Recently the Republic of Ireland U19 squad played against Sweden.
Ireland won 2-1.
This, hopefully, is another good crop of young Irish players that can break into the top level within a few years.
Last year the same squad, in the main, comprised the RoI U17 squad.
In March 2008 the U17 lads played against Finland at Kilkenny.
What was different about this fixture was that there was a scout from Rangers present.
My sources in the FAI thought that the Ibrox scout was watching RoI players, but he may also have been checking out a Finnish lad.
That was more than a year ago, since then Rangers have made no enquires for any of those players who wore the green of the Republic that night in Kilkenny.
The Rangers scout hasn’t been seen since.
I contacted FIFA registered agents based in Ireland who represented these lads and I was told that not a single one had been contacted by the Ibrox club.
One of the Dublin based agents, a chirpy talkative northerner who studied law at Trinity and who is from the Rangers side of the street, was quite unequivocal:
“there is still a huge barrier there,” he said.
I asked him to clarify what he meant.
“Well would you want to be an Irish lad going to Rangers?”
It was a powerful question.
A source in the FAI stated to me that, in his opinion, the Irish lads who had yet to win a move over to Britain would rather stay playing league of Ireland than go to Ibrox.
Clearly Rangers have an image problem among Irish players.
That image problem is largely, of course, of their own making.
The Famine song hasn’t helped or the fact that there are Rangers supporters in Dublin who have a banner saying that they are “Behind Enemy Lines”.
It isn’t that difficult to see why young Irish lads might be put off signing for Rangers.
Those Rangers fans that sing the Famine song and see nothing wrong with that racist ditty and believe that the “Behind Enemy Lines” banner is acceptable “banter” are probably beyond any non-clinical help.
This is the classic chicken and egg situation for those who own and run Rangers.
Any objective third party –say someone at UEFA headquarters in Switzerland-would look at the situation.
What would they find?
Well we have a club that has a section of fans that are openly racist to citizens of a neighbouring nation.
This racism has seen some of these supporters before the courts.
Moreover the club had not signed a player from that country for 50 years.
Coinicidence?
I have been informed that in the 1980s Rangers had at least one Catholic player in the youth team.
It was a start.
Perhaps this is a clever way to break a previous discriminatory barrier.
No one saw the Maurice Johnstone signing coming.
Rangers supporter’s buses were cancelled and some outrages fans burned their Rangers scarves outside Ibrox, but it didn’t last.
Ten years later Rangers had a Catholic captain.
In the 1950 and 1960s there may have been hesitancy from some players who were Catholics to play for Rangers-had they been asked.
An apologist for the club could have said,  “ Well what Catholic would want to come and play for Rangers?”
However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that there was a signing ban on Catholics.
People like Sandy Jardine and Walter Smith have openly and unequivocally stated the existence of the ban on Catholic players at Ibrox.
Sandy Jardine even stated that when he had joined the club in the early 1960s that there were no members of staff, never mind players, who were Catholics.
It was just one of those things.
Unstated, but implicitly understood by everyone.
So there was a ban on Catholics playing for Rangers. The ban is no more.
How did we know there was a ban?
There wasn’t a single Catholic in the team.
Slowly Rangers were shamed into signing a Catholic.
Most sports journalists working in Scotland at that time managed to get through their working day without mentioning that Rangers was operating a ban on Catholic players.
There were, of course, honourable exceptions like the late Ian Archer.
The current generation of sports journalists in Scotland report on the anti-Irish  “Famine song” en passant and fail to mention that Rangers have not signed a player from the Republic of Ireland in 50 years.
As in the 1970s the exception in the sporting hack pack in Scotland is Graham Spiers formerly of the Herald now with the Times.
That Rangers have an image deficit with Irish lads is actually beside the point.
It is a section of the Rangers support that the club needs to lose if it is to, finally, to lose its problematic baggage and delinquent supporters.
Rangers will not be rid of, as Graham Spiers styled them, “the white underclass” from their support until the club loses its de facto signing ban on Republic of Ireland players.
It is classic cognitive therapy for people with phobias to take the person with the irrational fear-say of flying-and then gently introduce them to the source of their phobia.
It is called “systematic de-sensitisation” I have used this professionally many times and it works well with most people.
In my training I saw a video of a very successful, if expensive, programme working in the USA to cure people of their fear of flying through this cognitive behavioural approach.
On the first treatment session the person would be taken to the airport.
The second day through check-in and so on.
Penultimately onto the plane and strapped in and with the engines roaring on the apron the treatment session would end and the person would leave the plane before the pilot launched the aircraft down the runway.
In the final session the plane would take off with the person in the plane and the phobia was conquered.
By taking it a tiny step at a time a person who had been completely unable to countenance flying was gently manoeuvred into a position where they took off.
Once through that barrier the phobia usually disappeared.
Like all major journeys it started with a single step.
Groups of people, just like individuals, can suffer from phobias.
This approach can also work with groups of people.
How would this approach help Rangers to break their phobia of things Irish?
Clearly were the management of Rangers to persuade a full Irish international to sign for the club and that player ticked all the boxes as a “Fenian” then it would be a step too soon for the hordes that wrecked Manchester.
Perhaps I can suggest a tentative baby step for the fearful at Ibrox reared in a dysfunctional sub-culture to fear all things Irish.
Probably it would be good if that player was not born in Ireland, but qualifies via parentage.
The irony of Rangers signing what they would deride as a “plastic paddy” is not lost on this writer.
However, signing an Irish born player without impeccable “West Brit” credentials is probably too much for the  “white underclass” section of the Rangers support.
I may have the first step for Rangers to break their anti-Irish signing policy.
One of the stars of the current RoI U19 squad is Lanre Oyebanjo.
A man mountain of a young Londoner his mother is from Ballyfermot and his dad is from London.
He doesn’t fit the identikit picture of the “Fenian” in the muddled heads of the “Famine song” choir.
We in Ireland just see one of our own and, hopefully, another Paul McGrath.
Lanre qualifies, by birth, to play for England, through his mother to play for the Republic and, via the grandparent rule on his dad’s side, he could play for Nigeria.
He chose Ireland, it is his choice and should he turn out to be a star then I’m sure England fans would be mature enough not to boo him for being a “traitor” to England.
At the last match against Sweden he was a complete stand out.
He currently plays for lowly Histon in the conference.
This is not the lad’s true level as a footballer that much is self-evident.
They know they have a valuable asset on their books and he has another year to run on his contract.
£500,000 is the probable asking price, which is a lot for a largely untried 18 year old.
That valuation maybe an indication of the kid’s potential and why Alex McLeish is having him watched very closely.
A promising lad at this level is where Rangers and, indeed, Celtic will be dealing in the future as the financial belt tightens at both clubs.
Were an offer to come in from Rangers for the lad he would, quite reasonably, ask his international teammate James McCarthy about Rangers.
I have met James and he is a lovely lad, as straight as an arrow.
What would James tell his international buddy about the Ibrox club?
What would be fair and truthful?
What would be an accurate description of the behaviour of Rangers fans at New Douglas Park towards this teenager last October?
Are the Rangers management anti-Irish?
Well clearly not if they made an off for an U19 RoI international (something as far as I can find out has not happened).
Are a section of the Rangers support anti-Irish?
Exactly.
Are the Rangers management hesitant about signing a RoI player to start in the first team?
Possibly.
Is the lad a player?
Perhaps. What is undeniable is that he is attracting interest from bottom rung Premiership sides and championship clubs with aspirations.
One wonders if the current Birmingham manager would have bothered having the lad assessed if he were still the manager at Ibrox?
One thing is for sure Alex McLeish doesn’t have to concern himself what the reaction will be of the Birmingham city fans to Lanre Oyebanjo’s international team.
Can anyone say with any belief that he could be as sanguine if he were still the manager at Ibrox?
Rangers have a problem of anti-Irish racism to address within a section of their support and like the “Billy Boys” saga they will probably need outside help to deal with it to the satisfaction of society.
The house-training project at Ibrox is a work in progress.

