the schools in the country. Fortunately, most (though not all) of the hospitals either have much reduced or removed religious control - although many private hospitals in Ireland are still under religious control - we don't have an NHS. The biggest owner of private hospitals in the Irish state is the Bon Secour Order of nuns - the same order responsible for dumping the dead bodies of more than 800 babies into a septic tank at a Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway and sold more than 1,000 babies from the same Home between 1925-1961 in private adoptions after the babies were forcibly removed from their mothers.

Despite what Irish nationalists may attempt to portray - post-independent Ireland was an ultra-reactionary, religious state, dominated by the ultra-conservative business class and the RC hierarchy, with a dark underbelly that victimised children and vilified those who dared to raise their heads above the parapet - fortunately, to paraphrase WB Yeats, that Ireland 'is dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave'.

Thanks for sharing that. Absolutely horrendous. I still remember being slapped in the face by a French teacher when I was 8. That was the sum total of my mistreatment in the Emglish school system in the 60s and 70s. There by the grace of provenance go I.

 

[Medwayseagull]

Thanks for sharing that. Absolutely horrendous. I still remember being slapped in the face by a French teacher when I was 8. That was the sum total of my mistreatment in the Emglish school system in the 60s and 70s. There by the grace of provenance go I.

The slap was probably just a relection of cultural differences. If it had been the English teacher it would have been an uppercut.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

The slap was probably just a relection of cultural differences. If it had been the English teacher it would have been an uppercut.

I got three across the face and took it, stunned. A week later a boy got ten. He walked out of the class and the school. An hour later he'd returned with his mum and the teacher was escorted off the premises, never to be seen again.

She was Bolivian, apparently. Madame Levy. Some old St Nicks Portslade juniors circa 67-69 may recall her.

Some years late the only O level I failed was French. Fancy that.

 

[Badger Boy]

Robbie Keane is a spoofer - a money-chaser who prioritised his image over his talent and his style over substance. Two-thirds of the goals he scored for Ireland were against the 'minnows' - 5 against Gibraltar - 5 against the Faroe Islands - 3 against San Marino - 4 against Georgia - and more against the likes of Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Estonia, North Macedonia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Andorra, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Oman etc. In 50 games against the 'big' countries he managed all of 8 goals. He did similar things against club sides. He has a bad reputation among the grassroots of Irish football - when the grassroots were being deprived of much needed funds during the recent financial scandal in the FAI - Keane threatened to sue the FAI and walked away with a handshake of €250,000 after Kenny replaced Mick McCarthy.

Now he is trying to pretend that he will be a manager - he doesn't have the brains for it. He'll end up as a pundit and people will see how much of a spoofer he is.

I respect your opinion, but I couldn't disagree more. He might have been a bully of the lesser teams but most players have better statistics against the dross than against the cream. He wasn't going to win anything with Ireland, no disrespect, as he wouldn't with England either. At club level he had a very good career, I don't think he deserves to be called a "spoofer".

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

I respect your opinion, but I couldn't disagree more. He might have been a bully of the lesser teams but most players have better statistics against the dross than against the cream. He wasn't going to win anything with Ireland, no disrespect, as he wouldn't with England either. At club level he had a very good career, I don't think he deserves to be called a "spoofer".

I am not arguing that Robbie Keane wasn't a good striker - however, looking back across the range of strikers that have played for Ireland, I would have no problem picking Frank Stapleton, Noel Cantwell, Don Givens, John Aldridge and Shane Long ahead of him - and even Kevin Doyle and Michael Robinson. All of them were much better team players and all of them never lifted their foot off the pedal in games. There were many games, particularly against the bigger nations where Robbie Keane just went missing.

As for winning something - Ireland could potentially have got to the final of the 2002 World Cup - aside from the Saipan debacle and managing to send home your best player - Ireland should have beaten Spain in the last 16. McCarthy, instead of going to the win, played for penalties in extra time, not realising that Spain only had ten men on the pitch and that one of those was unable to run and basically stood in the same spot for 30 minutes. Ireland should have won that game - they would then have had a quarter-final against a beatable South Korea and a semi- against Germany that they proved more than a match for in the group stages. McCarthy (and the FAI) f*cked-up the entire tournament when they had a team capable of going much deeper into the competition than they did (and Robbie Keane was pretty poor throughout the tournament).

