You’re very selective in your list of footballers. Do they all have parents born in the country of their own birth as McCarthey and McGeady do fro what I understand?

And how about Owen Hargreaves who gets heaps of abuse for choosing England over Canada, and even he had English parentage.

And it is fair to ask how Irish fans would feel if their two best young players – and McGeady and McCarthy are Scotland’s two best young players – were poached by another country.

Because poached they were. There’s no other word for it and you know it full well. The FAI actively tries to recruit players in Scotland with Irish names/backgrounds at a young age. They do you know. Is that allowed? Probably. Is it sporting? Debatable. Yet just as the Irish were happy to get behind a team of Scots and Englishmen managed by one of the most English Englishmen ever to have walked this earth, it seems Irish fans will take anything just to put out a competitive team.

There is no doubt that in the West of Scotland there is a strange Irish-Scottish-British thing going on that the majority of the country doesn’t understand and hates.

You are wrong to turn this into a Scottish-Irish thing though. It was a personal decision by each of these boys and if you are happy that two genuinely Irish talents are being kept out of the Irish team by two Scottish lads who don’t even have Irish parents and have never lived in the country, then good for you.

For me, as a Scotland football fan with no interest in religion whatsoever, I’m raging that two talents – especially McCarthy who will be a star – have been allowed to slip through the net. I blame the SFA, but also the FAI.

However, when McCarthy hits the sights, I’m sorry but the boy will still be Scottish, taught his football in Scotland and – nice lad that you say he is – obviously brought up well in Scotland. If you then want to claim him – good for you. To me it’s all very sneaky though – perhaps if the FAI hadn’t followed a strategy of recruiting every player with Irish heritage and had instead reared its own players, you wouldn’t have to poach players from other countries.

Sorry for the rant but I think the word “traitor” is perfect in a footballing sense for McCarthy and McGeady. Players get shouted at from terraces for a lot less. And by the way of course they don’t get shouted at in England – it wasn’t England they turned their back on. Imagine Rooney and Walcott choosing Germany over England. That’s the equivalant scenario. You seriously don’t think they’d get dog’s abuse???

Hypothetically, no-one would have batted an eyelid if a young, raw Robbie Keane had chosen to do the same thing. That’s my hypothetical answer to the most hypothetical of questions, hypothetically speaking.