My recent blog on the D-Day commemoration brought an “observation” which was too abusive to allow onto the site.
It was a difficult logic to follow, but the “writer” believed that somehow  I was somehow heartbroken that the Third Reich had been defeated.

No, me neither.

This “missive” also repeated the hoary myths about Irish Free State collaboration with the Nazis during what is called here “the Emergency.”

The allegation of U-Boat re-fuelling was stated by, a probably drunk, Winston Churchill in the House of Commons after VE Day.
.
What Churchill  must have known was that the Royal Air force had given De Valera a flypast in his honour.
In the battle for the Atlantic the allies had a key advantage-the Donegal Corridor.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Voices-Donegal-Corridor-Joe-OLoughlin/dp/1845885260

http://www.donegaldemocrat.ie/donegalnews/Veteran-to-fly-Donegal-corridor.5287827.jp

On at least one occasion a German plane following a British flying boat into the corridor was shot at by Irish ground forces. The German plane turned back.

German pilots who parachuted into Ireland were interned in the Curragh for the duration of the war.
Allied pilots were also interned, but immediately given “working leave” in the town.
This was a nod and a wink to them absenting themselves back over the Border and back to their unit.
Some RAF pilots decided to stay in Ireland, it was safer.
Many, the majority, decided to “escape” and return to their units in England.

