By Amy Eustace, writing from Dublin
James McCarthy. Hmm, that name rings a bell, doesn’t it? Wigan midfielder? Glaswegian? The guy on the receiving end of THAT infamous Wayne Rooney elbow? Yes! That James McCarthy. He may be better known for getting a face full of prime Scouse flesh but McCarthy has been hitting the headlines in Ireland for very different reasons as of late.
The Republic of Ireland - a nation full of people just about fed up with people telling them that they’re a quarter-Irish twice-removed on their Dad’s side or something or other along those lines - is often subjected to much debate when it comes to the tricky issue of the national side, and its profitable utilisation of the famed “Granny rule”. Compiling a starting eleven of players who were actually born and raised on the Emerald Isle is more difficult than you might expect. The spine of the team are thorough-breds - veterans such as captain Robbie Keane, Damien Duff, John O’Shea and Shay Given, as well as younger players like Kevin Doyle, Shane Long and the Hunt brothers. But in the national side’s history, there have been plenty of players from the neighbouring lands of Northern Ireland, Scotland and England declaring for Ireland. For many different reasons.
Some, arguably, choose to accept the Ireland call-up because they do not think they will recieve one for England. As Tony Cascarino - who qualified for Ireland through his mother’s adoption - admitted in his autobiography: “I didn’t qualify for Ireland. I was a fraud. A fake Irishman.”
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