February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
an attempt to break some spurious record for collective singing while also marking the end of the city’s 10th annual Irish festival. Although the song was written about Manchester’s own neighborhood of Salford, it was chosen for this honor because it has long been associated with Ireland through the efforts of The Pogues and The Dubliners, among others.
“We chose this song as the words were inspired by Salford,” said the Manchester Irish Festival secretary, Nigel Murphy, “and, just as the Irish adopted it as their song, we feel as though the City of Manchester has adopted the Irish Festival as their event and hold it close to their hearts.”
The whole gimmick was very ironic because right now there’s a horrible strain of anti-Irishness running through the hardcore United fans in Manchester. RedIssue (arguably the best of the club’s unofficial Web sites) has become infected with prejudice and bigotry toward all things Irish? From John O’Shea’s inconsistency to Liam Miller’s inability to make the first team during his first season, right through to Roy Keane’s failure to perform a miracle in Milan, much of the stuff written and allowed to fester on these message boards is appalling.
Most ridiculous of all is that some native Mancunians are starting to resent the increasingly large contingent from Ireland who have the temerity to follow the team around Europe. Without venturing into the whole debate about Irish people maniacally supporting English and Scottish clubs, we always thought spending huge sums supporting your club on away trips was a badge of honor among fans. Obviously that doesn’t apply to the Irish. Not to mention that the average Irish fan of United (or Celtic or Liverpool or whoever) has to fork out far more to see their team play on a regular basis than those fortunate enough to live near the grounds.
It has been pointed out more than once by the whiz kids behind United’s incredibly slick marketing operation that they love the Irish fans who make the pilgrimage to Old Trafford. Their reasoning is simple. Before matches, the Irish groups wade into the Megastore and spend big. They don’t just buy merchandise for themselves or their own kids but also bring presents for others that they ferry back with them on the plane that night. If any of the anti-Irish brigade among the support would think about it, they’d realize these very people have played a major role in filling the club’s coffers, pumping in the sort of money that assisted in United’ enormous growth in the 1990s.
The bean counters certainly know that much because we saw the big, colorful advertisement for the new official club Mastercard that appeared in the match program for the first leg against Milan. “Ar Aghaidh libh, lads” went the headline inviting Irish supporters to sign on for a credit card with a club crest. If the marketing folk are going to the trouble of looking up basic Irish phrases for their ads, it seems pretty obvious they figure the club can get a decent return from the traveling hordes who fly in for every match from Dublin, Cork and Belfast.
Apparently, this much doesn’t really register with the hardcore fans. The best that can be said about many of the posters on the RedIssue Web site is that they are equal opportunity offenders, lambasting loyalist fans from Ulster as much as their (presumably) nationalist brethren from the Republic.
“I am not a racist but some of the [expletive] Paddies are getting right up my nose,” writes regular columnist Mr. Spleen, the G-Stand Grumbler. “Now I know plenty of Irish lads whose dedication to the United cause, both emotional and financial, would put many Mancs to shame. But I also witness the march of the daytrippers from the hospitality suites up at the cricket ground up North Stand T 3 at every home game. Foam hands, Keano tricolours and jester’s hats abound. If you’re really unlucky, they might still be wearing the jersey of their Gaelic football club rather than the red and white of the true religion.”
It comes to something when they are complaining that the Irish fans have the cheek to wave Tricolors with Keane’s face plastered upon them as they walk down Matt Busby Way. Somehow, we don’t remember too much nitpicking when tricolors containing the visage of Eric Cantona were being sold on the approach roads to the ground. That it was a Mancunian entrepreneur who designed that version of the Irish flag in the first place and created the phenomenon is relevant too.
It would be foolish to dismiss this sort of rubbish as the rantings and ravings of a small rump of fans. A huge number of people browse these sites, and even more buy the monthly fanzine of the same name, a publication in which the Irish fans have come under sustained attack recently. Their offense was not signing up to the protest organization Shareholders United in sufficient numbers. At last count, 895 Irish supporters had paid the