The IRA was in contact with the Abwehr (German military intelligence) and facilitated German agents in Ireland.
It was partly because of this activity the De Valera smashed the IRA bringing over Pierrepoint the English hangman to execute the IRA chief of staff Charlie Kerrins.

 Churchill was aware of all of this when he staggered to his feet at the dispatch box in the commons in May 1945.

Churchill would also have been aware that, during the hunt for the Bismarck, that Royal Navy ships had docked in Cork harbour and had re-fuelled there.
This courtesy was not afforded to the Kriegsmarine.
Churchill was also aware that the fate of the success of D-Day was based on the timing and that meant weather reports.
Probably the most momentous weather forecast in history came out of Blacksod Bay in County Mayo.
Had the allies not been equipped with that information then the armada would have sailed on June 20th and would have been destroyed by the worst English Channel storm in living memory.
The weather report from the West of Ireland forecast an approaching “hole” in the Atlantic storm.
This was crucial information that made the Allied commanders decide, initially, on the 5th of June, although they delayed that date by 24hrs.
Several times a day reports were passed across Dublin from the Irish Met office to the British Embassy.
So far from being hostile to the Allies De Valera’s administration was secretly on the side of the allies.
His signing of the condolence book for Hitler was De Valera being diplomatically correct.
The facts on the ground stated quite clearly that the Irish Free State were important allies of the British in their hour of need.

No U-Boats were fuelled in Irish ports, but British ships were.

I do realise that this invalidates a line of the “Famine song”.
Ah well.

I suppose we should blame the schools…………………….

Probably the twenty year old me would have approved of the treatment of Nick Griffin today in London.
The newly elected MEP was speaking to the media outside Westminster.
Griffin was elected on as the world remembered the freedom fighters of D-Day.
With the defeat of the Third Reich Western Europe could reinstate the democratic governance and, slowly, come together into what is today the EU.
Griffin’s politics I find abhorrent, but he was elected.
On this island ,in the South and the North, elected members of Sinn Fein were non-persons in the media.
Unionists would deal with them in council chambers despite being democratically elected.
In the Republic Section 31 of the Broadcasting act meant that elected Sinn Fein politicians could not be interviewed on the airwaves.
Then Thatcher, as she descended into madness, banned the voices of Adams and McGuiness.
We saw their faces, but actors like Stephen Rea made a good living speaking their words.
It was bizarre and it didn’t work.
Dialogue brought Sinn Fein fully into the democratic tent.
Ken Livingstone and John Hulme were both correct on this.
Everyone else was wrong.
Sinn Fein with their mandate respected discussion and debate could then take place.

No one ever seriously suggested that Sinn fein were akin to fascists, but they were pariahs becuase of their associations with the Provisional IRA.
Subsequently I was saddened to see the behaviour of Jim Allister.
Back to the future he refused to acknowledge Sinn Fein’s Bairbre De Brun.
For the record De Brun was elected Allister was not.
The people have spoken.
Ignoring Sinn Fein didn’t stop the northern war, speaking to them, dealing with them did.

Hundreds of thousands of people voted BNP in the UK, I wish they hadn’t, but they did.
That means that their choice has to be respected.
It is a knee jerk of the student left to “smash the fascists off the streets!”
What is much moiré effective it to debate with then, dismantle their arguments and, hopefully, see their electoral support ebb away.

It isn’t as photogenic as the placard waving students on the Channel four news this evening, but engaging with the BNP in a robust debate is what, eventually, will neuter them.
That is why Channel Four was correct to interview the BNP’s other MEP Andrew Brons just as it was appropriate to tell us about Bron’s youthful high jinks as a member of the National Socialist Movement.
The NSM was founded on Hitler’s Birthday.
Brons joined the National Front and resigned in 1984 when he had risen to be the NF’s national chairman.
It was the defeat of Hitler’s regime that allowed Bron the opportunity to take part in the democratic process.

The BNP proudly state that they have a Jewish councillor yet they attempt to denigrate the Victoria Cross awarded to Private Johnson Beharry.
The first VC awarded in twenty years. BNP Nick Griffin dismissed the award to Beharry who he called “ an immigrant.” Saying that the solider had been given the VC because he was black and that “all he did was drive fast away from trouble.”
The BNP described Beharry’s conduct during the ambush in Iraq as “routine.”
A journalist colleague who covered Beharry’s storey told me that he had spoke to the soldier’s commanding officer (the man who wrote the citation).
There was no doubt that Johnson Beharry is a hero and thoroughly merited his Victoria Cross.
Beharry was born in Grenada and moved to the UK in 1999.
Surely this is an immigration success story?
Young man joins the armed forces of his adopted country serving with bravery and distinction.
Not a bit of it.

