The Best Of Enemies

Daniel McCarthy Looks At Some Infamous Irish Rows

They had mortally cut each other like the Kilkenny cats which had been tied together by the Hessians during their occupation of the marble city in the '98 rebellion. A bit of Ireland died in Saipan in 2002. This was an island which had borne witness to American heroism in the face of ferocious Japanese defence in WWII. Navajo codetalkers played a decisive role in the eventual US victory. Hundreds of Japanese committed suicide in the last days of battle, jumping from 'suicide cliff'.

There were no codetalkers necessary to decode the semantics of Roy Keane's now infamous ten minute tirade against the then Irish soccer manager, Mick McCarthy, in response to McCarthy's accusations over an Irish Times interview. The present chairman of Sunderland, (and husband of the wife who does the washing up powder TV ads) Niall Quinn, described Keane's outburst as 'the most articulate, surgical slaughtering I ever heard.' The ferocity of Keane's verbal defence may have been further fuelled by his sensing that as the wounding words hit their intended target, he was actually committing his own footballing form of hara-kiri. Keane was a streetwise breed of footballing animal, in many ways a kindred spirit of the French great Zidane. When Zizou snapped and head butted Mazzerati in the 2006 world cup final, he may as well have been the boy from Mayfield raging against the dying of the fading light in that Saipan hotel. For when Keane had done, the words still reeked in the air:

'You're a f*****g wanker. I didn't rate you as a player, I don't rate you as a manger and I don't rate you as a person. You can stick your World Cup up your arse. I've got no respect for you.'

Keane was gone, moral was damaged and despite a brave show by the hotel survivors, Ireland's world cup was over, in terms of being a genuine contender to lift the trophy at any rate. In a good Irish feud like this there were rights and wrongs on both sides. These men had a history. During the Irish tour of the US in 1992, an ossified Keane, who had been on a tear with the current Irish manager, Steve Staunton, and had held up the more senior pros return home, received a tongue-lashing from the then Irish captain - Mick McCarthy. McCarthy asked Keane if he called himself a footballer. Wearing a 'Kiss me Quick' hat, Keane quick as a flash delivered the telling put down: 'Do you call what you have a first touch?'

Like Forrest Gump when he one day decided he was going to run, people saw greater forces at play, symbolic parallels to be drawn between the warring camps. The guy with the 'Shit Happens' t-shirt could have started the franchise here. Keane was the Celtic Tiger/spoiled cub, McCarthy the keeper of Irish traditions/paddywhacker. The Irish people became a race dominated by the Sith lords of Star Wars. We had to speak in absolutes. You were either for or against.

Irish history has been peppered by such divisive, schismatic feuds. In the modern context, you only have to consider the current attempted takeover of Aer Lingus by Ryanair led by chief executive Michael O'Leary. Puzzled looks were exchanged by many when Denis O'Brien, formally known as Mr. Eircom, decided to buy up shares to shore up the Aer Lingus defences against a hostile takeover. Many considered that O'Brien's act of goodwill to the unions was less a nod to the government than a stab at O'Leary. You see, O'Leary had broken the unspoken rules of the old boys club when he went public on O'Brien's tax residency in Ryanair's advertising campaign on its Malta routes. Best served cold.

There is a saying across the Irish Sea that the Tory party is the Protestant church at prayer, and Manchester United is the Catholic Church at play. If that is so, Alex Ferguson, the former Glaswegian shop steward threw his toys out of the cot when he took on the Irish sheikhs, Magnier and McManus over the stud fees for the aptly named Rock of Gibraltar. The brilliantly successful Ferguson bit off more than he could chew with this Irish duo and in a sharp dose of reality, came to realise he was just a trophy friend who had been stripped of the fur coat.

Delve deeper and you see Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera. Collins had once revered de Valera. De Valera did later say in a moment of prescience: 'History will record the greatness of Michael Collins; it will be recorded at my own expense.'

