It was the folly of youth … not a political treatise
DECLAN RICE did not know what country he came from until a month ago. So, the idea that, as a junior footballer, he would fully understand the nuances and implications of nationalist slogans and rhetoric is a little hopeful. Rice was 16 when he gave a juvenile response on social media that included the phrase ‘Up the RA’. So, old enough to know better; but not so old to be incapable of foolishness that might return to haunt him years later. The same post also includes the word ‘brudda’, a red heart emoji, a green heart emoji, a shamrock emoji and an emoji of a little purple devil. As political treatises go, it is hardly the Gettysburg Address. ‘Wait till we draw England,’ Rice concludes. He was posting to a team-mate in the Ireland Under 17 team, Dublin-born Tyreke Wilson, and maybe, given Rice’s Englishness, over-compensating a little. Republican songs and Republican sentiments have long been a part of the culture around Irish sport. They are part of the team’s spirit, a gesture of defiance. They get sung when the Ireland rugby team gather, too — including players from the north. Last year, there was controversy when a video emerged of the winning All-Ireland hurling
team, Limerick, singing an IRA rebel song Sean South of
Garryowen. Are Limerick’s hurlers IRA sympathisers? Almost certainly not — in the same way Paul Gascoigne wasn’t a rabid Orangeman, but still celebrated a goal against Celtic by miming the playing of a flute because he was a Rangers player and immersed in a culture he didn’t fully understand. As Rice would have been with Ireland’s junior teams. We hear a lot about his Irish heritage but a young man posting ‘Up the RA’ in 2015, some 17 years after the Good Friday Agreement, is posturing, parroting words and attitudes he has consumed, the way England supporters continue to sing ‘No Surrender to the IRA’, as if it is relevant. These days, however, no millennial is safe from the timeline. It is no great surprise that Rice’s teenage folly has been unearthed so close to his England debut, given the bitterness in Ireland about his defection. Everyone, though, has a past. Some generations were lucky enough to make their mistakes when Rice and all his could contemporaries be forgotten. live theirs in public. He was a kid who wrote something stupid, which he now regrets. He has apologised and that should be the end of it. Think on: if Rice was a genuine IRA sympathiser, he wouldn’t be playing for England.