How Irish are you?

fontanalis · 09-09-2010 01:47PM

Was it Brendan Behan that said "the Irish and the Jews don't have a nationality, they have a psychosis"?

General Zod · 09-09-2010 01:52PM

I'm as irish as a Sharon Ni Bheolain/Bibi Basken sandwich.

SuperGrover · 09-09-2010 01:53PM

Voodoomelon wrote: »

...and me lookin like an ejit.

Yeah, you'd never guess you're Irish.

topper75 · 09-09-2010 02:00PM

Sheeps wrote: »

People who find GAA entertaining are sub-human.

Were you sick as a youngster maybe?

xflyer · 09-09-2010 02:08PM

aDeener wrote: »

I can't understand how people hate the GAA with so much passion. fair enough if you don't like the actual games, people have different tastes but the amount of good it does, especially in rural communities cannot be underestimated. i guarantee you, much much more youngsters would have emigrated, certainly in my area, were it not for the GAA.

this hatred is a bit sad really.

I would question that. In my opinion the GAA has done more damage to this country than any other factor. For a start it encourages parochialism, your parish, town, county etc. If you live in some of the stronger GAA counties you don't dare not support your team.

It also has damaged sport in general in this country. All of the local sport minded kids are shoved into the GAA. There's always a GAA club dominating every small town. No wonder we have second rate athletes and have to reimport Irish soccer players from Britain to make up the team. Our record in the Olympics is pathetic even allowing for our small size.

Worse still, GAA games are skill less and boring unless you happen to be a fan of the team. It's all about the score, points and more points.

Remember too it wasn't soo long ago that the GAA deliberately tried to suppress other sports with the ban and even recently there was the fuss about allowing soccer in Croke Park.

They don't encourage Irishness, they encourage tribalism. Exactly the reason the English or in fact the Normans had no trouble conquering us in the first place and exactly the reason they held onto us for so long. I'm not blaming the GAA for that but they continue the tradition of diviseness and tribalism.

We simply do not understand what it actually means to be Irish which is exactly the problem the OP has.

I would suggest that if you really are Irish then you are more interested in the country as a whole rather than what's happening with the local GAA in your dull little town in the midlands or somewhere.

bonerm · 09-09-2010 02:10PM

I'm only Irish when I'm listening to Damien Dempsey, him singing about de kulture and history of the peepel. At those times I want to bear arms, tatoo my body with celtic crosses and kick the brits the hell out.

Rest of the time I don't really care. It was a round world last time I looked.

aDeener · 09-09-2010 02:11PM

xflyer wrote: »

I would question that. In my opinion the GAA has done more damage to this country than any other factor.

holy fuck, i stopped reading there.

you have issues lad :rolleyes:

idiocy knows no bounds

krudler · 09-09-2010 02:12PM

My parents rode here and I was the result, thats about as much as my involvment in being Irish ends.

Wolfe Tone · 09-09-2010 02:16PM

aDeener wrote: »

I can't understand how people hate the GAA with so much passion. fair enough if you don't like the actual games, people have different tastes but the amount of good it does, especially in rural communities cannot be underestimated. i guarantee you, much much more youngsters would have emigrated, certainly in my area, were it not for the GAA.

this hatred is a bit sad really.

I just hate the actual games themselves. Probably because I am sh!t at them. And I am a louth man so I dont have a decent team to cheer on :L

xflyer · 09-09-2010 02:17PM

aDeener wrote: »

holy fuck, i stopped reading there.

you have issues lad :rolleyes:

idiocy knows no bounds

This country has issues, lad. Your problem is that you can't see the problem. But you're not alone. I not you are from Cork, Buttevant in fact. Tell me are you proud to be from Cork?

Maybe I exaggerate a little maybe the GAA is a sympton rather than the cause. But it is damaging to Ireland as a whole to encourage local and tribal issues considering how small this little island is.

aDeener · 09-09-2010 02:18PM

MUSSOLINI wrote: »

I just hate the actual games themselves. Probably because I am sh!t at them. And I am a louth man so I dont have a decent team to cheer on :L

that is fair enough, as i said different people have different tastes.

louth? we shall not get into the whole leinster final debacle so! :pac:

Wolfe Tone · 09-09-2010 02:19PM

aDeener wrote: »

that is fair enough, as i said different people have different tastes.

louth? we shall not get into the whole leinster final debacle so! :pac:

Best try I have seen at croker.

