This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.
Michael Commane
I’m no football follower. Yes, I watch the big games in Croke Park and in the Aviva. I much prefer to call it Lansdowne Road but I don’t think that’s allowed these days.
On the Saturday of the Ireland England game in Dublin I made it my business to get home on time to watch it on television. I was late for the analysis and interviews before the game, something I like watching.
I turned on the television just as President Michael D Higgins was shaking hands with the two teams. It seemed as if he were having a friendly and pleasant chat with each of the players and with some of the young people too. It was a lovely cordial moment.
The moment the English anthem began the crowd booed from beginning to end. It was awful, outrageous. I could not believe my ears. It was followed by the playing of the Irish anthem, which received the respect it deserved.
The RTÉ commentators resumed their work. I was again dumbfounded. Not a word from them about what had happened. At least that’s my memory of it.
Maybe I missed it but I don’t think so. That they did not criticise what had happened was almost worse than the booing itself. I didn’t see the subsequent panel discussion. Did they comment on it?
The following day I was chatting with a young man, who had just done his Leaving Cert. He had been at the game and when I expressed my horror at what had happened he vehemently disagreed with me and thought it was only right and proper that they should have booed. I was speechless.
His argument was that England had terrorised us for 800 years and all we were now doing was booing at their football team. If my memory serves me, he said they deserved every bit of it.
When I asked him if the Poles should boo at the German anthem when their team plays Germany he said that was different and it didn’t last 800 years.
I’m told it’s almost custom and practice for all sorts of chanting at football games, especially at English soccer games. But surely that doesn’t make it right or correct.
People might say it’s better to boo on the playing-field than to kill and maim on the battlefield.
Does this mean there is some sort of seminal hatred deep inside all of us? How long does it last before old wounds and grievances are healed and forgotten.
And that thought made me move on to think about the madness, nastiness and badness that appears on social media every day and night. Maybe after all, that is no blip, not just a few cranks letting off steam.
If that be the case it is extremely worrying.
The day after the Ireland England game there was an inspiring reading in the liturgy from St Mark’s Gospel talking about the importance of listening to the other person.
If only we had the ingenuity and wisdom to listen to the other person we might live in a better world. Booing of its nature excludes listening.
4 comments:
the last sentence tells you'r own story.
Your comments, Michael, about the widespread booing of the National Anthem of England while it was being played in the minutes leading up to the soccer international you mention brought back to me aspects of and quotations from a very fine article, in my opinion, by psychoanalyst Josh Cohen, published in THE NEW REVIEW that comes with The Observer dated 15 September 2024. Under the title The Age of Rage, the article focuses on a number of aspects of the theme, including the reality and influence of some social media, which, in the author’s view, ‘cultivate[s] a mode of anger that is both impersonal and self-important, a style of sloganising that is grindingly repetitive, each post an echo of the last’.
To some extent (and again this is a personal opinion and not yet based either on any consultation with a group of those who booed on that occasion or on further discussion with sociologists of the possible background to such behaviour), the person engaged in such action (especially when tens of thousands of others seem to be similarly engaged) will not feel the need to come up with any ‘rational’ explanation or any reason that might be judged ‘satisfactory’ by others for what he/she has been doing: rather, it need only be ‘grindingly repetitive’, as in Cohen’s quotation above, indicating (as you quoted) that English behaviour in Ireland ‘for 800 years’ has been unwelcome. Only the figure indicating the duration of this grudge will change in the twenty-second century.
I am glad you also brought to your readers’ notice the silence (as you remember) of the broadcasting commentators on that same occasion. While it may be difficult to come up with a brief but satisfactory reaction, and ‘live’ transmission of a match that’s about to begin makes the preparation of a remark needing much more advance work rather than a comment ‘on the spot’, to remain silent on the issue does not seem to me either a laudable decision.
It is true, however, that on a number of occasions in recent years some vocal members of the Catholic Church have believed themselves justified in accusing some of the ‘media’ of ‘standing in judgement’ on others or on groups within society. How, then, do you win, as a broadcaster? Your own comment seems, Michael, to be calling the media you mention to account for not expressing judgement on the behaviour of the people whose actions annoyed you and so many others.
As I read Cohen’s fine article again and reflect on it, I may have a further comment to offer, but that’s it for the moment.
Thank you Thomas for your thought-provoking comment. And thank you too to the anonymous comment writer but it’s a pity it is anonymous. The lack of care, which with it was written, is worth noting. There was a similar style comment some days earlier, but because of its anger and violence it was decided not to publish it. It too was anonymous.
Interesting that in response to one comment you use the phrase “I may have a further comment to offer” and in another “it was decided not to publish it”. Why not simply say “I decided not to publish it”?
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