The presidential figurehead born in New York and the warlord general born in west Cork, each adored by matriarchal families from the cradle. Collins, although he smashed the British intelligence system in Ireland, and probably would have done likewise to the border, was too much passion's slave to survive a joust with the great Machiavellian mathematician in the long term. Their divide was Ireland's divide, and when the spectre of civil war visited the nation, the whole revolutionary impulse and energy of a people either siphoned off to the new Ireland abroad or became cocooned at home for the next seventy years.

Browne was truly an heir to Parnell, the uncrowned king, who had taken so severe a pulpit pounding, he was to find an early grave. All the while during the Kitty O'Shea scandal of the early 1890s, the Catholic Church had kept its counsel, but in the wake of the Irish party split, a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Bishops and Archbishops of Ireland issued the statement that, 'Parnell is decidedly not to be the future leader of the Irish people.' In late nineteenth century Ireland this was a practical decree. The Church threw all of its weight behind the move to depose Parnell. It can be argued that such a move was not necessarily sectarian inspired, alluding to the fact that the Church had not spoken on the affair until it became obvious that, although Parnell was political "dead wood", he was going to hold his ground. Yet the nature of their avid rejection of Parnell did carry some non-ecumenical undertones as expressed by certain priests. The following gives a flavour of the choice language used from the altar at the time.

"Parnell is a debased wretch and a low scoundrel and Ireland would be very badly off if they could not find a better leader...he is not one of our breed; he is a Cromwellian and not one in sympathy with us in religion; he is the greatest coward that ever lived. When he was put into gaol he was begging and craving 'til he got out; he never did anything for the country...He has been living in sin with Kitty O'Shea since 1880."

Of course the Irish Catholic church was amongst the earliest rebels. They had kept the torch of Christianity alive during the dark ages of Europe, amongst them the great St. Fergal, or in Latin, Virgil. In the eight century Virgil was one of the first to argue that the world was round, knowing Science better than his contemporaries in Bavaria. His point of view that people lived on the opposite side of the world - antipodes - led him into conflict with Boniface, who regarded this thinking as heretical. This led to Virgil being reported to the Pope who accepted his explanation.

Factionalism was rife in Ireland after the Act of Union. During the penal days stick fighting with goose greased blackthorn or holly bataí was encouraged, as many went on to swell the ranks of the Wild Geese European armies as skilled swordsmen.

A downtrodden peasantry took to faction fighting with gusto, and fair days were thought incomplete without a good donnybrook to conclude proceedings. Fair day murders were commonplace, and when authorities did intervene, the factions often united and turned against them. The worst riots in Ireland took place in the 1820s. Of a later faction fight a police magistrate noted:

"James Downes died on Friday from the beating he received on Saturday last at the fair of Kilmichael, in the west of the county. From information taken against six of the persons charged with striking the deceased, it would appear that this man came by his death from a general fight between factions that usually fight at many fairs in that part of the country, and at which fights, Downes or his family were never known to be idle spectators."

In some instances magistrates were even interested parties in the outcome of such riots. Faction fighting was a legacy of a distressed and subject society, and it could be argued that warring gangs such as the Caravats and Shanavests were to early nineteenth century Ireland what rival Afro-American gangs such as the Crips and the Bloods were and are to Los Angeles today. There are accounts of such factionalism permeating their way through to hurling.

Indeed it was a hurler who was involved in one of the first recorded feuds of ancient Irish history - Setanta, a.k.a. Cúchulainn, who eventually slew his beloved blood brother Ferdia after three days of battle. From Queen Maeve and King Nessa warring over the brown bull of Cooley, to Diarmuid na nGall involving foreigners in his own private spat with fellow Irish chieftains, our feuds take on a self imploding, crippling life force of their own.

Which brings us back to Mick and Roy who publicly reconciled last Friday night in England's Black country, when their respective teams, Wolves and Sunderland clashed in the championship. 'It is time to finish it now' said McCarthy afterwards. The final act to an Irish version of a Greek tragedy.