At the funeral of a great old Cavanman away back in early spring, the talk turned to football quick enough as we stamped our feet in the churchyard cold. For no particular reason, Seánie Johnston’s name came up. He’d gone back playing with Cavan Gaels over the winter and the feeling in our tight little circle of experts was that if he made any shape at it at all, he might be back in county blue before long.

It was idle enough talk, filling the time until the family’s hugs and so-sorries were done at the back of the hearse. Or at least it was until one of our number could take it no longer. “Ach, to f**k with him,” says he. “He shouldn’t have kicked the free. He can go and sh*te for that.”

The free was the one Johnston had scored for Kildare against Cavan in the qualifier between the two sides 18 months previously. It was a tap-over, garbage-time free, the last score in a 3-20 to 1-9 hammering and our man’s contention was that Johnston could have let somebody else take it just as easily.

When I told Johnston the story last week, it was certainly not the first time he’d heard some version of it.

“He might have a point,” he said, albeit through a slightly sheepish smile.

Identity is such a mixed-up hotchpotch when it comes to sport. On a basic, brass-tacks level, it means far more to those on the outside who watch than it does to those on the inside who play. If you’re from Cavan, it makes no sense why Johnston would kick that free. If you’re from anywhere else, it makes no sense why he wouldn’t. Talent is applied in the place where it is standing at any particular moment. That’s sport.

Bad people

James McCarthy, assuming he is fit, and Aiden McGeady are going to be booed in Celtic Park on Friday. It will be loud and sustained and unpleasant. Almost certainly, the two people least affected by it will be McGeady and McCarthy themselves. They know it will happen because it must.

Scotland’s fans will boo not because they are bad people, not because they are sectarian or prejudiced or any other five-dollar word. They will boo because they are Scottish. Nothing more sinister.

In their eyes, McGeady and McCarthy have done them wrong and these are the consequences. Gordon Strachan is right – this is pantomime booing. Lots of noise but nothing more.

Open sewer

Mel Brooks

said tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. So it goes with sport and identity. Not only are we two-faced about it, we’re brazenly and triumphantly so. We can tut-tut away over the treatment McGeady and McCarthy will endure on Friday and yet be certain that the reaction would be no different here if the roles were reversed.

Remember Peter Madsen? Poor chap, late of Denmark and Brondby. Played against Ireland in 2002 at Lansdowne Road and spent his stint on the pitch getting booed each time the ball came his way. His crime wasn’t even his. Yet the best fans in the world gave him the treatment all the same.

Now, this was pantomime. Madsen came off the bench just after half-time, only to be introduced by the PA announcer as Peter Lovenkrands, then of Rangers. In those days, it was more or less company policy for the Lansdowne crowd to boo any visiting international who was or had been attached to the blue end of Glasgow.

So Madsen got it in the neck, right up until the PA guy corrected his mistake.

Every touch

There was a predictable chorus of outrage afterwards, decrying of the ignorance of fans booing someone they didn’t even know they were booing.

But what got glossed over somewhat was the fact that when once the crowd knew who Madsen was, they cheered his every touch.

Not as a show of support or anything, just as a pisstake. And for a time, they booed every touch an Ireland player made. Look, there was no Twitter in those days. You made your own fun at those pre-World Cup friendlies.

Booing at matches is something and nothing. The people who do it are the only ones to have paid to get into the ground and they get scoffed at by people who are being paid to be there. It’s the outward expression of inner grievance, an attempt – however childish, however futile – to put a player off his game against the team through which your identity is woven.

Players know this.

After the Lansdowne crowd called the dogs off Madsen, Lovenkrands got booed twice as loudly and then came in after the game and said he found the whole thing hilarious. On a certain level, it’s the price of doing business.

Identity drives the sports world, big and small, amateur and professional. You’re with us or against us, outside the tent pissing in or inside it pissing out. Choose the life and you choose that and all that comes with it.

McGeady and McCarthy are outside-the-tenters on Friday night. Seánie Johnston might well always be. You make your choices. You suck it up. And when the time comes, you kick the free. Everything else is just noise.