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THE IRISH WOMEN’S football team talk a lot about impact.
“For us, fundamentally as a team, we don’t just want to create history. We want to leave a legacy,” Katie McCabe said yesterday on the eve of her World Cup debut.
When she leads Ireland out to play Australia at 8pm (11am Irish time), there will be about 75,000 people watching on in a sold-out Stadium Australia, where athletics legend Sonia O’Sullivan secured an Olympic medal 23 years ago.
It’s thought that more than one-third of that 75,000-strong crowd will be shouting for the girls in green, rather than the Matildas, despite their star player Sam Kerr telling reporters yesterday she believed the entire stadium would be on her side.
With so many Irish living in Australia, the opening game has become a catalyst for long-promised reunions between friends. But there is also a travelling contingent of about 4,000 people who flew from Ireland during the past week.
While their demographic is largely young, female and sports loving, there are also families, married couples, retired friends and parent-adult child pairings making the trip.
There are League of Ireland aficionados, Coygig super fans and the odd bandwagoner.
Spotting the Irish fan is not a difficult journalistic task. Neither is getting them to talk to you.
Many were seeking out a buzz and a chat with a fellow fan once they landed at Sydney airport and were greeted by Fifa Women’s World Cup signs.
“There is a lot of good vibes across the place once people spot the jersey and scarves,” says Liz Ferris, who is wearing a Bray Wanderers jersey when we first meet her (we are on our second and third meetings given the moth/flame nature of Irish people abroad).
“I’ve followed League of Ireland for years and to see the women do well at this stage has been fantastic,” her daughter Aine Breathnach says by way of explanation for the world-crossing trip.
“I was in France in 2016 for the Euros so to see the women reach this height is fantastic. Hopefully, fingers crossed, it’ll continue.”
Liz says Aine decided to come when she realised her mother was going with or without her.
“I’m here to take care of the others,” quips their friend, Pauline, to a quick retort of: “To make sure we go home.”
The trio are, like many others who travelled, extremely optimistic and have tickets for the knock-out stages if Ireland make it through their group of death.
“We’ve been to Poland and France with the men but I played Leinster League for years – it’s the one thing I miss, getting old, is not playing anymore. We switched to being a major supporter. This is a trip of a lifetime. To be here at the first time, it’s special,” adds Liz.
And, ever the football fanatic, Aine lets it be known they “also have tickets to the France Brazil game so we can enjoy the atmosphere without the heart attack at the end of it”.
Yesterday, they did a practice trip to the stadium and ‘got goosebumps’ when it coincided with a runthrough of the national anthems and they heard Amhrán na bhFiann being pumped out of the tannoy.
The atmosphere at the game tomorrow is something fan Aisling Hyland from Athy, county Kildare, thinks will launch a higher pitched football fever back in Ireland.
“I think it’ll be the first time there will have been a big buzz about women’s sport in Ireland. I know at home, it’s still not really being picked up yet, but it will this week when they see how many Irish are out there.”
Her partner Liz Hyland, from Suncroft in Kildare, has been practising what she preaches – bringing her two teenage daughters to the matches in Tallaght.
“We are the generation who are bringing girls more into sport,” she explains. “We are pushing more into it. We had the 2020 campaign and it’s given the visibility to it and brought attention to it. At the France game, there were men there with their sons.”
Aisling adds: “There are guys going around with [Denise] O’Sullivan on their back – that’s class.”
Jim Ryan doesn’t quite have O’Sullivan’s name on his back but his football fan credentials are rock solid.
A Cork man, he has been at every major tournament that Irish football teams have qualified for – from the Euros in Stuttgart 88 to Sydney 2023. He’s also thrown a few other sports into the event mix, including the cricket and hockey world cups.
If there’s an Irish team needs supporting, he’s there with his friends and his flag.
Echoing sentiments from Liz, Aine and Pauline, Ryan also has tickets for the last-16 matches for himself and his three travel companions, Mairead O’Callaghan, John James and Eileen Martin (a lone Kerry woman amongst Rebels).
