I do hope Roy Keane doesn’t join Celtic. Not because of his ability– it’s always a good laugh when injury-plagued has-beens join the Old Firm and sap their resources while doing nothing more than lying on the treatment table. But if nothing else, it would be bound to encourage even more people to flock over to Glasgow from Dublin Airport every weekend, and there’s already more than enough vileness in the air when Rangers and Celtic fans come to town, without high profile Irish signings and a stadium full of tricolours to provide certain elements with even more targets for their sad vitriol.
Yes, Celtic FC was founded by an Irish priest. Ancient history, get over it everyone. Irish sports fans who actually care about football more than history would do well to direct their air fares and gate money towards their local league teams instead for a while, to improve the quality of the grass-roots Irish game instead of glory-hunting in Glasgow. And more importantly, to give the West of Scotland a bit of space to sort out its nasty sectarian problems, rather than (innocently or otherwise) adding to them.