Thrill · 09-09-2010 02:20PM

seraphimvc wrote: »

i can drink more pints of Guinness than anyone i know!

http://www.charity-online.ie/images/Guaranteed%20Irish.gif

aDeener · 09-09-2010 02:21PM

xflyer wrote: »

This country has issues, lad. Your problem is that you can't see the problem. But you're not alone.

Maybe I exaggerate a little maybe the GAA is a sympton rather than the cause. But it is damaging to Ireland as a whole to encourage local and tribal issues considering how small this little island is.

you exaggerate a little? you are blaming the GAA fro being successful. fcuk sake every sport has local connections, its just because the GAA are so good at what they do you notice them more.

you give out about the GAA getting youngsters to play their games, errr isnt that what all sporting organisations do. again, you are complaining about them being good at what they do.

how about you blame the other games leadership for not being attractive enough. :rolleyes:

i have read plenty of downright retarded posts on boards, but i have to say you have trumped them all.

bringing the normans and english into the discussion really was the cherry on top i thought.

i love cork, i love what cork people have done for this country - how you can find problem with this i dont know

jackiebaron · 09-09-2010 02:22PM

feelingstressed wrote: »

Kinda offtopic but something worth posting

Many clubs in England have a stand called the kop.

I can't believe the muppets who constantly tell me it means King over Pope and no Irish person should support such a club, such as Liverpool which is probably the most well known

Kop comes from Spion Kop, a hill in South Africa. Boer War veterans returned home from a battle there and a stand was named after the hill

I don't want to hear one more King over Pope muppet :mad:

I thought it was initially nicknamed Spion Kop after the Boer War battle (of Spion Kop) because of how steep the terraces were and the crowds looked like fighters massed of the hill. ... and then the name stuck. But I guess it's the same thing.

xflyer · 09-09-2010 02:35PM

Clearly you are a GAA fan Adeener. Can't see the wood for the trees. For a very long time the GAA went out of it's way to discourage other sports. That's damaging. They now have a dominating influence on sport in most of this country and particularly in small towns and villages.

That didn't happen because GAA games are more attractive to play. No one could call the GAA a 'beautiful game'.

Sure they're successful like a Shark in a small pond.

its just because the GAA are so good at what they do you notice them more.

The GAA are not good. Only yesterday on the radio a committed GAA man complained that too much funding was going into stadia and other facilities to the detriment of the grass roots. There are only a few good county teams in the country and they dominate the championships. How is that good? Every year, Kilkenny and Tipperary in Hurling or Kerry, Cork in football. What makes those counties so special?

It's easy to dismiss something you don't agree with as retarded.

Donkey Oaty · 09-09-2010 02:39PM

Sheeps wrote: »

their tolerance for bands like The Dubliners and their unjustified hatred of all things British.

Did you mean The Wolfe Tones?

MingulayJohnny · 09-09-2010 02:51PM

Diabhal Beag wrote: »

Honestly if you worry about how "Irish" you are then you are thinking way too much into it.

Born in this country = Irish

Hold an Irish passport = Irish

Being a nice and fun person = Nice and fun person

Being Irish doesn't shape your personality. It's just the same as being proud of being from Dublin,Cork,Limerick etc. Cheer on your representatives if you want. If you don't that doesn't make you any less Irish.

Sorry , don't agree , you're entitled to your opinion of course , by law an Irish passport holder may be an Irish citizen but being Irish is another thing altogether in my book. It depends on your definition of Irishness I suppose for me it's about a certain quality of character and psychological makeup as well as some kind of ancestral linkage. I don't think you can instantly be Irish just because you were born here and carry an Irish passport. It is a tricky one though , I'd regard Phil Lynott as being very Irish but I wouldn't regard a lot of Irish born po faced middle class Gaelgoiri as being Irish. They just don't cut the mustard.

I'd see the 'red legs' the descendants of Irish shipped to the Caribbean as being Irish and think we should foster stronger connections with them. I'd be willing to acknowledge if somebody claimed to be African-Irish or Brazilian-Irish if they are second gen with Immigrant parents. It cheapens the Irishness of genuine Irish people for somebody who has lived here for eight years and now holds an Irish passport to call themselves Irish. If I lived and worked on Korea for ten years and got a Korean passport do I have the right to call myself Korean with no ancestral link to the country or culture , I certainly don't think so. Can you imagine the reaction of a native if I was sitting in a bar telling them how I was 'new Korean'.