Invoking good vibes, Ryan tells The Journal, “I was here in 2000 for Sonia getting her medal so I’m looking forward to going back to the stadium.”
Laughing at the number of tournament anecdotes, Mairead notes: “We’re only in the ha’penny league compared to him.”
Roisin McHugh and Jen Breen – of Galway and Kerry (‘so more traditionally a GAA supporter of course’) – could give him competition for a record number of events some day.
“We had actually planned to come to the World Cup before Ireland had even qualified,” says Róisín, who lived in Australia for eight years and is reuniting with her brother during the tournament.
“Then Ireland qualified and we thought, ‘This is going to be the best trip ever’.
“So I made my little spreadsheet when the draw was announced and we got a ticket to every single permutation of a match that Ireland could be in, all the way to the final.
The couple has been following the women’s national team for about four years, and their hope is derived from Ireland’s 3-2 win over the Matildas in Tallaght two years ago.
“When I left, the Matildas were big. They were getting to World Cups, and Olympics, and we’d get up early doors in Australia to watch them around the world. So when I got back, I wanted to support Ireland,” explains Roisin.
“When Australia came to Tallaght, we were there. We met Sam Kerr. We beat them. We have hope,” Jen adds – wonderfully succinct commentary.
The Mercantile near Sydney Harbour has been the meeting point for Irish fans so far this week in the city.
A family-of-five caught my eye on my scavenger hunt for fans. “Irish people who have emigrated and settled here,” I thought.
But no. Football-mad Aisling Keane, and her two little sisters, are in Australia as she was dogged in her drawdown of a promise from her parents.
“We were watching the qualifying matches… and during one of them my husband said to my eldest daughter, ‘If they qualify, we’ll totally go see them in the World Cup’,” explains Aisling’s mother, Sinéad Keane.
“And then we saw Amber Barrett’s goal against Scotland, and when the final whistle went, she turned around and went, ‘Dad, when are we going?’”
“It was an expensive promise,” continues Paul.
Despite Sinead and Paul both having GAA backgrounds, the three children are football mad.
Aisling, who is involved with the FAI’s emerging talent programme in Dublin, particularly.
“People think we push her into it but we don’t, just once she has a ball she’s happy,” says Sinead.
“She is like, ‘When I’m playing for Ireland, ‘When I’m in my World Cup’… it’s happening. There is no doubt in her mind… which is really, really good. We don’t want to stamp on anyone’s dreams. It’s when, not if.”
The mother realises this is a new phenomenon.
“It means something. Girls didn’t have it until recently. The boys would have always had those expectations – ‘I’m going to be a footballer’ and nobody would have batted an eyelid.”
Paul picks up the theme: “This is a great opportunity for the FAI to see the potential in Ireland. We’ve been watching the underage teams, and there are unbelievably skillful girls out there. They just need the same level of coaching that is available to the boys – and we’ll be able to match the USA, Australia, anybody in the world.”
And Sinéad again: “We went to the first women’s league game that was televised and she was like, ‘Why is this the first game that is on TV?’ We didn’t have a good answer for her.”
The pair’s passion for the game – and their daughters’ happiness – is obvious as they riff off each other on the importance of girls’ participation.
“When Aisling comes home from school, she goes out practising. She watches clips on YouTube of skills and she tries to emulate those,” says Sinead.
“We know how important sport is to her life… so to have the opportunity to walk out in a stadium to see 80,000 people watching two female teams. I mean, that is a dream come true for her,” adds Paul.
“And it’s only the beginning. You can see the change in her from watching clips of male footballers to getting to watch more clips of the female footballers because there are much more of them and they are much more visible” – Sinead again.
“She knows their names, she can see them more on TV, they are much more publicised. It’s easier to now see the female role models that it used to be.”
How is she feeling about Thursday?
Paul: “It’s a dream come true for her.”
Sinead: “Like, she is overwhelmed excited.”
Paul: “Tears.”
