THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF IRISH SOCCER
It is the World Cup, and there is but one question on the nation's lips: Can we beat Saudi Arabia? It may seem a silly question. After all, this (frankly appalling) German team stuffed them eight nil. Surely we can get at least two up on them? And yet, I can't be confident. Ireland seems to have a pathological tendency to draw, and a draw here will not do. This has plagued us through previous world cups and still dogs us now. How many times have you said 'We should have won that one'? We always seem to just win by the skin of our teeth, or only just lose. And most of the time, we draw. If you could win the World Cup by drawing every match in the tournament, we'd be away on a hack.
I'm really suspecting that this is an aspect of national psychology. We don't pretend to be the greatest country in the world - but we'll be damned if we let anyone treat us as inferior. As historic underdogs, we don't fight to conquer. We fight to assert our equality. Really, proving our equality is all we want. This is why we have a remarked-upon tendency to celebrate draws as if they were victories. When we actually win something we get a bit uncomfortable and embarrassed about it. It seems bizarre to assert that these characteristics are relevant on the level of a national soccer team, when all the members are professionals - and most of them play in England anyway. But the group psychology is not to be denied, and when everybody at this level is intensely trained and magnificently fit, psychology could be the one thing that makes all the difference.
This goes back a hell of a long way. From the battle of Clontarf, a memorable win against the Danes spoiled by our team captain getting the ultimate red card, to the war of independence, only a victory at all by the narrowest of margins. (And the civil war was definitely nil-nil at home.) This may also explain why we are still keen on a foreign policy of neutrality, even though we no longer have anyone to be neutral at. We get through by only just winning, or by not losing too much. This is exactly the right psychology for a real warrior, who must always win while at the same time making as few enemies as possible, but it doesn't win world cups. We don't have a killer instinct, we have a survivor instinct.
So where's our motivation to beat Saudi Arabia? The Germans screwed them into the ground simply because they could. We don't think that way. The danger is we may literally be too nice to beat them. After all, they really do seem like fish in a barrel, the underdogs of the entire tournament. And we empathise with underdogs.
I suggest we get beyond the personal, beyond winning and losing the game, and try instead to fight for something larger. We ought to concentrate on what a frankly terrible country Saudi Arabia is. An extreme autocratic monarchy, a country of aristocratic and clerical domination. A throwback virtually to the middle ages that has only managed to continue unchanged because the west wants its oil on friendly terms. Most of all, one of the worst countries in the world to be born a woman.
Let's win this match on behalf of women everywhere.