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McClean refuses to wear poppy on eve of Remembrance Sunday as Sunderland suffer defeat

 

Controversial Sunderland winger James McClean refused to wear a poppy in the 2-1 defeat at Everton.

All Sunderland and Everton players wore the specially commissioned shirts featuring a poppy on the chest as part of the Remembrance Sunday commemoration.

Sunderland have been one of the leading clubs in acknowledging the annual event and were one of the first to commission the shirts and auction them for the Poppy Appeal.

 

But the Londonderry-born Republic of Ireland international asked to wear his usual shirt when he was recalled by Sunderland manager Martin O'Neill for today’s clash at Goodison.

Sunderland manager Martin O'Neill, who was also born and brought up in Derry, and played for Northern Ireland, wore a poppy on his post-match suit but did not wear one on his training kit during the defeat for Sunderland, who have still not won at Goodison since 1996.

 

Sunderland have distanced themselves from McClean's decision and have again given their full support to the appeal.

A club spokesman said: 'As a club Sunderland AFC wholeheartedly supports the Remembrance Commemorations. It was James’ personal choice not to wear a shirt on this occasion.'

The 23-year-old former League of Ireland midfielder, who broke into the Sunderland squad following O'Neill's appointment at the Stadium of Light less than a year ago, has been embroiled in controversy in the last 12 months as a result of his Republican views.

James McClean refuses to wear a poppy | Mail Online

 

I'm not sure about this recent fad of imprinting poppies on football shirts. While I applaud the sentiment behind the use of poppies in general, does it really belong in sport? I thought FIFA took a dim view of the politicising of football? Don't think we've heard the end of this, McClean is going to get a bit of flak for this.

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I was born in Derry and lived there for a good bit of my early childhood before moving to the Republic.

 

My father and mother have worked in Derry most of their lives so my family has a lot of connections there, so I totally understand wheres he coming from.

 

Me personally, I would have worn the poppy. I always think of it in the sense that there were plenty of Irishmen that died to and I'd wear it to remember them. But I also hugely respect all the British that gave their lives.

 

But McClean comes from a city where theres still a lot of hurt and anger towards the British army.

 

Its an impossible situation for people like him. I often wonder why someone just doesn't come up with something Green for Irish people to wear, a green poppy or something(that probably sounds ridiculous though)

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Another American tradition adopted by us.

 

Never understood the poppy appeal, why we having collections for people that are paid to do a job they chose? Fair enough if you were injured after being drafted but really how many of those are left?

 

The whole things been perverted to an extent though. The Poppy Appeal was seperate from Rememberence Sunday. The latter was about remembering war and making sure it shouldn't happen again. The Poppy Appeal was to rasie money for welfare porgrammes. My nan got a special chair to help her get up and down from the Legion funded by the appeal even though my granddad had died years earlier because he'd served in the army during the closing stages of the war.

 

It's become some kind of weird expression of nationalism now though, a way of backing 'our boys'. The country's really fucking strange when it comes to all this. It's gone from where Rememberence Sunday services were pretty somber affairs to where you'd can actually imagine yourself getting hraanged for not wearing a poppy.

 

It all ties in with all the other weird shit. The guy who won the VC going on Dancing on Ice, the knobhead sailers who got captured by Iran selling their stories to the S*n. the S*n military awards where Carol Vorderman presents a gong to someone for his Apache helicopter gun skills while Fern Cotton sits in the audience pretending to cry, the military fucking wives singing 'driving home for Christmas', to the 'realistic' action man figures you can buy at Argos which have names like 'Royal Marine in Basra combat dress'.

 

It's like politics, the military, nationalism, entertainment, celebrity and knobhead Facebook culture have somehow all been melded into one weird fucking outlook on society. We're turning into the Running Man.

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It was his choice. In my opinion, all this stuff should be kept as far away from football as possible. One point of note though, The poppy symbolises the lives lost in WW1 dosnt it? Well nearly 50,000 Irishmen died in that war.

Personally I would have no problems wearing one. All them Nordies are a bit mad like

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The irony is lost on a lot of people who complain about those not wearing poppies that a whole generation fought for individual freedom and one of those freedoms is the choice of whether to wear a poppy or not.

