Dere’s more to Oirland dan dis’.” – Alan Partridge. If the private messages of every teenage boy were made public, you can bet Rice’s words would belong in the mild-to-lame category. It probably was ‘good’ playing for Ireland: trips with lads he liked; wearing the shirt of his ancestral homeland. The eagerness for him to commit made Irish football appear needy and oversensitive and kind of desperate. Dere’s more to Oirland dan dis.

Source: The Irish Times March 23, 2019 06:00 UTC