Kyle Lafferty Declares for the Republic? Don’t bet your bowler on it.

Amongst all the furore surrounding James McCarthy not turning up for international duty, Marc Wilsons absence seems to have been glossed over.  Wilson one of the Northern “Deserters” choose to play for Ireland rather than his “native” Northern Ireland. One of the many inaccuracies thrown at these players by Norn Iron fans is the notion that they are “glory hunters”. Indeed I recently spoke to a good friend, Scott, who’s studied in the area of Northern Catholics supporting Northern Ireland and he still maintained that the search for success was the driving factor.  Surely Wilsons’ absence – interestingly at a time when he could have a picked up a medal – blows this argument out of the water. When Kyle Lafferty decides to throw his lot in with the Republic then I’ll believe this argument but currently it is all nationalist who are declaring.

So why then do players – and I include McCarthy and McGeady in this – leave themselves open to such scrutiny when their chances of success are not really any greater? Essentially it’s down to a players sense of identity. Growing up in a society such as Northern Ireland or Glasgow for that matter, heightens a person’s sense of identity. Post the Good Friday Agreement,  people born North of the Border were eligible to play for the Republic but to believe the nonsense that pre Good Friday Agreement, Northern Nationalists were only too happy to play for Northern Ireland, is naive in the extreme. How many people in Loughinisland, where 6 people were killed by Loyalist gunmen for the crime of watching the Ireland v Italy World Cup game in 1994, felt any affiliation with the Northern Ireland team? A similar point could and should be made on the chances of a person from East Belfast, who witnessed the horrors of an indiscriminate IRA attack supporting the Republic. In a society as eschewed as the North this simply doesn’t happen.

Lets look at Niall McGinn who last week openly admitted to supporting the Republic. While his comments were undoubtedly polarizing, the bile that has been directed at him highlights the issue that northern nationalists face when they declare for the North. McGinn would play for the Republic had he been selected for them before he played for the North. He was not but that does not mean that he tries any less? Compare him to Andy Townsend, who has admitted he would have chose England over Ireland had he been given the option. Ireland called first and he became a fantastic captain. Would Northern fans have been happier had McGinn sat in the international wilderness a la Kevin Nolan rather then play for a team who he can improve?

We now live in an era when Northern Nationalists can actually play for the Republic rather than just dream it. I think it’s important at this junction to note that the IFA are doing lots of work to try and encourage Catholics to support the North and to a degree this has worked but they’re working against 60 years of segregation. As Scott informed me the younger you go, the more Catholic support Northern Ireland as opposed to the Republic so this phenomenon may be short lived. I feel for the IFA. They have invested time and money in the players who switch allegiances just when they should be seeing returns for their investment.  To think that the FAI will somehow start scouting the underage Northern set-ups for anybody with a fenian sounding name, gives the association far to much credit. At present the association fails to look outside of the Pale for underage footballers never mind looking in West Belfast. However maybe it now is time for the FAI to say that they will start encouraging younger footballers to declare. At least this way, it’s the FAI and not the IFA who foot the bill for any development work. To do so though would close the Northern Irish team off to a section of the community and bring going to Windsor Park back to the bad old days.

The crux of the matter is simple, a segment of the population in Northern Ireland don’t feel Northern Irish and therefore don’t support the Northern Ireland football team. Until this matter is addressed then Northern Ireland, as both a political entity and a football team, will continue to divide support among its own citizens. Solving the problem of northern nationalist playing for the Republic is to solve the problem of Northern Ireland. And for that, this blogger does not have the solution.


Seamus is a sports agent, who's recently home from a two year stint with Ricky Nixons Flying Start organisation in Melbourne.