Friday, January 20, 2006
Kerr slam Republic’s racist supporters
Brian Kerr talks about the racialist abuse he’s had from ‘supporters’ berating him for including black Irish players in his team. Paul at Northern Irish Magyar has the report.
Mick Fealty @ 11:35 AM
A whole new slant on what it means to be “Black Irish”.
Posted by on Jan 20, 2006 @ 05:00 PMMcS:
It wasn’t the Israel match. It was one poster with several aliases who said he heard racialist abuse at an international at Windsor Park - can’t remember which one. It was hotly disputed by about half dozen readers who had been there.
Posted by on Jan 20, 2006 @ 06:21 PMNo mention of Ireland football fans being responsible here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/internationals/4630664.stm
Or here
Or here
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2006/0120/541745981HM1BRIANKERR.html
Or here
http://www.irishexaminer.com/pport/web/sport/Full_Story/did-sgkvWHW2Oel7Q.asp
Kerr said “he did not believe soccer in Ireland was racist. Foreign nationals and black players had been accepted in the League of Ireland and in junior and underage leagues. Sport could assist in both the combating of racism and also in the “real” integration of foreign nationals into Irish society.
Posted by on Jan 20, 2006 @ 06:49 PM“How does Brian Kerr or anyone else for that matter know they were supporters? Did they send ticket stubs or supporters club membership no.’s along with the other crap?”
The same way that evetyone knows that whoever phoned a death threat to Neil Lennon was a “Northern Ireland supporter”.
Everyone knows that don’t they?
Posted by on Jan 20, 2006 @ 08:55 PMI don’t recall anyone saying the people who phoned in the death threat to Neil Lennon was a supporter.
I personally doubt that it was.
The sectarian singing and sectarian language directed towards Lennon on the other hand is well documented.
Posted by on Jan 20, 2006 @ 10:48 PMInteresting points above.
However, if true, then what Kerr says took place should be condemned. That sort of crap should not be tolerated.
Posted by on Jan 20, 2006 @ 11:09 PMCan anyone point out a time when Jeff Whitley was given abuse by the Northern Ireland fans?
Posted by on Jan 20, 2006 @ 11:34 PM“only a matter of time before NI fans have sufficient well earned pride in their collective behaviour to do away with the need to find fault (real, contrived, or exaggerated) with us.”
Ringo
My own reaction now when my team’s (club and country) supporters are attacked in this way is to check the information and figure out for myself the truth behind the claims. I do this because of there IS truth in them, then I want to see in what small way I can contribute towards making sure that sectarianism/racism/hooliganism doesn’t blight my own match-going experience. Selfish I know, but that’s my main concern, not trying to appease people who don’t have the best interests of my team at heart.
But in order to do that, it’s important that this kind of info which Kerr has reported today is brought into the open. You may find it hard to believe, but this may not only be done so to attack the Republic’s supporters’ reputation but because the commentators in question may just think that it’s important we nip this kind of this racist crap( if it does exist) in the bud before it takes hold.
It’s up to you to make the judgement how valid the info is and the ensuing accusations but don’t automatically assume the motives of the people who’ve brought it to light are negative.
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 08:01 AM“The difference here is that this is a new phenomonen for the ROI team” (Sic)
New!? Paul McGrath begs to differ.
“Racism is part of human nature”
No it is’nt, its taught father to son, or through fear of the unknown. I have never met a person in my entire fcuking life who said “Racism is part of human nature”.
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 08:30 AMBrian Kerr never stated that the letters came from a fully paid up season ticket holder.
He was simply drawing attention to the fact that there is a problem.
I find it very disturbing that there is so much denial of the antics of sizable sections of ROI supporters at the ROI v Israel game. The problems where not restrited to about 10 supporters waving PLO flags in the south section.(an act naive and shameful in itself) Throughout the ground it was disturbing. At one point the chants of “six million Jews and they should of been Protestants” was greeted with bellows of laughter.
Other more sinister chants directed to individual players and coaching staff regarding the Holocaust where just as sickening.
I am in no way trying to tarnish the image of the vast number of ROI fans who are renowned around the world for their excellent behaviour, I am simply trying to point out that unfortuntely ROI has it´s fair share of mindless imbecils as well.