I know people who hold similar opinions but won't air them in public for fear of being called a bigot. People spout a lot of rhetoric when it comes to the 'new Irish' and other such bulls**t terms. Common sense seems to leave the room when the PC brigade are about.

Notorious97 · 09-09-2010 02:51PM

Id consider myself very Irish, shi*e at the language unfortunately but im hoping to correct that with classes etc, i am Republican (although this doesn’t mean you have to be if you are Irish lol), i love our native sports, i love our history and culture, and i love seeing anybody Irish doing well whether its in sport or business or personal life. I am quite open to other cultures too however, and im probably into a bit of everything really.

aDeener wrote: »

you exaggerate a little? you are blaming the GAA fro being successful. fcuk sake every sport has local connections, its just because the GAA are so good at what they do you notice them more.

aDeener wrote: »

you give out about the GAA getting youngsters to play their games, errr isnt that what all sporting organisations do. again, you are complaining about them being good at what they do.

how about you blame the other games leadership for not being attractive enough.

People will always blame the GAA for other sports failings, i love GAA, i don’t play it anymore, i love soccer and other sports too, but in my opinion any atmosphere at a soccer game for example whether in Ireland or the UK that ive attended does not even come close to the atmosphere i experience in a sold out Croke Park Dublin match with the national anthem echoing around 80,000 plus fans. I was at the Dub V Cork game and the atmosphere was unbelievable (even though i left heartbroken lol) but the Cork fans were equally as loud as a typical Dublin crowd, great days out my friend so i agree with you on how people can hate it i just don’t get!
Soccer in this country is a disgrace and its not the fault of the GAA, the FAI are a shower of complete shi*es and havent a clue how to run the game, Roy Keane (2nd Greatest Cork man IMO) was dead right!

i love cork, i love what cork people have done for this country - how you can find problem with this i dont know

Everybody should rightly be proud of where they come from, as well as their country as a whole. Im proud of being from Dublin so again like you i don’t see how people can be so anti Irish all the time. I think its the new fashion though. The one man im the proudest of hails from Cork, goes by the name of Mícheál Ó Coileáin

Donkey Oaty · 09-09-2010 02:54PM

MingulayJohnny wrote: »

Can you imagine the reaction of a native if I was sitting in a bar telling them how I was 'new Korean'.

How about "Nice to meet you. Can I buy you a drink?" Why should they be as small-minded as you?

onlyrocknroll · 09-09-2010 02:57PM

I'm amazed that so many people 'hate' the GAA. I'm not a particularly big fan myself, just watch Cork Championship matches, and maybe provincial and all-Ireland finals really, but why would anybody hate a sport?

Soccer bores the arse of me, so I don't watch it. It seems like a more healthy attitude then spending mental energy on it.

Op. Your Irish if you're from Ireland, your taste in music, food, sport etc are just aspects of your personality. In fact you're very Irish in the way you worry about whether you're Irish. I've never met a French man who thought he wasn't French because he didn't eat baguettes. Only we do that.

aDeener · 09-09-2010 03:09PM

xflyer wrote: »

Clearly you are a GAA fan Adeener. Can't see the wood for the trees. For a very long time the GAA went out of it's way to discourage other sports. That's damaging. They now have a dominating influence on sport in most of this country and particularly in small towns and villages.

That didn't happen because GAA games are more attractive to play. No one could call the GAA a 'beautiful game'.

Sure they're successful like a Shark in a small pond.

The GAA are not good. Only yesterday on the radio a committed GAA man complained that too much funding was going into stadia and other facilities to the detriment of the grass roots. There are only a few good county teams in the country and they dominate the championships. How is that good? Every year, Kilkenny and Tipperary in Hurling or Kerry, Cork in football. What makes those counties so special?

