Dear WSC
At the time of writing it is Thursday, September 11, 2003. Last night I along with 8,815 others ventured to Windsor Park, safe in the knowledge we could finally put to rest the 11-game goal drought. After all, we only lost 1-0 away to Armenia and we hit the post and crossbar and we missed a few chances. Two hours later we had lost 1-0 again and we hit the crossbar and hit the post and missed a few chances. The media has generally chuckled at our plight, and who could blame them. BBC Northern Ireland is running a phone poll on whether or not we should scrap the Northern Ireland football team in favour of an All-Ireland -Team. This in itself is a quite ludicrous, deliberately contentious and politically loaded question from a supposedly public service broadcaster. I don’t recall a similar poll in favour of a British and Irish Lions team poll when the Irish rugby team lost to Argentina in a World Cup game. A plus point about the goal drought is that for the first time in years what little publicity we have received hasn’t been about problems with sectarianism and the national team. To an outsider it probably seems that Northern Ireland home games are a seething cauldron of bigotry and hatred.In fact, anyone attending a game without preconceived ideas would be surprised at how good the atmosphere is given the terrible ground, poorly performing team and crowd size. We are now just known as being useless, not useless bigots. I hope one day soon to look back and laugh about when we couldn’t score as Andy Smith nods another past a hapless Barthez on our way to automatic qualification for the World Cup in Germany…
Jim Lockhart, Banbridge, Co Down
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