By Stephen McKinley
Never underestimate the genius of the Irish — in the name of soccer, a group of Irish fans want to turn night into day.
This year’s World Cup tournament takes place in Japan and South Korea, a full nine hours ahead of Irish time, meaning that many games will start in Asia at unearthly hours for the Irish fans.
Solution: fans in Ireland want the government to put the clocks forward nine hours, so that fans can watch the games in Japan at a decent hour.
They even have a website, which describes several situations where fans ought to be screaming for the home team, but instead will be stuck in traffic, or fast asleep.
For example: “June 11, 2002 — you’re dancing on a table, beer flying everywhere, kissing some fat sweaty bloke you don’t know after we qualify through to the knock out stages — NO, you’re not — you’re heading back to work.”
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The “Give Us Back Our World Cup” campaign website describes the full horror of trying to support one’s team and holding down a job at the same time. After all, a game that kicks off at 3:30 p.m. in Japan or South Korea, will be on Irish and UK TV at 7:30 a.m., no time to be heading down to the local pub.
Already, more than 5,000 people have signed an Internet petition, and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has received a message calling for the time change.
Protestors last week picketed the Dail in Dublin as well: “Are we serious?” asks the website. “We are deadly serious — let’s just see how much of an Irish soccer fan Bertie really is!”
Cheering on Mick McCarthy’s men presents fans with a serious problem. Their solution, to change Irish time to match Japanese and South Korean time for the duration of the World Cup, effectively turns night into day.
That means that a time change of nine hours would mean that Irish soccer fans would spend the month of June going to bed at 8 in the morning, going to work at around 4 p.m., and going down the pub for the games at around 2 a.m.
Who knows, maybe the entire country will like the change so much it will become permanent.
The fans’ web site can be found at: http://www.carlsberg-irishsoccer.com.