 

I personally do not wear one, as I'm uncomfortable with how wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan are grouped in with this. If the poppy simply commemorated the two World Wars, then I would wear one, but as I said, I'm not comfortable with its association with an illegal war and another in which there seems to be a blurring of aims and no coherent strategy.

 

The First World War is, in my eyes, one of the greatest tragedies in human history and shows just how much contempt the state has for its citizens. An entire generation of young men wiped out because of a dick measuring contest going on between various European nations; a war glamourised as being all for king and country and marketed as pretty much a jolly in France. The Second World War is pretty much as just a war as you can imagine and those who sacrificed themselves deserve to be remembered and respected.

 

As I said, I feel uncomfortable with the poppy encompasing all wars and not just the two I've mentioned above.

 

If McClean doesn't want to wear one, then that's his personal choice. What I do find odd though is- without wishing to generalise here- the scorn that some Irish people pour on the whole thing when as a poster above mentioned, 50,000 of their countrymen died in the First World War and they surely deserve to be acknowledged.

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The irony is lost on a lot of people who complain about those not wearing poppies that a whole generation fought for individual freedom and one of those freedoms is the choice of whether to wear a poppy or not.

 

I personally do not wear one, as I'm uncomfortable with how wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan are grouped in with this. If the poppy simply commemorated the two World Wars, then I would wear one, but as I said, I'm not comfortable with its association with an illegal war and another in which there seems to be a blurring of aims and no coherent strategy.

 

The First World War is, in my eyes, one of the greatest tragedies in human history and shows just how much contempt the state has for its citizens. An entire generation of young men wiped out because of a dick measuring contest going on between various European nations; a war glamourised as being all for king and country and marketed as pretty much a jolly in France. The Second World War is pretty much as just a war as you can imagine and those who sacrificed themselves deserve to be remembered and respected.

 

As I said, I feel uncomfortable with the poppy encompasing all wars and not just the two I've mentioned above.

 

If McClean doesn't want to wear one, then that's his personal choice. What I do find odd though is- without wishing to generalise here- the scorn that some Irish people pour on the whole thing when as a poster above mentioned, 50,000 of their countrymen died in the First World War and they surely deserve to be acknowledged.

 

Pardon my ignorance and i'm sorry if this is a really stupid question (i have a feeling it is) - but how far back does the poppy's representation go? Is it for every person who has ever fought in the name of Britain? Even as far back as the empire?

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It was his choice. In my opinion, all this stuff should be kept as far away from football as possible. One point of note though, The poppy symbolises the lives lost in WW1 dosnt it? Well nearly 50,000 Irishmen died in that war.

Personally I would have no problems wearing one. All them Nordies are a bit mad like

 

They volunteered to fight too. The largest ever volunteer force was the two and half million who came from the Indian sub continent to fight in the second world war, over a million of them were 'fucking muslims', lest we forget.

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Pardon my ignorance and i'm sorry if this is a really stupid question (i have a feeling it is) - but how far back does the poppy's representation go? Is it for every person who has ever fought in the name of Britain? Even as far back as the empire?

 

It originated in America by an American woman inspired by a Canadian poem during WWI

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I wrote a lengthy post about this issue last year when the FA were up in arms about FIFA or UEFA (I forget which) refusing to let England wear a kit featuring a poppy. This is a different side of the same story.

 

It amazes me that people can bang on about the hard-won freedoms fought for by generations past, yet fail to recognise that the fact an individual can chose whether to wear a poppy for whatever reason their conscience dictates is an expression of exactly the same freedom of expression that we value so much.

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Football and society is becoming heavily politicised and the wrong opinions persecuted. The Kick it Out campaign opened the doors to political slogans in football. Poppies on shirts is just another aspect of this. I expect in the next few years we will have some sort of mandatory awareness campaign for homophobia and then after that whatever else becomes trendy in the zeitgeist.

 

Of course, if you think this is all a bit of a slippery slope and football should just be about football then, ipso facto, you are evil and should probably be detained for your own safety.

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War is a choice these days.

 

Any wars we either start or join, should come with a clause that all children of the royal family, and parliamentarians, of adult age, are automatically drafted and sent to the front line.

 

Oh, to make this relevant to the thread, they each have to have a poppy shoved up their arses.

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