Well said Con Murphy

Quite right rocketfingers,Irish people supporting Man Utd against a dublin pub team.Bet you wouldnt see Joseff from Louth wearing one of those soccer tops,he's still cuddling his red GAA top and rightly so.

Well said Mr Murphy.If u want to support an English team go and live there.  Celtic & Hibs were formed by Irish people so there maybe a connection there for Irish people.  But an English team NO

People can do whatever the please, and who cares. Get over it IMO.

*they

A bit of hypocrisy there, some of the clubs he's getting paid for talking about on a Monday night wouldn't be around now if it wasn't for these people he's running down. Money raised from "glamour" (as the LOI clubs themselves title them) friendlies have kept a lot of LOI clubs afloat over the years.
You don't have to go back too far for an example. Galway have admitted that the e20,000 they raised playing against a set of Liverpool jersies at the weekend will enable them to see out the season this year.

A real sign of somebody being a complete and utter **** is if they are diehard fan of any English club!!
I can't stand when people go on and on about different players being good and having a "sweet left foot", they are a bunch of overpaid pricks!!
If you have a connection with a club, like your parents were from there or something fair enough, but people with no connections being fanatical is just SAD!

The real killer is waliking by most Irish pubs when a big English domestic  game is on and seeing the guys in their 40's & 50's with the Man U,Liverpool etc  snug fit jersies on, having a smoke at halftime saying to each other "We this and we that"talking about English teams.

Nothing wrong with supporting an English (or Spanish or whatever team) but FFS.

Fair play Con Murphy.

Won a pair of tickets to the game on here last week(Thanks Betfair) but the whole occasion left totally me totally dispirited.

Great to see real Irish men on here and having a bash at Jimeen and wayside pair of West B's.

The money from that game is gone into a fund to retrain loi players for the workforce when they finish playing...

Fair play to Con for caling a spade a spade.
Was in Dublin city centre that night and not a single green jersey to be seen. A Red sea. Embarassing to be honest.

To be fair though, Football in Ireland needs a serious change. Would anyone disagree that changing to a county system might provide fans with more identity with their clubs? Football in Ireland is very Dublin-centric.

Ireland is the only country in the world where a con could present crimeline.

I think his piece is a load of unthoughtful nonsense. So in Cons eyes the only worthy soccer fans in North Tipp would be the ones that followed their 'community' team Thurles Town and would then have stuck with them on their slide from LOI down through junior football? He surely wouldn't suggest it would be okay to change allegiance to a different club once they got into difficulties? In Cons world would they not be 'allowed' to equally support a team in the highest quality league to where they live? Would it be that wrong to currently follow Thurles Town and say Everton for reasons other than the 'thrill'? 

As someone alludes to here, not everyone has a sense of 'Cons community' with any LOI club due to the geographical imbalance. Anyway why should a fan be tied to following a 'local' club when players can play wherever they like with scant regard for the 'community'?

For sure, it is disgaceful if any Irish people were booing Airticity players last week but there are a minority of baboons found in any public gathering.

I make no apologies to Con for being a loyal fan of an 'English' club like Arsenal having followed them since the late seventies when they caught my attention at a time when their squad was full of Irishmen. And I certainly haven't stuck loyally to them for the kick of winning as he suggests. Or does Con think it is only okay to follow 'local' teams rather than 'local' players?

I've been to countless LOI games and got interested in different teams for differing reasons at different times but no team managed to fully catch my attention for various reasons -due to the geography of it all, time constraints and probaby in no small way due to the fact that all the best players head to the UK which has an obvious effect on the standard. Is it not understandable that fans of a sport like to watch the very best players play? Until the LOI becomes more than a breeding ground for young players with aspirations of heading abroad then it cannot expect to fully capture the public imagination and unfortunately we don't have the population base to support such a league at present. Why should it offend Con that I follow my local junior team and also Arsenal but not a LOI team as I'm sure is a similar comparison to many of the fans that went to Landsdowne Road (the 'Aviva' tells a tale in itself) last week to see Man Utd?   
   