Does anyone remember the shameful scenes in Lichtenstein when a vast amount of travelling supporters booed the Hosts national anthem, simply because it had the same tune as God Save The Queen.Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 10:06 AMPat Jennings Fan
“Haaertz, an Israeli leftish paper, also carried a report of the Israel coach and players being attcaked although”The Haaertz article, if I remember correctly, was full of lies and conflicted with reports published in other Israeli papers as well as an Irish paper.
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 10:07 AMSpartacus, I read the article and it is indeed a very interesting slant on the very nature of peoples attitude toward the Jew. Or indeed the way Jews perceive the way they are seen by others.
I don`t however see your point. Are you saying that I should accept being racially abused in public and not take it so serious, because I´m some how an angst ridden paranoid Jew.
The Holocaust, the exobus from Babylon, the Diaspora all have little relevance to sitting at Landsdowne Road and being subjected to hate fuelled diatribes of the most dispicable nature.Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 10:36 AMno, doctor who, but you’ve given the game away above. as i suspected, you describe the act of 10 people in ‘waving the plo flag’ (actually its the palestinian national flag, dr.) as ‘naive and shameful in itself.’
the fact that you cannot reply to my request that you describe this ‘anti-semitic’ literature at queen’s is telling. there wasn’t any. possibly a leaflet advertising a talk on palestine, which would apprently qualify in your book.
you seem to have misread, or misunderstood the article of all you took from it is about ‘the nature of people’s attitude toward to Jew.’ tt is about the way that supporters of isreal have used the cry of ‘anti-smeitism’ to avoid facing up to their own complicity in the ongoing oppression of a people.
you dont tell us whether you were in attendance and heard for yourself these chants. if they happened i have no problem condemning them outright. but i have a suspicion that much of that is being fabricated to smear the legitimate attempt to raise isreal’s treatment of palestinians, in the same way that right-thinking people would have ‘mixed sports and poltics’ to do so in the days of apartheid south africa---a close ally, after all, of israel.
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 10:52 AMmaca
“The Haaertz article, if I remember correctly, was full of lies and conflicted with reports published in other Israeli papers as well as an Irish paper.”“although it wasn’t clear if they were alleging it was football fans/political activists or a mixture of both”
You cut off my quote before the last bit, where the all important “alleging” appeared! Biffo and MacSwiney were asking for more info about allegations of anti-semitism at the game-that’s why I gave them the thread from Footie IE and the info about Haaertz.
The main other Eng-lang Israeli paper(Jerusalem Post) concentrated more on the Pro-Palestinian demos, but did also mention about one of the players(the goalie?) getting assaulted later in the hotel. From what I can recall one or two of the Irish papers also wrote about it. One of the posters on here, who was a local journo, did mention that he’d contacted Haaertz to clarify sources etc but with the thread later being deleted he mustn’t have been able to come back with their reply
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 10:54 AMSpartacus as I have mentioned on previous threads I was at the game between ROI and Israel, as a guest of two former work colleagues who where equally disgusted at what they witnessed.
Why do you ask me to defend Israel I am a British citizen whose family arrived here via Poland prior to the second world war. I have never actually visited Israel.
You seem to think that every Jew worldwide is responsible for Palestinian oppression in parts of the state of Israel. A ridiculous scenario it´s like asking every Catholic in Ireland to apologise for the actions of the IRA.
Maybe you think that I´m part of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 11:18 AMMick
I’m interested in why you chose the title for this thread.
Not a single news organisation that i can find attributes the racist letters to Ireland supporters.
You base the thread on the interpretation from a guy who runs a blog and supports northern ireland.
Hardly objective.
Brian Kerr, in an article in the Irish Times yesterday said:
“he did not believe soccer in Ireland was racist. Foreign nationals and black players had been accepted in the League of Ireland and in junior and underage leagues.”
He went on to say
“It was the first time he had encountered racism of this kind.”
The thread is both misleading and stinks of opportunism.
Very sad for a site that should be representative of all.
Racism exists in all walks of life in this country but to try and label ‘supporters’ as being responsible, when this was not stated by Kerr, is a poor reflection on the standard and direction that slugger seems to be going in.
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 12:48 PMdr who:
ducking it again.