Sinead: “We can’t believe we’re here, and she just thinks it’s amazing.”
To quote another woman of the moment Taylor Swift, and forgive our language, but ‘that’s a real f**king legacy to leave’.
Australia v Ireland kicks off at 11am Irish time. Sinéad O’Carroll and Emma Duffy are in Sydney reporting for The Journal and The 42. Subscribe to The 42 here.
I have always wondered if you have a massive big bathroom made completely from marble and gold does your shïte still smell?
Because this stinks to hell.
I’m sure that guy playin golf if from Cavan.
Painted horse. So tacky. I’m a unicorn man myself – more classy
Saddam, Gaddafi now this character – power corrupts etc.
Meanwhile back in Ireland we reward corrupt politicians with pensions much greater than the president of Ukraine’s salary. Wonder what the world would have thought if we had ousted Haughey and gone up to have a look round Kinsealy. Just googled Haughey’s house and Yanokovich has a long way to go before he reaches Irish standards.
Does anyone know if this is his private house or his state residence?
And don’t forget Haugheys ‘private island’ !!
I agree, but poor Enda I hope hasn’t a pad like this.
This also happened when Slobodan Mecockyebitch fled Serbia.
I don’t think he fled, wasn’t he arrested?
Petr, where have you been? So what do you think of this big house? It’s funny how you socialists end up living in big houses.
Btw, I see that your socialist paradise in Venezuela was all a mirage. Any thoughts on all of this?
@ Kenneth Sheehy: You live in a delusionary world, but I must admit that the banking world who have stolen billions upon billions from me and you ,our children and our children’s children and have gotten away scot free after manipulating the labor index etc are really thankful to people like you. In the US more and more hard working people are losing their jobs, houses and are being forced to take their children out of college . Peoples anger has being now being diverted to other governments world wide instead of clearing up our own total financial mess. I have gathered that you do not like to hear any alternative views to your own , but please let your defensive(fear) barrier down for 5 minutes and look at following link.
All wars are bankers wars : http://thegic.org/video/all-wars-are-bankers-wars
Sorry Libor index,
Padraic, you live in Russia so how did the banks steal money from you? And you say billions. So you were a billionaire? Please tell me how you came into this fortune?
Should the US government now also not be overthrown ?? If you have children this should worry you. NY Times: Afghan Opium Kingpin On CIA Payroll
A bombshell article in today’s edition of the New York Times lifts the lid on how the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a suspected kingpin of the country’s booming opium trade, has been on the CIA payroll for the past eight years. However, the article serves as little more than a whitewash because it fails to address the fact that one of the primary reasons behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the agenda to reinstate the Golden Crescent drug trade.
“The agency pays (Ahmed Wali) Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home,” reports the Times.
An October 2008 report from the Times reveals how, after security forces discovered a huge tractor-trailer full of heroin outside Kandahar in 2004, “Before long, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs.”
In 2006, following the discovery of another cache of heroin, “United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai.”
The Times article out today also discusses how the CIA uses Karzai as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban. He is also directly implicated in the manufacturing of phony ballots and polling stations that were attributed to the President’s disputed election victory.
“If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” the American officer said of Mr. Karzai. “Our assumption is that he’s benefiting from the drug trade.”
Officials quoted by The Times described Karzai as a Mafia-like figure who expanded his influence over the drug trade with the aid of U.S. efforts to eliminate his competitors.
[efoods]
The Afghan opium trade has exploded since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, following a lull after the Taliban had imposed a crackdown. According to the U.N., the drug trade is now worth $65 billion. Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s opium, with the equivalent of 3,500 tonnes leaving the country each year. Other figures put the number far higher, at around 6,100 tonnes a year.
The New York Times exposé pins the blame on Karzai, but fails to explain that one of the primary reasons behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the United States’ agenda to restore, not eradicate, the drug trade.