If Con wants a sport where local people support their local players playing for their local team then I think he should stop dreaming about it and realise it already exists..... but it's called the GAA.

Very well said KK.  Trying to bring a GAA mentality to football doesn't work... Football fans in this country shouldn't be obliged to "love" the Airtricity League because the FAI have badly managed this league for decades now.

KK i don't think he is having a go at you for supporting Arsenal what he is saying how can people call themselves an Arsenal/Man U fan and the closest you get to them is your armchair or on a barstool, now i ain't saying you don't go over just using an example based on you. Of course Arsenal these days are very attractive team and i do like watching them even though not a fan but surly if we wanted to watch a quality league we would be heading to cities such as Madrid and Barcelona. the whole west British thing is really strange, i myself only have an issue with people if they tell me going to a league 2 or in some cases a lower league 1 side is better than supporting their local side as having lived in the UK for years and going to watch 2 different league 1 and 2 sides in my time i know how poor the standard can be. The thing i like about going to league of Ireland game the most is the banter and the craic, i can't see fellas heading off to a strange city where they have no roots as just getting near the same thing me and my friends get out of it. I would imagine that there is guys also so bitter like squigs, Ricky and Daza on here that they would rather support England than Ireland in soccer and rugby as they have warped minds and is the reason soccer is the number played sport in the 26 and 32 counties and Rugby is the fastest growing sport. Brasco they only took over the running of the league 5 years ago. I love my national league i am a supporter not aq follower.

Ur getting desperate, sad and angry now Joseff/Workrider.
Your statements are becoming more bizarre and unhinged.
See the ranting nonsense below. I think he has finally
broken. Keep making a fool of yourself. It's actually
become quite amusing.

PMSL @ us supporting England in soccer and rugby and
hating hurling. Pathetic stuff.

Give me hurling over football anyday and i'm English. 

Donal was spot on with his "overpaid pricks" comment, 99% of footballers are complete toerags.

Fair play to him for telling it as it is. Don't follow the LOI myself for several reasons and like most Irish people with an interest in soccer watch the EPL instead, but it was cringeworthy turning on rte and seeing the stadium full of red jerseys the other night. Its a pity the LOI can't get more support but the reality is its just very hard to sell. All the best Irish players are playing in England, a lot of counties don't have LOI clubs (so who is someone from tipp, kerry, clare etc. to support) and the debacle of clubs finishing towards the top of the league and then getting relegated coz they're skint is very offputting.

Well Rocket the craic and the banter would want to be wonderful as the standard is frankly ****.

The likes of Con Murphy and the LOI got a payday from these so called fairweather fans and he should be thankful the LOI advertisment was getting a 7-1 hammering against a team in preseason. Its not football. At nearly every stage the LOI made mistakes the near constant financial worries associated with nearly half the division show no signs of subsiding despite the salary caps been brought in, even Rovers the sucess story of the last 3 years have benefitted from the genorosity of the 400 club.

You support a LOI team you follow them through and through and your team ends up being thrown out for being either insolvent, Cork or Corrupt Derry City and read Bohs desperate financial situation. The nearest LOI team to me is Bray and with the greatest of respect to them Ive gone on down to the Carlisle Grounds a few times this season but they are a team that through no fault of their own were thrown into a league they were never ready to contend they had prepared for life in the first division yet have to play in the Airticity and only find out a week before the season starts leaving them with a woefully prepared team playing with relative kids. Its not what people want to see.

But obviously the Irish Catholic heritages surrounding the likes of Liverpool and Manchester attract people to these sides coupled with the power weather we like it or not of Satelite Television beaming non stop football into our pubs and living rooms.

Delighted to hear Cornelius keeping the wolf from the door, reporting on the barstool foreign soccer last night.

Squigs Liverpool FC catholic? You want to read your history my boy they are quite the opposite. This is something fabricated so Irish people justify why they support an English team while not supporting England.

big deal.....if an Irish person wants to follow a soccer team the uk is our nearest professional league.

Totally agree Gant i just picking up on an myth that squigs threw up, after all it is a free world my friend.

