It was dress-down Sunday in Bordeaux, where many Irish fans left the green jerseys behind them (or on a much-needed visit to the laundry) for the day. Some took took to wearing civvies instead. Many donned other sports colours – their county GAA jerseys – and went tribal.
After the trauma inflicted by Belgium on Saturday, it was a relief to be able to turn back for a while to the All-Ireland championships, beamed into Bordeaux on the TVs of Irish pubs. But distraction aside, the internecine feuding of games between Galway and Mayo or Tipperary and Limerick also has a recharging effect.
In that respect, the Irish soccer fan abroad is a bit like the Bordeaux tram system. The latter is notable for having no overhead wires, because the aesthetes in charge of the city didn’t want to ruin the handsome skyline. Engineers had to invent a ground-up power system instead.
Plugged in
Well, Irish soccer fans abroad also have a ground-up power system: the GAA. And many of them spent Sunday afternoon plugged in to it, so that by about 4pm, they were all back up to full speed.
While sipping beer, the crowd outside the Connemara Irish Pub amused themselves by kicking footballs back and forth across the wide street opposite.
Then, just as happens in TV ads, a passerby in a cap suddenly fastened on to a loose ball and met it with what witnesses immediately recognised as the touch of an international soccer striker. Sure enough, he had been one in a former life. The man turned out to be Ian Rush, prolific goalscorer for Liverpool and Wales.
Others who paused to enjoy the renewed revelry included a unit of the Bordeaux fire brigade. Not responding to a call-out anywhere (we hope), they first threw a jersey from their own football team into the crowd, then paused to take pictures of the fans.
Serenaded
The Irish are clearly popular with the French emergency services, partly because they don’t cause many emergencies (although you would worry about the street football). But the love may also have come down from the top, because among the many admirers the visitors have earned here over the weekend is the long-time mayor of Bordeaux himself, Alain Juppé.
Juppé was moved to tweet his affection for the fans after an incident in which, sheltering in an underpass from the rain, they serenaded the French police, who were politely trying to move them on but who enjoyed the joke and responded in kind.
“Le football comme on l’aime” (“Football as we love it”), gushed the mayor after seeing the inevitable video, congratulating both the fans and officers. One of several local media organisations that reported the incident described Juppé as having been “totalement séduit” (“totally seduced”) by the Irish. So if the team didn’t score at the weekend, the fans did, as usual.
The Belgian game did have a depressing effect, but only briefly. By Saturday night, many supporters of both sides had exchanged colours, and songs, so that sometimes it was hard to tell which was which.
On the tram back to my hotel, I watched an Irish fan lead a group of Belgians in one of their own chants, a call-and-response, delivered in what sounded like perfect Flemish.
A middle-aged Dub nearby, less linguistically talented but anxious to make a contribution, then led them in a mass rendition of “Stop the bus we want to wee-wee”, which they had just enough English to find hilarious. They were still laughing when he dismounted with the farewell: “We’ll see yiz in the final.”