The BNP’s problem with Johnson Beharry is the colour of his skin not his conduct in the face of the enemy.
That is exactly why the BNP should not be chased off public platforms.
Now they have a democratic mandate it is all the more reason to submit their toxic views to the scrutiny of public debate.

I do not believe that the BNP, once engaged in public debate will soften, but I do think that they will lose their appeal as pariahs.

Ordinary people in Britain are, quite rightly, disgusted with establishment politicians post the expenses scandal. The man on the Clapham omnibus is going to look kindly on the party that the denizens of Westminster tell him not to vote for.

Sending the BNP to Coventry will only result in them finally being returned to Westminster.

The twenty year old me believed, simplistically, that the scourge of fascism was a problem that could be “smashed”. In today’s digital age the virus of race hate that the BNP seek to spread will be eradicated by education, education, education.

The current Republic of Ireland players in the SPL are as follows:

Celtic – Flood, McGeady, O’Dea
Dundee Utd- Sean Dillon, Jon Daly
Falkirk – Patrick Cregg
Hamilton – James McCarthy, David Elebert
Hearts – Paul Mulrooney (under 19s), Denis McLaughlin (on loan at Dumbarton)
Hibs – David Van Zanten, Alan O’Brien, Kurtis Byrne
Inverness – Adam Rooney, Richie Foran, Andy McNulty (on loan at Elgin City)
Kilmarnock – Connor Sammon
Motherwell – Cillian Sheridan (on loan from Celtic), Jim O’Brien
St Mirren – Billy Mehmet

Of course Rangers have no players from the Republic of Ireland.

Given the racist behaviour of a sizeable section of the club’s support t towards Irish people then I’m sure that the club will address this issue before they receive a formal  inquiry apropos this matter from UEFA.

It seems one of the iron laws of coalition politics that the minor party gets eaten up.

Fianna fail’s last coalition partner the Progressive Democrats actually ceased to exist as a party after two terms in with the Soldiers of Destiny.
The PDs did, of course, come from the FF gene pool.
Once established as a vehicle for the O’Malley clan they got themselves religion.
Thatcherite economic religion.
As with all dominant parties the strength of Fianna Fail is that they don’t actually stand for anything other than being in power.
It was a case of the tail wagging the dog.
In the end when there was a backlash against the ruling lot the small party could be badly damaged by even a small swing.
Now it is the turn of the Green Party.
My number One vote in town and council went to the Greens, little help that it was, but it was a gesture to the local guy who is genuine gem.
As I write this the Green party have a total of three-yes THREE-county council seats in the 26 county state.
Wipe out.
The sad thing is that the party has excellent local councillors. The fish rots from the head.
The current coalition government-led by Fianna Fail-have two Green Party ministers.
Party leader John Gormley and Eamonn Ryan.
I met Eamonn ten years ago when we were both part of a Bord Failte delegation to Berlin.
He was selling cycling holidays and I was running a mountain guiding business in Donegal.
He was instantly likeable bloke and very committed to a clean environment for both business and ideological reason.
When he was elected as a Green Party TD I would have been one of the first to congratulate him.
He did consider running for President, but his party weren’t in favour.
He had a latter from me at the time offering to help run his presidential campaign in this part of our Republic.
Some time afterwards I spoke to Eamonn on the phone and joked with him if there was any chance of the GP getting into government in order to block the awful gas pipeline gouging out a scar across my father’s county of Mayo?
He said there was no chance.
You should never make predictions-especially about the future!
Recently Eamonn was embarrassed by the circulation of a picture of him in 2005 on the picket line in Mayo protesting at the Shell gas pipeline.
Now in government Eamonn has-err-adjusted his position on the pipeline.
The Green’s unique selling proposition was that they were ideologically driven to keep the environment clean and any development should be sustainable.
The Shell to Sea campaign did not forget Eamonn’s support for their struggle against the oil company.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WbYJZm7Xt4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeiuDAzIs2k&feature=related

John Gormley’s big difference has been to ban high-powered light bulbs (I’m not making this up).
As part of his Green credentials Gormley was a familiar site around Dublin cycling around Dublin.
Now he sometimes cycles in his ministerial working day with a high-powered government car crawling behind him.
Events dear boy events.
When the austerity programme was implemented this year, a belt-tightening exercise, which could last as much as five years, the Green minister didn’t let out a whimper.
Last night I watched Eamonn on RTE he was almost in tears as the local government the wipe out of the party unfolded.
All political careers, we are told, end in failure.
Small parties in coalition with larger partners often come to grief like the Greens here in Ireland.
Today John Gormley his party would continue in government with Fianna Fail in truth the Greens can do little else.
Fianna Fail will bounce back from this mid-term mauling.
The outlook for the Greens isn’t nearly so sanguine.