Our team is a league apart
QUESTION How many League of Ireland clubs have had players who also played for the Republic of Ireland while at that club, and which of them has provided the greatest number of players to the international side?
A HANDFUL of League of Ireland clubs have contributed players to the Republic of Ireland side and Shamrock Rovers is the club that has contributed by far the greatest number of such players.
The national soccer team in this part of Ireland made its debut at the Paris Olympics in 1924 and it was only in 1953 that it became the Republic of Ireland team.
A number of First Division League of Ireland clubs have contributed players to the national side, including Shelbourne (5), Sligo Rovers (7), Waterford (21) and St Patrick’s Athletic (28). As an example, the first Shelbourne players to play for the national team, in a game against Italy in 1926, were Mick Foley and Fran Watters.
The most recent has been Fran Byrne, while the most-capped Shelbourne player was Joe Haverty, capped seven times in 1965-66. Waterford’s contributions at national level have included Shay Brennan in the 1960s.
Other clubs in the First Division, such as Cork City, Derry City and Finn Harps, haven’t had that level of success at national level.
But out of all the First Division clubs that have sent players to the national team, the most outstanding, by a long shot, is Shamrock Rovers. The club, which was founded in 1899 and is popularly known as ‘the Hoops’, has a very impressive record, winning the League of Ireland title on 17 occasions and the FAI Cup 24 times.
Its contribution to the national football team has been legendary, a total of 62 players. But it’s telling that in the past 40 years, players from First Division clubs didn’t contribute any goals in matches played by the national side. A Shamrock Rovers player, Ray Treacy, played in a 1978 match against Turkey, which resulted in a 4-2 win for the Republic of Ireland. His clubmate, John Giles, had scored the opening goal in that match.
Thereafter, a 40-year drought followed, in which no League of Ireland players scored for the Republic of Ireland. That long break wasn’t ended until June 2018, when Graham Burke, a young player with Shamrock Rovers, scored for Ireland in a friendly against the US that resulted in a 1-1 draw. Burke had only been capped for the national side for the first time in May 2018.
Burke had joined Shamrock Rovers in February 2017, and his career with the club proved remarkably short; in June 2018, he transferred to Preston North End.
This means that Burke’s time as a player with Shamrock Rovers seconded to the national team was short-lived indeed. Everyone who follows Irish soccer hopes that the long drought of League players scoring goals for the national team won’t now be resumed.
David Monaghan, Waterford.
QUESTION Can any animals recognise their own reflection?
THE Gallup mirror self-recognition test is regarded as a key test for animal self-awareness.
In 1970, Gordon G Gallup, a _ professor at Tulane University in Louisiana, the future home of the National Primate Research Centre, was inspired to create the test after reading Charles Darwin’s account of his visit to London Zoo in 1938. Darwin had been impressed by Jenny, the zoo’s first orangutan, and wrote to his sister that Jenny was ‘astonished beyond measure’ when she saw her reflection in a mirror.
In 1889, German researcher Wilhelm Preyer became the first to posit a connection between mirror self-recognition and an inner sense of self in people.
In 1969, Gallup began experimenting with chimpanzee reactions to mirrors. He isolated two chimps and placed a mirror in each cage for eight hours at a time over ten days. Gallup observed marked changes in the chimps’ behaviour. First, they treated the reflection as if it was another chimp. But over time, they started to explore their own bodies. ‘They’d use the mirror to look at the inside of their mouths, to make faces at the mirror, to inspect their genitals,’ said Gallup. In 1970, he anaesthetised the chimps, then painted one eyebrow ridge and the opposite ear tip with a red dye. Gallup recorded how the chimps touched the marks.
In the early Nineties, Gallup encouraged one of his PhD students, Lori Marino, to explore the question further. Working with Diana Reiss at Marine World/ Africa US in California, Marino exposed two bottlenose dolphins at an aquarium to a mirror. Like the chimpanzees, the dolphins learned to use the mirror in a variety of ways. They whistled and squawked to reach out to the reflection socially. Then they performed a series of imitation games, such as opening their mouths and wiggling their tongues. Reiss concluded this proved they were self-aware.
Only bonobos, orangutans, dolphins, orcas, elephants, humans, magpies and possibly pigeons have passed the Gallup mirror self-recognition test.
Michelle Davies, Richmond, Surrey.
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