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E-mailI refer to your sports supplement of 17 October. In the soccer section there is extensive coverage of the English Premier League, with articles focusing on Blackpool, Tottenham and Liverpool football clubs.
I accept that there is a lot of interest in English soccer in Ireland. However, there is absolutely no coverage of the Airtricity League of Ireland in your paper. There was no report whatsoever on the excellent FAI cup semi-final between Bohemians and Sligo Rovers played the previous Friday.
Nor was there a preview of the other semi-final between St Patrick's Athletic and Shamrock Rovers on Tuesday.
That is not to mention the exciting end to the league season in Ireland, which also received no coverage. I have noticed this lack of coverage of Irish domestic soccer in other editions of your sports supplement.
As an Irish newspaper, I believe there is a duty to report on Irish sporting events. Is it any wonder that the League of Ireland struggles to survive, when a casual reader of your paper would not know it exists? I believe it is incumbent upon you as an Irish newspaper to focus more on Irish domestic soccer and less on the English variety.
Mark Urwin
Court Farm
Kilmartin Lane
Hollystown, Dublin 15
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Soccer is banjaxed in Ireland when you get a crowd cheering for an English team over an Irish one - as happened when Manchester United played a League of Ireland selection recently. What a display of slavery, which I could not imagine in any capital city would cheer against the home nation's team for a foreign one, and not only that, a team from a country which has waged recent war in Ireland and was a former colonial oppressor. That's not the players' fault, but can you imagine a Moscow or London crowd cheering on Bayern Munich, or a Parisian crowd rooting for Inter Milan over Paris St Germain? Once the home game here is so subservient to the English game, and to such an extent as this, it has no hope. I feel sorry for all the people who put in effort to local teams, but they'd be better off switching to GAA.