Is It Wrong/Contradictory To Follow "Northern" Ireland?

ROI fans - and I speak as one who’s missed very few home games in the last decade - are generally bland and mind-numbingly inoffensive. There’s basically zero contentious chanting ever at Lansdowne. England got a bit of abuse last September but by the end of the game most people just wanted to get the * out of there.

 

Why?

 

Do what makes you happy. If you live in the north of ireland, play in a football set up in northern ireland, have friends who are northern irish and who support northern ireland, it is a positive thing that you want to support Northern Ireland.

Appying some sort of moral dilemma to cheering on any football team is silly.

 

I think you raise an excellent point, the "Northern" Ireland team HAS indeed been hijacked in the name of British nationalism, and is that really fair that the team is associated with that? The support and the team aren't 1 in the same, "Northern" Ireland isn't Rangers, a club that once fully discriminated against catholics, NI has always had a mix of catholics and prods, unionists and nationalists, they never had Rangers type restrictions, they were just latched onto by a similar bunch of bigots

 

They’re kind of inextricably tied together given that the mere existence of Northern Ireland depends on them fostering a British identity of some sort.

Bigotry isn’t an essential component of that but more often than not it is, and that’s the kind of audience they tend to attract.

 

Because they're Irish, even if some of the people that live there are so desperate to be British that their national anthem and flag are that of the UK, they're still Irish and that's that

 

I'm not trying to be funny but can you explain please?

 

Youre accurate on that.

Ive been to fair few countries on this blue marble, and one thing ive noticed os the absolute refusal of Unionists/ loyalists to recognize the actual geography of their birth and residence.

If you meet a Scot and ask him if he is Scottish... Yes.
A welshman if he welsh... Yep.
An Englishman if hes English.... Yarp.

A "Northern Irishman" if he Irish...." no, Im British".

But at the same time the close minded sentiments of their support doesnt excuse the fact that the IFA mandate the teams National Anthem as * Save The King.
As you said in your earlier post; that's clear and incontrovertible evidence of partitionism, and concerted effort to exclude those of a nationalist identity from the support base.

 

Well, to put it another way, I can’t understand how non-PUL folk can go and stand to attention for GSTQ, and/or be part of a support whose views on Irish catholics/nationalists/anyone from the 26 counties are often pretty abhorrent.

There’s another Irish team who’re not supported by planters, who stand under the Tri-colour, and any person born on this island is eligible to play for them.

 

Ireland fans aren’t making up any rules “as they go along”. Anyone born in the 32 counties can qualify to play for Ireland - and rightly so. This is a fact. We have had numerous players from the 6 northern counties in the last 20 years or so. FFS, even that mercenary scumbag Alan Kernaghan was capped numerous times in the 90s (because the Pub Team refused to pick him due to him not having been born in their illegal statelet), so tell me again how Irish fans are making up the rules as they go along?