Dublin’s football team will face Kerry in the semi-finals of the All-Ireland Football Championship, Sunday.
In Ireland: “soccer” means soccer. “Football” rarely means soccer, although it can. “Football” can also mean American football, but very rarely. In most cases, “football” means GAA (Gaelic Athletic Assocation) football, which is like a faster, less tackle-y form of rugby, played with a volleyball. Except when “football” refers to Australian Rules, which was even more confusing back when teams from Ireland and Australia would play each other. Recently, it seems, the difference over the linguistics of “football” lead to a game called “donnybrook,” which is (incidentally) a district of Dublin and a town in Australia. Anyway, Irish GAA football teams do not play Australian football teams, although players from Irish GAA football teams occasionally go to Australia to play professionally. All clear?
The Dublin County football team‘s colors are dark blue and light blue, and those colors have served as a casual uniform for Dubliners for about a month now. 
(The formal uniform is a fluorescent yellow safety jacket; more on that at a later date.) I didn’t know that there were so many variations on a blue striped collared shirt. Houses are festooned with the checkerboard of blues, especially on the northside.
There’s no chance of getting a ticket. But if we’re not busy after the Tour of Ireland passes through our neighborhood, we’ll probably go to a pub to watch the game. Dublin are the underdogs, so this should be fun.
3 Comments to “Up the Dubs!”
10 October 2007
Thanks to this post, I realized that the writers for Heroes made a significant error in dialect. At one point in the episode 203, “Kindred Spirit”, an Irishman says to Peter, “There’s a big football match between Celtic and AC Milan tomorrow, you know, soccer.” As us Bugleites know, a real Irishman would have just said, “There’s a big soccer match between Celtic and AC Milan tomorrow.”
12 October 2007
Wow, I’m impressed at your application of Bugleite knowledge. I haven’t seen the episode (or the series), but I think that there may be a second error. Celtic FC is a Scottish football club, so if the Irishman was mentioning the match as a nationalist, the line doesn’t make sense.
Celtic are also a great team, so a match between Celtic and AC Milan would be exciting for any football fan.
12 October 2007
That’s true, but Celtic playing AC Milan would likely be in a Champion’s League match, and there aren’t any Irish teams that would make the Champion’s League. Champion’s League match ups generate excitement all over Europe, just like I get excited about LSU vs. Florida. I assume that Irish soccer fans support English clubs in the Champion’s League, but there could be support for Celtic…
You can view the episode here: http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/video/episodes.shtml