Police investigate racist incident in Limerick directed at Manchester City’s Gael Clichy

Georgie Boy. I thought you didn't like black people coming to Ireland?

Must have been some monkey in the crowd.

I still have good soccer contacts in Ireland from the time I was living in Dublin and rooting for St Patrick's. The word from Ireland is that it is believed that a number of Irish "supporters" of the rival Manchester team, Manchester United, attended the game with a view to causing trouble. It is believed that it was one of these who threw the banana. It was the action of a moron, of course. But it raises a more interesting sociological question than the well-worn one of supposed "racism". Why would groups of Irish people identify so much with a team from a city in a foreign country-England--that they would attend a game in order to cause disruption to another team from the same city? I'd bet my Social Security fund that of the 20.000 Irish "fans" present at the game (and I'll exclude the "fans" of the rival English team) 19.500 were rooting for the English team against the Irish one. I saw it myself on one occasion in Dublin, when Irish "fans" of the London team Hotspur were actually booing and jeering the Irish team they were playing against. Now that's pathological, and more revealing of the Irish psyche than are the actions of some drunken fool.