Ireland's European Championship dream annihilated at the hands of Spain

@sirpeter why dont you lot in the free state stick to playing gaa sports as you cant play the so called foreign sports such as cricket, rugby or football? I am so glad the free staters ended up with 0 points and the first homeward bound. Still i told you so. The Republic is pants is every area of life. Economics, sports, culture except for causing violence. Take the Olympic torch going to the peace bridge in Londonderry and a few SF caused it to be detoured. What were they complaining about? Hardly sports related or friendly was it? (Even although the torch was taken to Dublin as a peace gesture despite it being a foreign state). It just shows how petty the Nationalist really are. No-one has explained to anyone why they were protesting or what it was about. Does anyone know? Can anyone explain? Answers please @sirpeter @IrelandNorth

@citizen69 – good points again, which I grudgingly accept and respect because my own differing view is that, with a bigger pool of players to choose from, Irish players might make their presence in soccer Internationals of bigger impact – just might. Some pundit in the media recently made a scary prediction: that all the FA countries’ teams in the UK, plus the Republic, are so lacking in talent that they may soon become just titbit players on the European and World Cup soccer stages. The reason for that he says is that there are too many world class players from other countries playing at top level in the UK, preventing more native born players making it into top level teams to gain the necessary experience. Hard to disagree with that, so one can only hope he is wrong. It is ominous that many Nth & Sth Irish clubs are struggling financially – Monaghan FC is the latest casualty after Sporting Fingal to drop out of the LOI and Drogheda Utd are struggling to stay in business. The influence of UK matches on TV has sadly captured the average local soccer fans attention more than the real thing on the local pitches. Mine included… *shamed to admit*

Ah yez eejit Wou’nee and BTB!! – that language thing I gave is one of the oldest American jokes around Ireland and the internet. Where d’yez think I got it? Fair dues to the Irish soccer team for giving Italy a real game last night, what a fright night the Italians lived through!

Ah yez eejits Wou’nee and BTB – that language thing I gave is one of the oldest American jokes around I Ireland and the internet. Where d’yez think I got it? Fair dues to the Irish soccer team for giving Italy a real game last night, what a fright night the Italians lived through!

WoundedKnee, you need glasses or literacy training. Not your concern what teams we support. You have none in South Dakota or the US we have any interest in.

"We support our teams"... Which teams are those, Ciara? Manchester United? Glasgow Celtic? Bolton Athletic?

WoundedKnee, citizen69, etc. no one in Ireland asked you to watch our matches. We don't watch your US matches and could care less about what your teams or you do. If you don't like it watch something else. We support our teams and supporters in their thousands were there for them.

jacersagain, Americans speak hundreds of languages. You must be living under a rock.

My wife, who knows as little about soccer as does sir peter, observed to me that the Spanish players were to a man better-looking than their Irish counterparts. I had to agree with her. That Irish team needs to try out for that old TV program The Swan.

jacersagain: "A person who speaks one language is called an American". Dumb remark. Especially when you remember that the Irish can't even master two sentences in Irish, after maybe 14 years "learning" the language! Cad iad na teangacha atá ar do thoil agat féin? La verdad es que no te creo, apenas hablas inglés. Je suis bien certain que tu mens.

@jacersagain:... I can't help feeling though is that what we would end up with is a watered down Irish team in sense of identity that neither set of fans would be very happy with. Republic of Ireland fans like to wave their tricolours and sing their national anthem and Northern Ireland fans like to wave NI & Union flags and sing their anthem and there's nothing wrong with that. It's all about pride in your country. The thing with football is it has a much more working class support base than rugby and that is a section of society that i think is more polarized in terms of nationality, identity & politics. To be honest i don't think it would even improve the prospects of the team very much over the level at which the Republic's team is at now. Northern Ireland's IFA were still the only official Ireland team up until the 50's when a complaint from the Free State team promoted FIFA to rule that neither team could be called Ireland. the Republic pressured players from the south not to play for the IFA's Irish squad and banned transfer certificates for anybody that did. FIFA then ruled that players born in the Republic could not play for the North... pity that rule doesn't stand the other way around today! Too much water under the bridge i think. probably best left as is.

@jacersagain:... Now getting to the kit. Best to stick to the green & white as that's the colours both teams play in today, no need for a flash of orange as it would look like the tricolour! Maybe a green home kit and an orange away one, or is that going too far!? I understand your point about the Aviva stadium being the bigger & better stadium and that Republic fan's already travel from all over Ireland to see home games in Dublin but i guess they've always been used to that. It's not only about the length of travel though, it's about ownership as well. Seems a bit strange having to always travel to another country to see you 'home' team. In rugby they used to alternate between Dublin & Belfast where alternate anthems would be played depending on which territory they were in. Belfast was soon dumped though and even in a friendly game in 2007 when the Irish team played in Belfast after a long absence the IRFU refused to acknowledge it as a home game and stated that the team were playing "outside Ireland"!! Double standards if you ask me. Even when Windsor park gets redeveloped it probably wouldn't be considered for a home game...

@Jacersagain: Yes regarding the anthem, if there ever were a single Irish football team then Ireland's call or similar neutral anthem would be a good contender in place of any national anthem. Regarding the flag, i think your suggestion of the blue harp flag both interesting and inspired. This flag would possibly appeal to unionists as it is also part of the royal standard flag of the British royal family. As for your point that unionists in NI should never feel left out of the Republic’s Tricolour, well that's just the point... while everyone in the North is aware of what the orange stands for it's still the REPUBLIC's tricolour and that is it's only use in an official capacity. Unionists strictly see it as a flag of the Republic, a different country...

@ ciaradexy, you dearie-ex - the person you call “little Anne there” is a living human person, like you. For all you and I know, she might be 6’6” tall and not at all, not atall atall atall ‘little’, well used to hard and kind work for her family. I invited you, if you were a decent person, to apologise to her for your derogative comments about her if you and that other non-appreciative person, Bythebay, were decent people. Neither of you did. No, don’t attempt to flip over things: it’s a fact that you didn’t apologise up to now. No! Don’t give me and other ICentral readers your poor excuses. You didn’t apologise. Does that mean that I, and a lot of other ICentral readers, should slot you both in to the “indecent’ class of people in the world that we share with grannie Anne?

(…finally may I say that) Personally, I think it’s a shame that the 26-county Football Association of Ireland broke away from the original founding 32-county body for soccer in Ireland, the Irish Football Association. It should have remained one body just like the Golfing Union of Ireland, the Rugby Union of Ireland and other sports did. As a Dubliner I'd say, in sport terms, that it should be the FAI that should be going back to the IFA, cap in hand like a prodigal son. That 32-county soccer selection that played against the mighty Brazilians in the ‘70s (4-3 to the Samba dancers) showed what could be achieved if they had remained as one soccer association. Things have changed meantime and it’s true that the granny-rule has brought a lot of English-, Scottish- and Welsh-born players playing for Nth Ireland and Rep of Ireland teams (why don’t Irish-American soccer players like Landon Donovan declare for Irish teams??? Eh?). All Irish soccer is now just a feeding ground for mainland British clubs, where few native-born players make it to international standard. If only we could leave politics out of sport altogether, all would be much grander… My view would be that we should push for a change in sporting anthem to ‘Ireland Calls’, dump the oul’ ‘olé, olé, olay olay’, maintain the shout “C’mon you boys in green!” and fly the Harp-centred blue flag instead of the Tricolour at these international events. At least then, perhaps, we all Irish can avoid annihilation such as we suffered in Gdansk. Just don’t get me going about the Irish rugby team’s performances in New Zealand… please! Just pls don’t!