Before the invasion, the Taliban collaborated closely with the U.N. to reduce opium production down to just 185 tonnes, a figure at least 2000% below current levels. The notion that the “Taliban benefits from the drug trade” and that the U.S. is trying to stop it, as both Bush and Obama claimed, is the complete opposite of what is actually happening.
As Professor Michel Chossudovsky has highlighted in a series of essays, the explosion of opium production after the invasion was about the CIA’s drive to restore the lucrative Golden Crescent opium trade that was in place during the time when the Agency were funding the Mujahideen rebels to fight the Soviets, and flood the streets of America and Britain with cheap heroin, destroying lives while making obscene profits.
Heroin re exploded onto the streets after the invasion I have always had my doubts about the official reason for going into Afghanistan
You mean 9/11 Glen? The training camps all training fighters to attack thr West
Oh ok
Truth hurts
Wow that’s amazing, the people of the Ukraine can now get back to growing poppies again and restart the heroin production ….. yawn
James
What’s your take on the heroin situation you do have an opinion I’m assuming you have all the facts
James
Explain this to me how come heroin production jumped from less than 10% to over 90% when Afghanistan was invaded
HSBC have being fined a few billion Dollars for instance because they knowingly dealt with money from Jihadist terrorists, Mexican drug cartels etc, etc, and fines for manipulating the libor index. A small fraction of the money they stole from investors, and in the last instance from the taxpayer. Possible criminal charges ? Emphases of course on the word “Possible”. Noteworthy here is the fact that the vast amounts of money in the form of bonuses, etc that individual traders have walked away with will never be recuperated .
Goldman Sachs for instance used a double strategy in 2007. Firstly by misleading investors over the quality of the mortgage backed securities which it sold, and secondly by betting against them. A win , win situation. In 2007 Goldman earned a net profit of 11.4 billion dollars (a record sum) while its top 5 executives split 322 million among themselves (also a record)
In comparison : HO CHI MINH CITY, Nov 15 — A Vietnam court sentenced two former executives to death in a fraud trial, underscoring the government’s efforts to clamp down on corporate corruption while cleaning up its banking system.
I don’t advocate the latter of course, but just to show the difference in attitude. In Vietnam you get the death sentence and at Goldman you give yourself a 65 million bonus. At Goldman Sachs, although it underwrote billions of dollars of mortgage securities, parallel to this, a small group of traders were given the assignment to organize a well-timed proprietary bet that the housing bubble would collapse and the securities would rapidly loose value. They won of course ( in both cases) This is similar to selling somebody a sick horse, and then rushing off to the betting shop to bet the horse loses the race .Message is: We need to look closer to home instead of allowing our attention to be diverted to foreign ports.
That sure is an interesting story you have managed to put forward Padraic. However what you have just posted is nothing more than a copy and paste word-for-word hack job from this website:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/ny-times-afghan-opium-kingpin-on-cia-payroll.html
That site is run by Alex Jones. At the beginning of the month you told me that you have never heard of him:
http://www.thejournal.ie/al-qaeda-1291191-Feb2014/#comments
Yet on this article and the one on the Syrian rebels you have posted links to his website:
http://www.thejournal.ie/syria-rebels-guide-1299301-Feb2014/#comments
Here is a small clip of Alex (the person who you keep directing people to) in full on action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhvaI07jmkA
Why do you keep linking content from that deranged lunatic?
I have also checked that link that you posted:
http://thegic.org/video/all-wars-are-bankers-wars
And the person who wrote it is Michael Rivero, who worked for none other than, you guessed it, Alex Jones.
Here is the ACTUAL article from the New York times and not the train wreck of conspiracy nonsense that can be found over at prison planet:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
And lastly yes, Ahmed Wali Karzai did (or maybe he even still does) work with the CIA, yet to say he somehow works for them and cultivates and sells heroin is laughable considering you have (yet again on this site) given no evidence to back up your claims.
Alex Jones has been outed as a disinfo agent and probably works for the same people he is warning about
He tells you to do your own research and that is about the only honest thing he says he is a fraud
But the fact still remains that heroin production has increased since the invasion
Ouch!
