I'm an Irishman and I support England — it's not easy to say that
England's Harry Kane (centre), Ollie Watkins (centre right), Nico O'Reilly (right) and Declan Rice celebrate after their win over Mexico on Sunday.
On the morning of the recent World Cup clash between England and Mexico, the supermarket giant Aldi posted a video on their social media channels which perpetuated a tiresome and belaboured stereotype.
The clip’s headline read “Irish people doing their shop before tonight’s game.” It then featured happy shoppers packing their bags into the boots of their cars. All of them were wearing ponchos and sombreros.
Never mind the outdated depiction of Mexican culture, reduced to Trump-level clichés, the advertisement exploited the “Anyone But England” trope, sustaining the idea that Irish people are still locked into an ancient prejudice against our nearest neighbours. Willing to support anyone except the old enemy.
Are we still that country which bitterly resents the success of our former coloniser? Or have we evolved to a level of national and collective maturity which would allow us to absorb up to a million unionists in a United Ireland, many of whom will continue to identify deeply with Britishness?
I’m an Irishman and I support England. It’s not easy to say that. I immediately picture the Stephen Rea meme, as his character in
scribbles down the names of dissenters to the cause. I have to confess my support with trepidation, never confident how such a position could be taken.
But it shouldn’t be this way. We’re a modern and successful European nation in our own right. Let the 800 years of oppression go, lads. It wreaks of begrudgery. We can acknowledge injustice without being enslaved by its legacy.
Does the data back up the narrative that we are still constipated by our animus to the English? The numbers are conflicted. A recent poll by Ticketmaster found that England was the team that Irish people intended to support the most during the World Cup, at 13%.
Conversely, Novibet conducted their own research which found that the Irish take a perverse joy in witnessing the shattering of the Three Lions’ dream. Their numbers show that 70% of Irish football fans enjoy seeing England knocked out of major tournaments.
put the question directly to the people during the Euros in 2024 and found that 54% of respondents would support “anyone but England”. The “Anyone but England” narrative is poisonous bigotry, yet it’s treated with lighthearted redundancy as a “bit of craic”.
Etsy is currently selling t-shirts emblazoned with this phrase [available in five different colours!], created by a Scottish crowd who harbour similar issues to ourselves.
I lived in the UK for five years. I have a brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are both English. My father brought me to London to see a West End show when I was a small child and it ignited in me a love for the English capital, an impossibly exotic place for a child growing up in 1980s/90s Ireland.
I like British culture…the literature, films and history in particular. Again, this isn’t something you hear Irish people say, because we are reluctant to attribute so many of the things we love and enjoy to Britishness — the Premier League, romantic comedies, Wimbledon, Britpop, Cheltenham, classic sitcoms.
We prefer to admire them as individual institutions that are divorced from their nationality. Just look at how many Irish people support individual English football clubs with religious levels of devotion, yet can’t stomach their national team.
We’re not helped in our quest to move beyond the simplistic ritual of England bashing by those who seek to mischievously capitalise off it.
In 2024, the gambling company TonyBet erected a billboard in Dublin during the Euros, a tournament we failed to qualify for. The slogan? “There are still 23 teams you can support.” But there were 24 teams. England doesn't count.
In 2019, the ASAI upheld complaints against Paddy Power over an advertisement they ran ahead of Ireland’s Six Nations clash with England. It contained the line, "Sorry for the last two years of pain, suffering and humiliation. Another 798 and we'll be even.”
The complainants claimed that the ad was "stirring up anti-English feelings, and both highly insensitive and bigoted towards English people".
Does all this needless and petty showboating work both ways? Back in 1994, England failed to make it to the World Cup finals in the States, while Ireland basked in the glory days of the Charlton Era.
Rather than eyeing us with bitter envy, the English media embraced their neighbour’s success. BBC sports journalist Chris Bevan said that Ireland was "adopted by many British fans, myself included, in the absence of any home-nation qualifiers".
Despite this magnanimity, just one year later the entente dissolved when the Lansdowne Road riot broke out during the fixture between the Republic of Ireland and England, in February 1995. I can still remember watching it unfold on TV at home as a 12-year-old boy, not understanding why the England supporters were tearing up the seats and lobbing them onto the pitch.
Where does all this lead us on the road to redemption? The comedy troupe summed up our conflicted feelings in a recent sketch. Satirising an Irish fellow’s discomfort with watching England play, the message was essentially, “I don’t want them to lose but I also don’t want them to win.”
Is ambivalence the best we can hope for?
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
