Sevconia is upset tonight, and I had a feeling it would be. The moment it became clear that the IFA was going to proceed with banning Lafferty from playing this weekend I knew there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth about the “unfairness” of it all.
Now, personally, as someone who doesn’t particularly care about international football I feel their pain.
I really do.
The last thing I want to see is associations taking action against clubs because players pull out of international squads. It’s a stupid rule. It’s the clubs who pay their wages, after all, and especially when the games involved are friendly matches of no value at all and where players might get injured.
Yet I have no sympathy for the Peepul at all.
You see, the problem they have isn’t with unfairness at all; it’s with disloyalty. Everyone agrees the rule is stupid, so their demanding that Griffiths be treated the same way cuts no slack with me I’m afraid, and nor with anyone else.
Let me tell you why their issue is with disloyalty.
First of all, the national association that did this to them, the IFA, is that of the north of Ireland, that “nation” to which they pretend some allegiance. Its authorities have never given a monkeys about them, and that should have been obvious long before now. The FAI is the body that represents teams in the south, so some of those pitiful souls wailing on social media today about a “sectarian” organisation disadvantaging them need to get their facts right.
How tragic that the royal Loyal north of Ireland federation has done them up like this.
How dreadfully treasonous.
Some of their fans had turned on that association before now, of course, because of the likes of Lennon, but they really are a desperate bunch to have believed that it owed them something because of some perceived allegiance.
But the real target for their vitriol – and some of them have said as much – is the disloyal Alex McLeish, who alone had the power to insist that Scotland did the same to Griffiths and hasn’t bothered to. When he was appointed he was supposed to be “on the right side” but this has convinced some of them that he and his SFA bosses are still out to get them.
These gibbering lunatics see conspiracy everywhere; now the Grand Unseen Hand has McLeish dancing on the strings, as well as the Northern Irish national team. By God, that hand gets an awful lot done and it has longer reach than any of us imagined.
Honestly, they are a pitiful shower. That they are moaning about this shows how little joy there is in the world for them at the moment. Those orange shirts don’t mean a thing; the organisations and institutions they are pledged to hold them in contempt.
Seems you can’t trust anybody these days.
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