Game, set and match to Liam… :-)
T@ Liam I worry about the world in which my children will grow up in, You not ? ::t :The 2001 bombing and invasion of Afghanistan has been presented to World public opinion as a “Just War”, a war directed against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, a war to eliminate “Islamic terrorism” and instate Western style democracy. The economic dimensions of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) are rarely mentioned. The post 9/11 “counter-terrorism campaign” has served to obfuscate the real objectives of the US-NATO war.
The war on Afghanistan is part of a profit driven agenda: a war of economic conquest and plunder, ”a resource war”.
While Afghanistan is acknowledged as a strategic hub in Central Asia, bordering on the former Soviet Union, China and Iran, at the crossroads of pipeline routes and major oil and gas reserves, its huge mineral wealth as well as its untapped natural gas reserves have remained, until June 2010, totally unknown to the American public.
According to a joint report by the Pentagon, the US Geological Survey (USGS) and USAID, Afghanistan is now said to possess “previously unknown” and untapped mineral reserves, estimated authoritatively to be of the order of one trillion dollars (New York Times, U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com, June 14, 2010, See also BBC, 14 June 2010). deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
Afghanistan is a land bridge. The 2001 U.S. led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has been anallised by critics of US foreign policy as a means to securing control over the strategic trans-Afghan transport corridor which links the Caspian sea basin to the Arabian sea.
Several trans-Afghan oil and gas pipeline projects have been contemplated including the planned $8.0 billion TAPI pipeline project (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India) of 1900 km., which would transport Turkmen natural gas across Afghanistan in what is described as a “crucial transit corridor”. (See Gary Olson, Afghanistan has never been the ‘good and necessary’ war; it’s about control of oil, The Morning Call, October 1, 2009). Military escalation under the extended Af-Pak war bears a relationship to TAPI. Turkmenistan possesses third largest natural gas reserves after Russia and Iran. Strategic control over the transport routes out of Turkmenistan have been part of Washington’s agenda since the collapse of the Soviet union in 1991.
Note
1. The Golden Crescent trade in opiates constitutes, at present, the centerpiece of Afghanistan’s export economy. The heroin trade, instated at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 and protected by the CIA, generates cash earnings in Western markets in excess of $200 billion dollars a year. Since the 2001 invasion, narcotics production in Afghanistan has increased more than 35 times. In 2009, opium production stood at 6900 tons, compared to less than 200 tons in 2001. In this regard, the multibillion dollar earnings resulting from the Afghan opium production largely occur outside Afghanistan. According to United Nations data, the revenues of the drug trade accruing to the local economy are of the order of 2-3 billion annually. In contrast with the Worldwide sales of heroin resulting from the trade in Afghan opiates, in excess of $200 billion. (See Michel Chossudovsky, America’s War on Terrorism”, Global Research, Montreal, 2005)
Where do you work Padraic?
Unfortunately as soon as you start referencing infowars and global research you’ve lost a huge amount of credibility in the eyes of most rational people.
Note: UN data
@Jeremy Usborne: its not a question of where I work or do not work. I have two small children and worry about the world in which they will grow up. Can you please dispel for me the points I have made ,one for one ,Thank you.
Are you related to Jim Corr?
@ Tom Brennan : Counter evidence please that the CIA are not totally involved in the drug trade. I have offered my version . and now you. Please confirm for me that they are not. Ok
It’s unreal tbh, you present people with cold hard facts, actual quotes and they simply don’t believe because it’s not on their 24 hour news channel. Simple.
Perhaps you should google “russell’s teapot” Padraic.
It would upset thier lives and beliefs
Liam nicely done. But……
Is it really worth the hassle. Its a crack pot on the journal. Hardly an out of the ordinary occurrence is it.
Padraic, you are spewing nonsense!
Interesting Facebook profile he has.
Jeremy, who? Padraic?
@ James – I think it is worth the hassle. Although many people can see the nonsense for what it is when coming from people like Padraic and people like him, some people can fall for it.