1. i never asked you to defend israel. i’m glad you don’t.
2. i condemn without reservation any anti-semitic acts committed in the stands or elsewhere, and it seems from some accounts that these did occur. i would distinguish between these and the demonstrations against israel’s treatment of palestinans, which some people seem anxious to conflate. as the article which i provided you with a link to suggests, this is a sleight of hand that is deployed everywher these days, not only in ireland.
3. you have yet to produce a single shred of evidence to back up your claims about the distribution of anti-semitic literature at queen’s. either do so or retract your serious claims.
jim:
you are under a misconception that many others who visit this site have raised from time to time. with respect to the important service that mick and others perform in providing one of the few spaces where discussions can be had that are relatively free-wheeling and involve all ‘sides,’ slugger does not claim to be running a site ‘for all,’ in the sense that it is meant to be neutral, objective. it is a unionist site. that is fairly ov=bvious if you look through the types of threads that they run and the way that stories in the press get ‘interpreted’ by admins, so the roi story is not exceptional in that way. i’ve suggested before that mick should run a disclaimer, or an explanation, somewhere on the home page.
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 05:03 PMFor a unionist site a lot of people have voted Henry Joy McCracken and John Hume as the greatest Ulstermen.
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 07:10 PMGrassy Noel is spot on.
So often you get one side (usually Nationalists, in fact) accusing the other of something vile. When the reverse is also shown to be the case, they choose to justify it rather than accept that it, too, is unacceptable.
A lunatic phone call to a paper threatening a midfielder, a lunatic letter to a manager, sectarian chanting, racist expressions - all these are to be utterly condemned, not excused because ‘themmuns’ do it.
Usually it’s my party that gets accused of sanctimony - but this is yet another occasion when it’s everyone else that sits back in their glass house throwing stones, even if the stones are thirteen years old!
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 07:46 PMOh Spartacus, in your defense you are obviously blinkered at what you think is right.
However unlike the cinematic Spartacus I don´t think anyone is going to stand up and admit they are you.
On a thread that you think is Unionist well of course your “liberal views” can only be taken with a pinch of salt.
I know it´s getting off the beaten track a bit but I would be interested to know just why you think this is a Unionist site.
I have not been ducking again as you say it and as you well KNOW I did not accuse Queens University of institutionalised racism or anti semitism for that matter.
The anti semitism in question was in the form of personal abuse to myself on a verbal, written and physical nature simply because I was perceived as Jewish. I would further add that this abuse was not restricted to one side dishing it out, but when students tried to set up a Friends Of Israel branch which incidentally has members from every mainstream British Political Party, it was met with downright hostility from certain quarters.(I was not part of this set up)
You really do have a problem, perhaps you can go to Iran and join in the Holocaust didn´t happen debate, and let me say again I was at that match in question and like many people around me I was disgusted. I guess you where outside rather naively condeming the state of Israel for their obvious and well reported goings on on the West Bank, while completley ignoring the major atrocities inflicted upon ordinary Israel folk by so called freedom fighters jumping on buses and killing innocent children.
Hey Spartacus it´s a comforting thought that you actually get a vote.Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 08:28 PMSpartacus
Did you know that Jews are really six foot lizards, and that they didn´t really get murdered by the Nazis and whats more the President of Iran is going to prove it.
I guess you knew that already.Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 08:37 PMIJP
“Usually it’s my party that gets accused of sanctimony - but this is yet another occasion when it’s everyone else that sits back in their glass house throwing stones, even if the stones are thirteen years old!”
Is homophobia not wrong and sick
Sean neeson etc....
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 09:21 PMpapa lazarous
Wanna buy any pegs Dave?
Dr Who
Did you know that the Semetic people also include Arabs?, nothing terribly pertinent to the thread just a bit of info. But it is used mainly to describe Jews.Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 09:50 PMMustapha Mond
Yes you are quite right, perhaps Spartacus can tell us all about it once he has taken his head out of the sand.
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 10:20 PMTim
In the absence of any specific reference to comments made by that MLA, you are guilty of libel.
Such things endanger this site. If you’ve got a point to make, get some references.
I would ask Mick to remove your comments (and, at the same time, this response) forthwith.
Posted by on Jan 21, 2006 @ 11:36 PM