As for Keane having a very good club career - for a player who played in a very good Leeds team, for Spurs, Liverpool and Inter Milan - the sum total of his medal haul (before he went to America) is a League Cup medal in 2008.He flattered to deceive..

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

The slap was probably just a relection of cultural differences. If it had been the English teacher it would have been an uppercut.

We had a few that delivered an uppercut - punching students was common. The issued weapon was a leather strap about 2ft long, 2in wide and about 1/2 thick - but most teachers had their own weapon of choice. Getting hit across the face with the tube from a bunsen burner, the leg of a chair, back of the knuckles with a metal ruler, the pipe from a gas cylinder used as a whip - but the most common was getting punched and kicked.

 

[Weststander]

Dier by nature.

Belgium lead.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Giles is open about being an enforcer - he doesn't glorify it but outlined why he ended up playing in that way. In the early 1960s he was playing for Man Utd against Birmingham when Birmingham's enforcer, Johnny Watts, scissor-tackled him, destroying the ligaments in his ankle and breaking a bone in his leg. The tackle nearly ended Giles' career. After being out for months and subsequently transferring to Leeds (Busby said it was the biggest mistake he ever made) Giles was the victim of a similar tackle from Eddie McCreadie of Chelsea - from then on Giles was going to get his tackle in first and you knew if you went near him, he would destroy you. As a small, gifted passer of the ball, Giles had to be as tough as nails to survive. These days Giles is utterly condemning of anyone who tries to hurt another player - and Roy Keane was particularly singled out for his tackle on Haaland.


Geldof is a poser - a guy from a privileged background who went to the most expensive private school in Ireland - he knows nothing about the RC hierarchy and life under the hierarchy and the state and his musings are nothing more than the pangs of a liberal conscience. Read Paul McGrath's 'Back from the Brink' to get a real sense of what life was like.

I disagree with your assessment of the attitude of Irish people towards the RC hierarchy and the state. I come from a poor working class background in a small rural town in Ireland and grew up and went to school in the 1960s and 1970s. The primary school was run by the Nuns and the secondary school by the Christian Brothers - both of them sadistic ********. Nobody who was in school with me had any reverence for the RC hierarchy or the state. When these people weren't sadists they were paedophiles and we knew who were the sadists and who were the paedophiles. In primary school we had to rote learn the RC 'catechism' - the parish priest would come into the school to quiz us - when we got a question wrong the Nun would batter us (and we would get battered again later for embarrassing the Nun) - we eventually realised as 7 year-old kids, that they would keep asking us questions until we got one wrong - so we stopped trying to learn and just took the beatings. In secondary school we kept away from the paedophiles and displayed defiance to the sadists. The paedophiles could suss out the vulnerable kids - if you had an older sibling (in my case a cousin) then you were somewhat protected from the paedophiles - the 17/18 year olds would gang together and even beat up the paedophile priest/brother if he went near a sibling. Those without older family members in the school and who were vulnerable were the ones who were targeted. With the sadists we just stood up to them and defiantly dared them to hit us. I was a quiet kid, didn't cause any trouble in school but got hit at least once a day, every day. I was luck with my group of friends - there were four of us but one of the lads was 6ft 4in when he was 14 and built like a tank. He was a gentle giant but the Brothers were afraid of him so they tended to keep away from us. When they wanted to hit him they would stand on a desk to get above him so they could get a good swing with whatever weapon they were using. He never hit back but would look at them and they would back off. By the time we were finishing school some of the students had enough. Eight kids from my year were expelled in our final year for attacking different Brothers. I learned nothing in school - and was always told I would be a waster and never amount to anything (I wasn't the only one - the Brothers were mostly from privileged backgrounds and had contempt for working class kids). I often ducked out of school in my last two years - I loved reading and would usually end up in the local library - the librarian would call the cops and they would threaten my father for not making me go to school. My father knew that he couldn't make me go to school and didn't want me to be part of that environment anyway. I was self-taught for all my school exams and ultimately ended up with a PhD, a string of academic publications and I work as a teacher.

