WHEN the Ireland squad
for Euro 2012 was officially announced and his name was read out by
Giovanni Trapattoni, James McClean voiced his pride through his
Twitter account. He told his 50-odd-thousand “followers” that he
was honoured to be chosen to represent his country at a major
international tournament. He was not alone: Leicester defender Sean
St. Ledger, Simon Cox and Shay Given also expressed how happy and
proud they were to be among the 23 boarding the plane to Poland for
the tournament.
However, only McClean received death threats.
That's interesting. Or
is it? Let us not forget that McClean is not the first football
player from Northern Ireland to have threats issued against his life.
There is an odd tendency towards sweeping it under the carpet, but it
is undeniable that Neil Lennon, Niall McGinn and Paddy McCourt each have been the recipient of grisly death-threats.
In the past, perhaps
unfairly, these incidents have brought the collective reputation of
Northern Ireland football fans into disrepute – but the reputation
of Northern Ireland fans was shrouded in controversy by extremists
long before Neil Lennon, Niall McGinn and Paddy McCourt and it's
those honest, reasonable fans in the middle that suffer for it.
Nevertheless the
gruesome underbelly simply needs to be exposed and rebuked as
robustly as possible.
It is immaterial whether the messages spewing
forth hatred came from a 16 year old or a 60 year old, the sentiment
remains the same and it must be treated seriously, otherwise more
will follow suit. Likewise, the quantity of threats is irrelevant. I
was shocked to hear some recklessly claiming that the public reaction
exaggerates the threats, by pointing out that there were “only” a
small number directed at the Derry footballer. Only a
few, that's right – no; one threat is one too many.
The other outrageous
suggestion that was proffered was that the 23-year old athlete
brought such threats upon himself by taunting Northern Ireland fans.
Comparatively however, McClean's tweets, if ill-advised, are quite
tame. Yesterday his message of pride was no different to that of
other Ireland squad members, yet McClean was faced with a mountain of
negative reactions. It's because he is a Derry man playing for the
Republic of Ireland instead of Northern Ireland.
A potent cocktail of
ignorant, sectarian cretins with a football-gang ethos believing that
it is absolutely fine and acceptable to insult, abuse and intimidate
individuals whose otherwise innocuous actions (or even state of being) grate
with them, is what is at play here.
McClean was instantly
metamorphosed into a hate-figure among extremists in the Northern
Ireland support when he opted to declare for the Football Association
of Ireland. Branding him a “Judas”, they howled and growled at
almost anything McClean said or tweeted. Outrage ensued when McClean
corrected BBC sports presenter Colin Murray for describing him as
“Northern Irish”, rather than “Irish”.
Yet more followed when
he expressed his joy at receiving his first cap for Ireland in
February 2012. Aggressively telling McClean what nationality he was
and what country was in fact “his”, they scoffed at the notion of
the player being proud of his identity – a legitimate identity
which simply diverged from their own.
Will this madness
continue? More importantly, will it be allowed to?
