Significance of Poppy

Was that snide ‘poppycock’ headline over that reader’s letter from Australia about Roy Keane wearing a poppy meant to be humorous?

If so, it’s beneath contempt, as 4,000 Cork men died in the Great War to save Europe from Prussian militarism. The poppy symbolises the sacrifice of all those who gave their lives.

Roy Keane is a Cork icon, he is not in thrall to some outdated notion of Irishness that makes the recognition of the men who served in khaki something to be airbrushed out of Irish popular imagination.