There was little or no reverence for the state of the RC hierarchy among anyone I knew growing up. The RC hierarchy, the cops, the judiciary and the state worked hand-in-hand in maintaining hegemonic control. If a kid made a complaint about a paedophile priest or Christian Brother, the family would be ridiculed and, more often than not, the kid would be dumped into an industrial school / reformatory - run by the same Christian Brothers. It suited the state to allow the RC hierarchy to have control over these institutions and the education system (and the health system) as it absolved the state from responsibility, ensured that the RC hierarchy had a vested interest in maintaining the political establishment and made it more difficult for ordinary people to complain about these institutions and the people who ran them. I remember one lay teacher in a convent primary school (not the school I attended) who was a known paedophile. As kids one of our pastimes was to rob apples from apple trees in peoples back gardens. Our parents knew what we were doing - but we were told that whichever garden we went into we were not to go into that particular garden of the house of this paedophile. Nobody dared to complain about what was happening in this RC run convent school - not out of reverence but out of fear. I found out later of one mother who made a complaint about this teacher molesting her daughter - she was arrested by the cops, and a local judge ordered her incarceration in a psychiatric institution (where she spent the rest of her life). What happened the teacher? - they made him principal of the school and gave him a nice quiet office where he spent another 40 years abusing children. It wasn't until he was long retired that he was charged with molesting dozens of children but the reality was that his victims could well have run into the hundreds - he pleaded not guilty and was given a six year sentence when he was convicted - the judge was lenient because he was in his 80's by the time he was brought to court. People were terrified of raising complaints - you would be harassed by the cops, you could be institutionalised by the judiciary, their kids were brutalised by the sadists in the schools - if you tried to pull your kids out of the school the cops would bring parents to court, the priests would refuse admission to the child to a different school. Some families moved but the abuse was widespread and you didn't know if you were sending your vulnerable kid into another dangerous situation. There were more than a few families who emigrated to Britain, not because of poverty and unemployment, but to keep their kids safe - but that is a difficult thing to do if you don't have any money, have vulnerable elderly parents/grandparents etc.

The sadistic beating of children in school was widespread - it was in part a mechanism for control, to brutalise people that you want to keep in line. The paedophelia was not as widespread - but to demonstrate that it was a serious problem - more than 1,300 members of the religious orders in Ireland were reported as paedophiles since 1975 (and you can be sure that there were a lot more that weren't reported for a variety of reasons). I was fortunate that I was never subjected to such abuse - but I know of at least 3 paedophiles who were in schools I attended, and 2 more outside of the school environment. I also know at least half a dozen people who were victims of abuse - all of whom ended up as alcoholics, with drug addiction, one committed suicide and two ended up in prison - and there are probably other people that I knew who were victims and nobody has ever been aware of. So the lack of criticism among some Irish people is not out of reverence to the RC hierarchy or out of loyalty to the Irish state - it was out of fear. Sometimes people who emigrate look back at their home country through rose-tinted glasses. Fortunately that is no longer the case - you will find very few people now who have nothing but distain for the religious orders (who continue to hide paedophiles and to hide their financial resources to avoid civil suits against them) or for the Irish state. The Irish state continues to protect the RC hierarchy - indemnifying them against civil lawsuits - continuing to allow them control 98% of the schools in the country. Fortunately, most (though not all) of the hospitals either have much reduced or removed religious control - although many private hospitals in Ireland are still under religious control - we don't have an NHS. The biggest owner of private hospitals in the Irish state is the Bon Secour Order of nuns - the same order responsible for dumping the dead bodies of more than 800 babies into a septic tank at a Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway and sold more than 1,000 babies from the same Home between 1925-1961 in private adoptions after the babies were forcibly removed from their mothers.

Despite what Irish nationalists may attempt to portray - post-independent Ireland was an ultra-reactionary, religious state, dominated by the ultra-conservative business class and the RC hierarchy, with a dark underbelly that victimised children and vilified those who dared to raise their heads above the parapet - fortunately, to paraphrase WB Yeats, that Ireland 'is dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave'.

Wow, that is just horrendous. I never knew...

Thanks for posting this, it's quite incredible, and disturbing. How is it that I never knew this before?