A personal view is that the emergence of the self-aware, self-memifying crowd has been an unfortunate development for Irish national team fan culture. You do wonder what the effect is on the players of being at the centre of such an eruption of headloss. But there are not many other national teams where the players are asked to do quite this much of keeping their heads while all around are losing theirs. For the Irish players, everything about the fans’ behaviour in the build-up and the surroundings is telling them the situation they are in is completely abnormal and extraordinary. Irish fans will keep getting more excited about playoff matches than many other crowds would get about an actual World Cup final.

Source: The Irish Times March 30, 2026 08:45 UTC