It's easy to dismiss something you don't agree with as retarded.

clearly.
and people paid heed to them, that was their own agenda there was no law for them to play GAA, sure de valera himself was more of a fan of rugby. these people prefer gaelic games, deal with it. or how about gettting involved in whatever sport you do like and encourage children to play it.

you remind me of the people complaining about kilkenny dominance in hurling, that it was ruining the game. tipp folk decided to up their game to compete with them. something other associations should consider doing.

the GAA make mistakes, like everyone else, i agree this stadia building is unnecessary but for the most part they are extremely succesful - as you said yourself towns are dominated by GAA clubs!

and yes it is retarded what you said. you claimed the games were unskillful, now there are plenty of sports i do not like but i appreciate that there is skill involved in them. funny, if they were so unskillful you would have no bother reaching the top then! you clearly havent seen joe canning, henry shefflin, dj carey, colm cooper, padraig joyce, bernard brogan in action. i remember the australians being astounded when they saw marty clarke being able to chip up an oval ball - i wonder where he learned that :rolleyes:

i think you have outdone yourself on the silly post again complaining about the dominance of teams... yes because the premiership, serie A, la liga have different winners every year :rolleyes:

plus you show what you know, cork havent won the football championship since 1990 - down, donegal, derry, dublin, meath, kerry, galway, armagh and tyrone have all won it in the meantime.

and this years win for tipperary was only their 4th one in nearly 40 years.

ignorance is bliss

jackiebaron · 09-09-2010 03:10PM

How do you define Irish?
Irish as in a gombeen like John Hurt in "The Field" or John Mills in "Ryan's Daughter"?
Irish like D4 cock-wallopers?
Irish like Oscar Wilde?
Irish like a skanger?

I was raised in Dublin. Both parents from Cork and their parents all from Cork, ad infinitum. I was however hatched in London then brought back to Oireland as a baba. Got a Brit and Irish passport. Have a Dublin accent. Not D4 nor skanger but definitely a dub accent. Love fry-ups. Love spuds/cabbage...but that's just because I'm a foodie ....and love anything that's put in front of me whether it's oysters, carpaccio, moussaka, lamb tagine, borscht, goulash, sushi, shepherd's pie or simple cheesybeans on toast.
I like the GAA but don't follow it as I live abroad. The summer is a nice time to bob up to the Irish pub and watch a game of hurling or football on a Sunday....plus my girlfriend is Italian and it's entertaining to listen to her shriek with delight when a goal or point is scored in either hurling or football as she thinks these games are so much more enjoyable to watch than Premiership or Serie A. The punters get a kick out of it.

Definitely a Republican. But love England. Love their music, their grub (surprise surprise), their women, their pubs and countryside. I hate Kevin Myers and his pro-Crown toadying but I also loathe these gobsh!tes who won't let their kids play rugby or cricket in the park because "d'ere durty faaaarin games".
The only time I go into a church is when I'm visiting a new city. I like architecture and cathedrals do it for me. There's nothing quite like a cathedral minus the fückin' priest and congregation! Hate diddley-di music but like some of the ballads and the love songs that the Furey's sing. Musically I like just about everything from Abba to Rage Against the Machine. Just don't like jazz, country/western or diddley-di.

Am I Irish? Yeah....but I'm also a citizen of the global village. Going to eat German bratwurst tonight with Coleman's English Mustard AND Chef brown sauce smeared on it, olives, onions and gherkins, Kerrygold smeared on my Italian ciabatta and washed down with a tankard of Spanish rioja. Burp!

Top o' da maaaarnin' to ya!

fryup · 09-09-2010 03:11PM

onlyrocknroll wrote: »

I'm amazed that so many people 'hate' the GAA. I'm not a particularly big fan myself, just watch Cork Championship matches, and maybe provincial and all-Ireland finals really, but why would anybody hate a sport?

its not just the sport, its the whole narrowminded pseudo politcal ethos of the organisation

onlyrocknroll · 09-09-2010 03:11PM

xflyer wrote: »

I would question that. In my opinion the GAA has done more damage to this country than any other factor. For a start it encourages parochialism, your parish, town, county etc. If you live in some of the stronger GAA counties you don't dare not support your team.
.

More damage than, Cromwellian invasion, potato blight, political corruption, crippling poverty, sexual abuse, unemployment, civil war etc? Wow you really do hate the GAA.

Firstly what you call parochialism could just as easily called local and civic pride. Every small town in the country now has excellent sporting facilities and a culture of local cooperation and pride thanks the GAA, that is a phenomenal achievement.

The GAA has evolved beyond it's opposition to foreign games, I accept that this inward looking, narrow and exclusive conservatism was a negative aspect of the GAA, but it's wrong to tarnish the whole organisation over one flaw.