I’ve been on the Journal for about two years now and back then the site didn’t really suffer from an onslaught of crack pots.
@ Padraic – So you decided to copy and paste (yet again) from someone. This time being Michel Chossudovsky. The only difference between him and Jones is that Chossudovsky has the title professor.
But the man is no less of a nut job. Chossudovsky states that the U.S. has weapons that can start climate change and saying that the holocaust didn’t happen.
http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/article.php?id=1998&start=1
http://www.wordsandwar.com/2009/04/20/antisemite-academic-in-ottawa-eh/#more-1926
Again, just like yourself, not credible.
Padraic. You keep banging on about how the banks stole your children future but yet you say Russia is debt free. And you have told us on many occasions that you live and work in Russia so how have the banks stolen your kids future? I mean if you are in a Debt free Russia then the banks have taken nothing from you or your kids or are you one of these people that if someone is cut ten thousand miles away you bleed too?
Good man Liam with the information, you really showed Padraig up huh?(LOL) , the ol’ conspiracy theorist nutjob shiite, but if you take away the personalities (Alex Jones truly is a wackjob) behind it is cold hard facts, quotes from the people themselves, but its easier not to have to swallow this and just go with the old mainstream media mantra aint it.
Sure I may input some more. In the early years of the Afghanistan war, coalition policy included widespread forced eradication. In June 2009, however, Barack Obama’s administration announced that U.S. and other international forces would no longer conduct eradication operations, on which the late Richard Holbrooke said the United States had “wasted hundreds of millions of dollars.”The sensible motivation for this reversal was recognition that eradication produced unintended consequences. Pulling up a farmer’s opium crop could generate ill will, perhaps enough to produce a new recruit for the insurgency. It was also geographically inconvenient. Afghanistan is a horrendously complicated place, but to oversimplify, two-thirds of the country (roughly 27 of 34 provinces) has been nearly poppy-free and relatively stable for a few years. The remaining third — in particular Helmand and Kandahar provinces — is rife with both poppies and insurgents. Eradication in those areas has a minimal and temporary effect on the drug trade, at most pushing production to the next valley or district. And angering farmers where Taliban recruiters prowl seemed like a gift to the enemy. So the Obama administration swore off direct support of eradication, though the governors of some Afghan provinces continue to pursue their own eradication programs.
Padraic, I did and it’s sheer rubbish!
Nope I don’t read things not fact based. Bitter man. I feel for yiur children not because of this dept bht because they are exposed to such hate bile and bitterness
Pretty shabby compared to Buckingham Palace.
Pretty extravagant compared to the average home in Ukraine! That’s what matters here Derek! You are still trying to turn the attention away from this guy.
His salary as president of Ukraine $100,000 and enda kennys as taoiseach is????
FFS Declan. His published salary is 100k, but it’s Ukraine! Did ye look at the photos???? Think a published 100k salary pays for that??? It’s many many multiples of that.
OK compare enda Kenny and David Cameron??
BTW that place was his state residence not private residence
What are you getting at?
Don’t like the taoiseach?
Do something about it then.
@Declan it was his private residence and Ukraine parliament have voted to confiscate it. So no, it’s not a state residence.
And that is 20 times average salary. But yanukovic is a billionaire and hia son too .
Options for him are pretty limited. He will most likely live a reclusive life in Russia or spend his days in a dank Ukrainian jail.
Leaders in Belarus and North Korea take note
Fair play to them for not looting the place.
The guy also had bottles of vodka with his picture on them, talk about been self indulgent nut job!
I seen some pictures yesterday and one of them was a hovercraft , you know you’re rich when you you have a hovercraft
he’s got good taste. Too bad he’ll never see it again. Crook.
Red thumbs? I doubt you understand the references. Do a bit of research.
I love how, the pictures were posted on imgur, were used by AFP for reporting and that article is on the journal… Like half the journal staff probably saw them on imgur before the AFP write up… Could have beaten them to it.
have your say