Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Lineker sparks upRor on social media for praising effort of ‘British’ McIlroy
GARY Lineker has become involved in a Twitter row after calling Rory McIlroy British.
The Match Of The Day presenter took to social media to praise the Co Down golfer after he shot a 65 on day two of The Open – but narrowly missed the cut.
The former footballer posted: “Fabulous effort today from @McIlroyRory.
“Showed the character of the champion he is.
“So much rubbish written about lack of bottle. You don’t win 4 majors and the Player’s without heart and nerve.
“We should be proud of our great sportspeople not bash them at every opportunity.”
A number of people replied to the tweet, with one user saying: “‘Our sportspeople’.
Rory is Irish.”
Responding to that tweet, Lineker commented: “It’s the British Open and @ McIlroyRory is British.”
Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, anyone born in Northern Ireland can class themselves as British, Irish or both.
When someone told this to Lineker, he said: “Exactly. Don’t worry though, I do realise he’s from Northern Ireland.” McIlroy will represent Ireland at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
Speaking on making the decision earlier this week, the former world No1 said: “Personally, I needed to do a lot of inner thought and sort of... ‘Is this important to me? Why do I want to play it? Who do I want to represent?’ All that sort of stuff.
“At the start, whenever I was thinking of playing the Olympics, I let other people’s opinions weigh on that decision. I can’t please everyone.
“The only people that really care about who I play for, who I represent, don’t mean anything to me. I don’t care about them. So at the end of the day, I think with where golf is, with it being part of the Olympic movement, if I had to look back on my career and not played in one I probably would have regretted it.
“So that was part of the reason I wanted to go, for the experience as well. It’s going to be a wonderful experience. I’ve never done anything like that before.
“And it’s in Japan. I enjoy Japan. I enjoy the people. I enjoy the food. So it will be a nice week.”