Sir, - I welcome Roisin Ingle's jolly exposure of the wave of anti-English sporting hysteria which swept the country last week ("England's difficulty is Ireland's ecstasy", The Irish Times, July 4th). As Ms Ingle indicates, a similar unsporting outburst of what she calls "knee-jerk xenophobia" in England would have occasioned a major crisis in Anglo-Irish relations.
But that would not and could not happen, of course, because the great majority of English sports fans support Ireland and the Irish against "foreign" competition. They support Ireland (surely one of the very best premier league squads in these islands) in international soccer competitions, and continue to do so even in the post-Charlton era. They gladly cheer on even as the Irish rugby team goes down to another massive defeat. They applaud the achievements of the like of Sonia O'Sullivan and Michelle Smith (in the latter case much more enthusiastically than many Irish people).
English popular support for Ireland is not patronisation or, as some might have it, a post-colonialist hangover. It stems from a sense of commonality between England and Ireland - of language, culture, history, of overlapping and mutually-constructed identities.
Such sentiments are not widespread in Ireland. But there are signs of hope. As Roisin Ingle pointed out, Irish support for Argentina against England was far from universal. Even among those who cheered England's defeat, only the most juvenile begrudged admiration for the English performance.
Personally, I look forward to a time when there will be Anglo-Irish sporting unity as well as rivalry and to the day when England's difficulty will be Ireland's agony. - Yours, etc., Dr Geoffrey Roberts,
Department of History, University College, Cork.