Phil Mac Giolla Bháin

Recently the Republic of Ireland U19 squad played against Sweden. Ireland won 2-1. This, hopefully, is another good crop of young Irish players that can break into the top level within a few years. Last year the same squad, in the main, comprised the RoI U17 squad. In March 2008 the U17 lads played against Finland at Kilkenny. What was different about this fixture was that there was a scout from Rangers present. My sources in the FAI thought that the Ibrox scout was watching RoI players, but he may also have been checking out a Finnish lad. That was …

Read more…

My recent blog on the D-Day commemoration brought an “observation” which was too abusive to allow onto the site. It was a difficult logic to follow, but the “writer” believed that somehow  I was somehow heartbroken that the Third Reich had been defeated. No, me neither. This “missive” also repeated the hoary myths about Irish Free State collaboration with the Nazis during what is called here “the Emergency.” The allegation of U-Boat re-fuelling was stated by, a probably drunk, Winston Churchill in the House of Commons after VE Day. . What Churchill  must have known was that the Royal Air …

Read more…

Probably the twenty year old me would have approved of the treatment of Nick Griffin today in London. The newly elected MEP was speaking to the media outside Westminster. Griffin was elected on as the world remembered the freedom fighters of D-Day. With the defeat of the Third Reich Western Europe could reinstate the democratic governance and, slowly, come together into what is today the EU. Griffin’s politics I find abhorrent, but he was elected. On this island ,in the South and the North, elected members of Sinn Fein were non-persons in the media. Unionists would deal with them in …

Read more…

The current Republic of Ireland players in the SPL are as follows: Celtic – Flood, McGeady, O’Dea Dundee Utd- Sean Dillon, Jon Daly Falkirk – Patrick Cregg Hamilton – James McCarthy, David Elebert Hearts – Paul Mulrooney (under 19s), Denis McLaughlin (on loan at Dumbarton) Hibs – David Van Zanten, Alan O’Brien, Kurtis Byrne Inverness – Adam Rooney, Richie Foran, Andy McNulty (on loan at Elgin City) Kilmarnock – Connor Sammon Motherwell – Cillian Sheridan (on loan from Celtic), Jim O’Brien St Mirren – Billy Mehmet Of course Rangers have no players from the Republic of Ireland. Given the racist behaviour …

Read more…

It seems one of the iron laws of coalition politics that the minor party gets eaten up. Fianna fail’s last coalition partner the Progressive Democrats actually ceased to exist as a party after two terms in with the Soldiers of Destiny. The PDs did, of course, come from the FF gene pool. Once established as a vehicle for the O’Malley clan they got themselves religion. Thatcherite economic religion. As with all dominant parties the strength of Fianna Fail is that they don’t actually stand for anything other than being in power. It was a case of the tail wagging the …

Read more…

It was hard not to feel for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with his toe curling Freudian slip at the D-Day commemoration. His reference to “Obama beach” was sadly emblematic of the way in which the UK’s role in the liberation of Europe has been written out of the celluloid historical record. From being disappeared by Hollywood from the naval intelligence war that cracked the enigma codes to the D-Day landings. Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” manages one mention of the British contribution to the biggest amphibious landing in history. It is one line of script that has Tom Hanks …

Read more…

Does discrimination in employment against Irish people exist in Britain today? The Irish in Britain of a certain age can recall in-your-face job discrimination. The West of Scotland of my boyhood was full of anecdotes about major employers from Shipyards to banks who didn’t employ anyone from the Irish community. However the plural of “anecdote” is not “evidence”. My new view on encountering the question that started this article would be an emphatic “no”. Moreover the answer would have been “no” for at least several decades. If someone claims that there is some structural discrimination going on in this day …

Read more…

Kevin McDaid has been laid to rest. His funeral, like all funerals, was an occasion of sadness, but this was complicated grief. Complicated by the fact that Kevin was murdered. The cortege stopped and was silent and still at the spot where Rangers supporters had repeatedly jumped on his head last Sunday as they celebrated their team’s league triumph by killing a taig. Across the river the silence was broken as a loyalist band played the anthems of hate as the cortege stopped Was this an utterly cruel coincidence or a calculated mark of disrespect? Given the sickness that infects …

Read more…

When writing about the murder of Constable Carrol in Craigavon and British soldiers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar at Mazareene barracks in Antrim one of my reasons for totally condemning these murders was that Northern Ireland was in a new era. I was quite clear what I thought about those who had taken the lives of these three men. I wrote that these delusional “guerrillas”, confusing means with ends, were trapped in a previous historical period. Any of the ,highly debatable, justifications for the use of arms in Northern Ireland circa 1970 were all totally and utterly gone in 2009. …

Read more…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfqo04RHiBE   Here is the  treatment of the murder of Kevin McDaid by the  conistently excellent Channel 4 news team.   I would be grateful if any of you could  post up here how this story was treated in Scotland by the print media or on TV. It clear from this youtube clip that the C4 team focussed on the football element to the murder.