Balance is key in the face of human frailty
KINDNESS and understanding informed public reaction to the play-list misstep by the Irish women’s team. Fair play: now, let’s be willing to extend them to less sympathetic public transgressions in Irish sport.
The popularity of Vera Pauw’s team, what they have done in getting to a first World Cup, and their interventions in significant discussions off the field, all ensured that they were cushioned from the fall-out of what happened in Hampden Park late on Tuesday night.
The decision to sing the song was wrong, despite the misspelt insistences of many tricolour-festooned Twitter accounts.
A failure to appreciate why singing a song that includes a line praising the IRA is, in part, attributable to bone-headed republicanism, but it is to a large extent due to the passing of time.
As we are regularly told in analyses of the rise of Sinn Féin, there is a generation, now in their 20s and 30s, for whom the Troubles in the North are ancient history.
It doesn’t make the IRA any more palatable to civilised people, though, and nor does it elevate the creative works of those tuneless mastodons, the Wolfe Tones.
Demographics played another central part in this story. The Irish team are, by definition, young women, and they celebrate in ways those of us who are older simply cannot fathom.
The risks posed by careless posting seem obvious, but sportspeople today managing public profiles do so almost entirely through social media. That they repeatedly fail to understand its pervasive reach must have left some within the FAI furious this week.
Yet consider how in previous generations, a succession of teams and players got into trouble thanks to alcohol. That was how sides bonded and celebrated then, and there was the occasional controversy and headlines of booze-fuelled mayhem.
Cultures change but the capacity for mistakes, for human frailty, remains. It is the willingness to accept this that has distinguished the response to this story.
But the hope must be that this acceptance of the vulnerabilities within the human condition, is accessible by those who make mistakes in future. You’d wonder.
Pauw’s side are the nation’s darlings, and with good reason.
They are so impressive, as sports stars and as people, that nobody doubts they will shake off the lingering effects of this unfortunate episode. These are public figures who are easy to admire and support – and therefore, to forgive.
What happens when a less sympathetic figure errs, though? Will there be the same considered response? Or will those calling for restraint in recent days be at the front of the torchlit mob?
Consider the truly absurd overreaction to the Gordon Elliott story. What he did in posing for a photograph while sitting on a dead horse was tasteless and ignorant, but he was hounded to a scandalous extent.
He was not as obviously sympathetic a figure as a young soccer hero with a moving back story, but what he did was no justification for vigorous attempts to deny him a living, to ruin his business, his reputation and therefore his entire life.
It feels naively hopeful to think that how people have responded to this week’s story is the result of a more considered society.
That’s just not the case. Instead, a widely loved group made an error and were instantly forgiven.
But a true sign of a healthy society would be showing similar understanding when the next controversy inevitably erupts.
Each case is different, and reaction must be informed by their particular circumstances. One suspects, though, that this will not be what happens. Instead, the hive mind will dictate the response.
This week’s one was conditioned by two factors: the popularity of the team, and the nature of the transgression.
The latter point is worth reiterating, given the unsettling revisionism that means songs about the IRA are now deemed harmless.
Look up the Twitter feed of Rob Wotton, the Sky Sports presenter who conducted a tone-deaf interview with Chloe Mustaki.
He got it wrong, but for hours thereafter he was being abused for it, and his input was the trigger for a backlash to the original reaction that was in places vicious.
Given all the furious noise subsequently generated, it could be forgotten that Pauw led the way in offering a heartfelt, unconditional apology that acknowledged wrongdoing, however inadvertent.
Hoping lessons will be learned from this bizarre few days seems a deluded wish.