The instinct, always, is to give these things a chance. You can’t, on the one hand, always be giving out about the Government’s obliviousness to the needs of sport in Ireland and then, on the other, summarily turn your guns on whatever they come up with. And so, when they publish something called the ‘International Sports Diplomacy Framework’, you are duty bound to give it a proper look.
The initial signs aren’t promising, it has to be said. For one thing, even allowing for a bit of parochial gilding of the lily, Minister for Sport Patrick O’Donovan indulges in some pretty wild overstatement here. Noting that the 2027 Ryder Cup will be in Limerick, he says it is “likely to be the biggest global sports event that year”. This is nonsense.
The women’s soccer World Cup is on in 2027. So is the men’s Rugby World Cup. So, more to the point, is the men’s cricket World Cup, which in 2023 attracted over half a billion television viewers worldwide. An Irish Ryder Cup will cause a fair kerfuffle over here but it won’t be mapped on the global stage. It will barely cause a ripple in America – and they’re taking part.
Again, this is just silly stuff for anyone to be saying out loud
O’Donovan goes on to say that “Ireland is building a name for itself as the European home of American football”. Again, this is just silly stuff for anyone to be saying out loud, never mind a minister for sport. London has hosted 39 regular season NFL games. Ireland, by contrast, will host its first ever one in September. College football has an established foothold here, yes – but the UK is not going to be overtaken as the European home for American football any time soon.
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Claiming otherwise just damages your credibility. On the whole, the framework is fine. It is woolly and aspirational and filled with phrases like “to enhance Ireland’s international engagement through the unifying power of sport”, and “to build a global reputation as a premier sporting nation”. Maybe this is all achievable but you’d be more confident if the Minister didn’t feel the need to over-egg the pudding about what’s already happening.
The document is filled with ideas that are impossible to disagree with while being incredibly hard to measure. One stated goal is to “leverage sports diplomacy actions to encourage greater engagement in sports among target cohorts in Irish society where there are lower than average participation levels, including people with disabilities and older people”.
All of which (a) is a perfectly laudable objective, (b) should surely be the kind of thing we do already and (c) comes with no specific targets or time frame attached. How will we ever know if anything has changed?
Maybe the Minister for Sport will tell us. We can be the biggest global leveragers of sports diplomacy or some such. Yippee!