Finally its ridiculous to say that "if you live in some of the stronger GAA counties you don't dare not support your team." I live in Cork, I know countless people who support Kerry, Tipp, Limerick etc. I've never seen anything worse than a well intentioned slagging match between rival fans.

MingulayJohnny · 09-09-2010 03:19PM

Donkey Oaty wrote: »

How about "Nice to meet you. Can I buy you a drink?" Why should they be as small-minded as you?

Hold the reigns there , I was describing a possible scenario for the purpose of conveying a point. I don't know you and you don't me so don't make assumptions about me and I won't make assumptions about you. I've battled against small mindedness and still do in this country from rural to urban. If you knew how open minded I was ( which you have no way of knowing either way ) you wouldn't be jumping to conclusions. Please don't go down the same internet forum spiral of accusuations and presumptions. But if you want to regard me as small minded it's a relatively free country so assume away.

topper75 · 09-09-2010 03:26PM

It's all in the haplotypes children. Check your haplotypes and you'll know. If you don't have the haplotype, leave your key at reception and we'll forward the refund to your correct country.

The first Irish human genome sequence provides insight into the population structure of this branch of the European lineage which has a distinct ancestry from other published genomes. At 11 fold genome coverage approximately 99.3% of the reference genome was covered and more than 3 million SNPs were detected, of which 13% were novel and may include specific markers of Irish ancestry. We provide a novel technique for SNP calling in human genome sequence using haplotype data and validate the imputation of Irish haplotypes using data from the current Human Genome Diversity Panel (HGDP-CEPH). Our analysis has implications for future re-sequencing studies and suggests that relatively low levels of genome coverage, such as that being used by the 1000 genomes project, should provide relatively accurate genotyping data. Using novel variants identified within the study, which are in linkage disequilibrium with already known disease associated SNPs, we illustrate how these novel variants may point towards potential causative risk factors for important diseases. Comparisons with other sequenced human genomes allowed us to address positive selection in the human lineage and to examine the relative contributions of gene function and gene duplication events. Our findings point towards the possible primacy of recent duplication events over gene function as indicative of a genes likelihood of being under positive selection. Overall we demonstrate the utility of generating targeted whole genome sequence data in helping to address general questions of human biology as well as providing data to answer more lineage-restricted questions.

onlyrocknroll · 09-09-2010 03:29PM

Also, as for the charge of being 'narrowminded' (sic)

The way in which the GAA has promoted the women's game is extremely progressive in a way that no other field sport is.

Throughout rural conservative Ireland women's GAA is taken seriously by players and supporters in a way that women's rugby or soccer could never compete with.

Perhaps this isn't as true at inter-county level (I know somebody on the Cork ladies football team who complains of lack of support, and the treatment of the teams and supporters at Croke Park by the stewards in the past has been embarrassingly poor) but at ground level the GAA has been very progressive in this respect.

onlyrocknroll · 09-09-2010 03:42PM

xflyer wrote: »

I would suggest that if you really are Irish then you are more interested in the country as a whole rather than what's happening with the local GAA in your dull little town in the midlands or somewhere.

Nice little bit of snobbery to finish your point there.

MingulayJohnny · 09-09-2010 03:47PM

fryup wrote: »

its not just the sport, its the whole narrowminded pseudo politcal ethos of the organisation

I grew up in rural Ireland and never broke into the GAA scene , was more into just playing in the countryside when I was a kid. I do enjoy watching hurling sometimes though. I'm proud to be Irish despite our hang ups. I'm proud of my language , culture , character and music but not to the exclusion of other cultures. I'm not going to lie I've got issues with the GAA and some of it's members from my own homeplace anyway even though I've mellowed a bit lately in the way I view the GAA.

In the parish where I'm from a lot of but not all of the members are narrow minded and hostile to anything that's perceived to be different or eccentric. Judging by their carry on of some of them they seem to think that they're the continuation of the Fianna or something. I've encountered this attitude from GAA fans after matches in Drumcondra also.

I went to the Galway\Kilkenny match in Croke park recently , it was the first time I'd been in the stadium since it was renovated. I got to see and meet a broader cross section of GAA fans and it surprised me. I think it's like any large group , it's a mixed bag. Still won't be making friends with my local crowd anytime soon though.

How Irish are you?

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