TIPPING POINT:No amount of preaching to the unconverted can alter the fact the home league remains a playground for those who don't make it across the water, writes BRIAN O'CONNOR

WITH THIS gig you get a glimpse into the sporting soul sometimes, particularly of fans. On those occasions when a gentle rub, maybe even a slight dig, is delivered towards a particular pursuit, the response can be instructive.

Golfers are usually secure enough in their smug, V-neck membership to dismiss everything thrown at them as jealousy. Rugger buggers tend to have hides thicker than their ears. Gaels are a bit touchy and quick to fling the “West Brit” arrow even if a critic possesses a pedigree greener than most bar-stool patriots.

And then there’s other stuff, like American football fans who dismiss Super Bowl flak as the lazy peddling of ignorance and caricature. But what would you expect from a bunch of fat, redneck Yanks frantically pawing one-handed at their computers?

However, when it comes to arch-sensitivity, there is nothing to match the psoriasis that is the default setting of League of Ireland football fans. If you really want to feel the wrath of a fan scorned then have a pop at domestic football and then wait for green-ink IEDs to blow up in your face.

Because there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to match the righteous fanaticism of a League of Ireland fan. The basis of this piety is their unshakeable faith in the local; that devotion to a club in their locale is fundamentally more worthy than those fair-weather followers who glory in the achievements of Man U, Liverpool or other clubs across the water; that their trust in the beautiful game is more real because it is based in the grassroots.

And what often accompanies that belief is an overpowering chippiness. Knowing eternal salvation and a year’s free supply of Airtricity, is theirs if they continue to fight the good fight, their instinctive reaction to anything but fawning admiration of local football is to cut the hand off any heretic who fails to find salvation inside Dalymount Park.

What also comes with it is a sense of entitlement. Despite a depth of media coverage that is the envy of many other sports, and which could be argued is generous considering the number of skulls actually paying through the turnstiles, the League of Ireland always feels instinctively short-changed.

And that’s because LOI fans cannot understand how their devotion is not replicated everywhere else. Look at what’s on offer on your own doorstep, they will argue. But the point is people have, and no amount of proselytism can change the fact that the vast majority have decided they can row along quite happily without it.

All of which doesn’t mean they’re right, of course. The new Premier League season kicks off this Friday. For the faithful this is not news. For many of you it will be. And if you’re going to do anything over the summer it might be worth pledging at some stage to tear your eyes away from Euro 2012 and sample some local action.

Nothing which provokes the devotion League of Ireland football does should be summarily dismissed. There are genuine football devotees out there whose lives are defined by Oriel Park, Turners Cross and Tallaght Stadium. I have seen young men with glaring green tattoos proclaiming their devotion to Bray Wanderers. That’s Bray, green, permanent and elective. Tell me the product that provokes that isn’t at least worth checking out?

Take the example of Shamrock Rovers, the Premier League champions, and famously the first club from Ireland to make the group stages of a European competition. Even more important than all that is the basis on which the club is run with true fans and supporters making the decisions and determined to make them on a sound and sustainable basis. It’s a model for any club in any sport and one that has no doubt produced more than its own fair share of tattoos.

What it hasn’t done, however, is tattoo itself on to the general sporting consciousness here. An average Premier League attendance of 1,500 is fine in itself but compared to the sepia-tinged heyday of 20,000 plus crowds, it is neglible. There continues, however, to be a belief among the converted that if floating sports fans just give the League of Ireland a chance, then a return to the halcyon days is still possible. But that is to ignore certain inconvertible realities.

Just as for centuries it was Ireland’s political misfortune to be parked next door to the world’s strongest imperial power, then it is Irish football’s lot to be forever inextricably linked to British football. It has always been the case. And now that the Premiership is the world’s most popular football franchise, then fighting its all-pervasive influence is a task doomed to failure.

No amount of preaching to the unconverted can alter how the League of Ireland remains essentially a playground for those who couldn’t make it in Britain. No youngster coming up through the grades is dreaming of togging out for Rovers or St Pat’s. The fantasy revolves around getting away, to the glamour and financial beano that is the Premiership and remarkably even the leagues below it.

But then the argument goes, what about Kevin Doyle and Shane Long playing for Cork City? Yes, and first chance they got they were gone. Stephen Hunt’s career looked to be heading nowhere when he was let go by Crystal Palace. Briefly he considered coming home and playing in the League of Ireland but decided Brentford was a better option. That’s Brentford, folks.

The reality for the majority of football fans in this country is that domestic fare remains pretty much an irrelevance, an occasional grassroots supply-line for the stuff that matters to them. Maybe that’s their loss but it’s also a pure reflection of fans voting with their feet.

Bucking the general consensus is a noble instinct and rowing against the popular tide is usually a sound foreign policy. But equally, professing to know better than everyone else is the conceit of every fanatic.

Maybe the answer is for League of Ireland fans to stop defining themselves, and what they love, by what they purport to despise. Even show a little tolerance to those of us shallow enough and impressionable enough to be in thrall to the Great Premiership Satan.

In the meantime, though, anyone got the number of a security firm?