Typical one eyed rubbish from an rte 'journalist'.

He fails to ask why it is that his own organisation decided to cover this mickey mouse game live rather than either the first proper international there last wednesday (incidentally played by an irish team made up of players who all play in the english and scottish leagues) or indeed the combined provinces match the week before which was the first ever rugby match to be played there. The reason this Man U game happened was to generate revenue for the FAI and for RTE. Both are organisations who sabotage soccer in this country at every turn and are the main reasons that people in this country have to look abroad to watch a decent soccer match.

Where was Con Murphy when the FAI scuppered Limerick's chances of a big match with Barcelona earlier this summer? Where has he been over the last thirty years as the FAI also failed to properly support players staying and playing in Ireland. The IRFU, to their credit, have shown what can be done by showing preferential treatment to players at the four provinces. A radical restructuring of soccer in this country along similar lines to those employed by the IRFU could produce a better quality product and bring casual Irish soccer fans back, but there is no clamour for this. Instead you have patronising statements about how great the 'die-hard' fans of these tiny clubs playing substandard football are. You will always have these die hard fans and fair play to them (ha ha!) but, until the FAI looks at radical restructuring which will involve killing off these old names (like has happened with Neath and Swansea in Wales for example), there will be no progress for domestic football in this country and you will not see an Irish club compete beyond Autumn in european competition.

I note Murphy also slyly refers to the redeveloped lansdowne road as 'the aviva'. I'm sure him and the cronies in rte and the rest of the irish media have been paid handsomely for doing this (the general media line about Aviva deserving it because they paid for the 'naming rights' is hilarious). Another case of money dominating the good of the sport I'm afraid.

If Murphy wants to properly question why people in this country would follow a foreign soccer team then he must bring the FAIs mismanagement and the effect of money on the game into his arguments but it just doesn't suit him.

Typical one eyed rubbish from an rte 'journalist'.

He fails to ask why it is that his own organisation decided to cover this mickey mouse game live rather than either the first proper international there last wednesday (incidentally played by an irish team made up of players who all play in the english and scottish leagues) or indeed the combined provinces match the week before which was the first ever rugby match to be played there. The reason this Man U game happened was to generate revenue for the FAI and for RTE. Both are organisations who sabotage soccer in this country at every turn and are the main reasons that people in this country have to look abroad to watch a decent soccer match.

Where was Con Murphy when the FAI scuppered Limerick's chances of a big match with Barcelona earlier this summer? Where has he been over the last thirty years as the FAI also failed to properly support players staying and playing in Ireland. The IRFU, to their credit, have shown what can be done by showing preferential treatment to players at the four provinces. A radical restructuring of soccer in this country along similar lines to those employed by the IRFU could produce a better quality product and bring casual Irish soccer fans back, but there is no clamour for this. Instead you have patronising statements about how great the 'die-hard' fans of these tiny clubs playing substandard football are. You will always have these die hard fans and fair play to them (ha ha!) but, until the FAI looks at radical restructuring which will involve killing off these old names (like has happened with Neath and Swansea in Wales for example), there will be no progress for domestic football in this country and you will not see an Irish club compete beyond Autumn in european competition.

I note Murphy also slyly refers to the redeveloped lansdowne road as 'the aviva'. I'm sure him and the cronies in rte and the rest of the irish media have been paid handsomely for doing this (the general media line about Aviva deserving it because they paid for the 'naming rights' is hilarious). Another case of money dominating the good of the sport I'm afraid.

If Murphy wants to properly question why people in this country would follow a foreign soccer team then he must bring the FAIs mismanagement and the effect of money on the game into his arguments but it just doesn't suit him.

good post idiot...

Everton are more of the catholic persuasion than Liverpool, not theat it bloody matters as I doubt it is the reason people follow them

Everton are the catholic team in merseyside Rocket I was referring to Liverpool the city as it and Manchester as the two main catholic cities in England at the time of the clubs foundation so no myth

Of the three names mooted to replace Newton Heath one was Manchester Athletic another Manchester United and the final one Manchester Celtic obviously no Irish influence at all.