They must breed them in the basement or something
Shane made a play for the TFK audience last weekend
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november 10 2018, 12:01am, the times
Rugby can’t field the ‘Team of Us’ if only the elite play
shane coleman
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I’ve a confession to make. It’s one I’m hesitant about revealing because it probably doesn’t show me in a particularly good light. But here goes: every time I see or hear the “Team of Us” advertisements for the Irish rugby team, I can’t help but feel irritation. I can’t stop myself jibbing at the merit of that claim. My inner voice cries out: “Are they really the ‘Team of Us’?”
It’s an odd one because, unlike some of my friends, I’ve been always been a fan of the Irish rugby team. My first international game was a rugby one — Ireland v Scotland, I think in 1976 — years before I ever attended a football international. I was there on the old north terrace with my late father when Michael Kiernan knocked over that drop goal to clinch the Triple Crown and the Championship in 1985 and can still feel the emotion of that moment.
I walked out of Landsdown Road as dejected as I’ve ever felt when Michael Lynagh scored that late decisive try in the World Cup quarter final in 1991. And after years of near misses, I roared so loudly when Ireland finally clinched a Grand Slam on that extraordinary day in Cardiff in 2009 that I made my young son cry with fright.
I’ll be cheering on the Irish team against Argentina today and will never not do so. But if I’m being totally honest when I do go to watch, I don’t feel as fully invested as I do when watching the Irish football team or an All-Ireland final in Croke Park. The constant stream of patrons to the bar during the game doesn’t help, but perhaps, deep down I feel it’s just not my tribe.
Which brings me back to the “Team of Us” adverts. At a detached, unemotional level I admire the cleverness of the concept. It’s a damn fine campaign that clearly resonates with a lot of people. Just not with me. Because my question is this — in reality, how “us” actually is the “Team of Us”?
I grew up playing football against Stephen Staunton, who went on to play for Liverpool and Ireland. I can even boast that I once made him cry on the pitch — long story short, a late winning goal in an U12 semi-final against his all-conquering team. In my local GAA club, we were proud that the Geraldines had a representative on every All-Ireland winning Louth team, including the most recent one in 1957.
Yet living near Dundalk I didn’t have the remotest connection with anyone who played rugby at the top level. And the reality is that unless you were from the southside of Dublin, went to a private school, or were from Limerick or Cork, you probably weren’t ever going to.
Is it that different today?
Rugby has done an amazing job in marketing itself. That the sport could get 50,000 people last month to turn up for an early-season Pro14 game between Leinster and Munster demonstrates the extraordinary draw that it has become. Those of us who attend weekly League of Ireland games in battered stadiums with a couple of thousand other die-hards can only look on in envy.
It’s not just the domestic league. Three years ago, a month before Ireland beat Germany in the Euro qualifiers, a mere 20,000 people turned up to watch Ireland edge past Georgia in a crucial match. The rugby team would get double that for a friendly — sorry “test match” — against Fiji. So hats off to the IRFU. Rugby now has a cachet that football or the GAA struggles to match.
But that doesn’t make the squad the “Team of Us”. Back in 2007 when Croke Park was opened up to rugby and soccer, I was lucky enough to attend the first internationals in both codes at the stadium. For the rugby game against France, I walked down a deserted Royal Canal from Phibsboro, where I live. Nobody from my neck of the woods was going. A couple of weeks later I made the same journey for the first soccer international, along with hundreds of other fans coming from the west of the city.
That surely speaks volumes. The Irish soccer team that day, managed by a Dundalk man, featured players drawn from Donegal, Waterford, Drogheda, Wicklow, Wexford, Tallaght, a corporation estate in Limerick, as well as working-class areas of London and Glasgow.
Rugby? Well it has made enormous strides in spreading the game to towns and villages across Ireland at underage level, but professionalism has damaged the once thriving junior rugby scene in towns across the country. It seems you’re either part of the elite squads or you’re playing what they now call “social rugby”. For all that some sports journalists have tried to claim it is now the people’s game, there are serious barriers to people actually playing it.
Nor is there any getting away from the reality that if, like the vast majority of people in Ireland, you don’t attend a small number of private schools, your chances of wearing the green jersey — or even the blue of Leinster — are dramatically reduced.
And, until that changes, the “Team of Us” tag rings somewhat hollow.
Shane Coleman presents Newstalk Breakfast, weekdays at 7am
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Very hard not to agree with all of that
Boro lads are all like that to be fair.
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Jesus he can’t even write an opinion piece without starting off by wishy washing his opinion
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This argument will be known from now on as “the coleman”
Lot of lads here taking their lead from shane
The Coleman is the height of snowflakery
He might as well start-the piece “ I do not want to offend anyone but…”
Is that the same as ‘Well I’m no ha racist Joe, but…’
David McCullough doing great apologising for Dev on Yates there now.
Ah it’s alright, she’s a Doctor.
That is utterly awful . Gas that the state paid a fortune to train that bird to be a doctor and she discovers a career roaring at fatties on Tv can lead to a career talking utter tosh on day time radio .
I hope her father sends Dinny one of those letters he’s overly fond of sending himself
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These cunts use to bother a shop assistant or a bank teller with their inane nonsense years ago. I suppose social media is that echo chamber for them now.
I’d say that cunt is on a permanent period
Or posts here!
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hounded out and destroyed by the feminazis
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