Irishmen admit having just one thing on their mind - football

IF ST PATRICK was still with us and was able to spend time with a few of his pals in the pub yesterday what, you wonder, would he have talked about?

His regrets about missing a few snakes in his serpent-sweep of Ireland? Ruby Walsh winning the World Hurdle at Cheltenham? Joan Burton not getting an economics portfolio?

Probably none of these, according to an international survey, the results of which were unleashed yesterday.

There would, in fact, be a “staggering” 83 per cent chance that Patrick and his male mates would have talked nothing but football, around which “men’s worlds revolve – fact”, declared Heineken, one of the sponsors of, well, football’s Champions League.

(Significantly more startling, surely – and the company neglected to highlight this in its press release – is the fact that 17 per cent of Irish men don’t talk about football at all, as if there were more important things to be discussing.)

Only 45 per cent of those surveyed owned up to chit-chatting about women with their male acquaintances, leaving some doubts about the credibility of the poll, with work, money, cars and “nights out” the next most favoured chatting subjects for the loosely labelled “typical Irish male”.

In all, the species known as Irishmalefootballfanicus spends, on average, five hours and 17 minutes each week either watching the game or talking about it, putting Ireland fourth in a list of 15 countries surveyed.

“It might not be the news women wanted to hear,” said Heineken brand manager Aisling O’Brien, “but it appears Irish men really do only think about one thing when they get together with their mates – and that’s football.”

But it could be a whole lot worse for the neglected women of Ireland – they could be Chinese. Our men are actually in the ha’penny place next to their counterparts from China, 94 per cent of whom prefer to talk about football over any other subject.

Spare a thought, then, for the 6 per cent of Chinese men who want to discuss, say, Joan Burton not getting an economics portfolio; they’re largely talking to themselves.