SHANE McGRATH
Rory’s right call
THERE is a version of Irish identity so narrow and so simplistic it could be neatly summed up in the chorus of any Wolfe Tones song. This strain of Irishness is ineradicable. It has been nurtured by selfpity and porter for decades, and it has survived the progress wrought by societal changes, from free education to peace.
It demands you are either with us or agin’ us. It talks about 800 years of English oppression and is serious, and it sees any hesitation, let alone refusal, to wrap oneself in the green flag as a betrayal of our dead patriots.
It is also, of course, ridiculous and backward. Mostly, thankfully, it lies dormant and is easily ignored, but it occasionally bubbles through to wider attention.
Two sports stories have acted like poultices over the past week in drawing it out. First there was Declan Rice declaring for England, leaving Ireland behind him and with it a vapour trail of abuse.
Then, on Thursday morning, BBC Northern Ireland confirmed a story that had been rumoured for months.
Rory McIlroy’s decision to avoid the Irish Open this summer as he prepares for the Open Championship in Portrush is the type of call leading golfers make every season.
Because of their success, they are not under pressure to play every week and so prioritise the biggest tournaments. They build regular fallow spells into their schedules with the aim of being fresh for the biggest weekends of the year.
It is partly a consequence of the increased attention paid to sports science by stars like McIlroy, with rest valued as highly as practise.
His reasoning was sound, then, but before midday on Thursday, the bile was oozing.
Here are three responses from Twitter to a story breaking the news. They are presented here in their original form, complete with punctuation that would shame a nine year old.
‘how many more hits does he want to give the irish let him f**k off once and for all’
‘No loyalty to Ireland or his home tournament’
‘He builds it back up now and won’t compete in it. Just a b **** x’
In 2011, the Irish Open was without a sponsor after a telecommunications company withdrew after two years of a three-year agreement.
Fáilte Ireland filled the gap but the prize fund fell to €1.5 million from €3 million the previous year.
Simon Dyson won the tournament and with it winnings of €250,000.
McIlroy, through his foundation, began hosting the Irish Open in 2015, with Dubai Duty Free announced as sponsors.
The prize fund rose to €2 million and Soren Kjeldsen, the winner, claimed €416,660.
Last year, the final one with McIlroy as host, the prize fund was €5.9 million and Russell Knox claimed €998,425 for winning.
The tournament was added to the European Tour’s Rolex events, a lucrative series designed to compete with the lure of America’s PGA Tour.
Thanks to Rory McIlroy, the Irish Open is not only relevant once again, but one of the prominent events in European golf.
He helped to save it. He owes it nothing.
McIlroy could have stayed silent and uninvolved in 2015 and let the tournament flounder. By choosing to do otherwise, he did a tremendous service to Irish golf but also left himself open to the type of bigot who has hounded him for years.
This nonsense can be traced all the way back to September 2012. That month, McIlroy gave an interview to Derek Lawrenson in Sportsmail and discussed his sense of identity with candour.
‘What makes it such an awful position to be in is I have grown up my whole life playing for Ireland under the Golfing Union of Ireland umbrella,’ he said then. ‘But the fact is, I’ve always felt more British than Irish. Maybe it was the way I was brought up, I don’t know, but I have always felt more of a connection with the UK than with Ireland.’
That was enough to poke at old hatreds, but then the controversy over his decision not to compete at the 2016 Olympics – after announcing on the eve of the 2014 Irish Open that he intended to represent Ireland there – set them ablaze.
Rice (above) was praised for the attempts he made to address the complexity of identity in his statement declaring for England, and McIlroy has been even more exhaustive in explaining his own knotted sense of self.
But there is a certain type of Irish person, bitter, small, and frightened, that doesn’t want to know.
McIlroy will never please them, and nor should he try.