Dave Hannigan: A trip to England offered my American sons a lesson on Irish history

The kindly woman working at the sprawling JD Sports in the Bull Ring shopping centre looked sheepish as she confirmed the outlet didn’t stock Birmingham City shirts. There was a smorgasbord of other jerseys, including PSG, Real Madrid, Arsenal, Liverpool, both the Manchester outfits, and most curiously of all, the garish pink of Inter Miami (founded 2018). Just nothing from the professional club which has been based a mile up the road for exactly 150 years. The modern football world, a strange and sometimes depressing place where global brands trump local loyalty.

No matter. Later that Good Friday afternoon, we traipsed through the grimy back roads of Digbeth and up towards St Andrew’s to join 27,000 Brummies watching the newly crowned League One champions entertain Crawley Town.

A winding route through an ancient Irish part of town. We passed Pat Benson’s Boxing Academy, a club tracing its origins back to Stephen Hayden, the Kilkenny pugilist who started the Irish Foresters around these parts in 1931. Streets once infamously patrolled by Thomas Shelby now more globally associated with City’s minority owner Tom Brady. From Peaky Blinders to New England Patriots.

For all the ersatz glamour of the quarterback and his moneyed cohorts, the stadium remains a little more corrugated iron than corporate box, still Bovril rather than Bollinger.

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The traditional pre-kick-off airing of Harry Lauder’s “Keep right on to the end of the road”, written after he lost his son at The Somme, nearly took the roof off. Reeking of history, the opening verse crackled like it was being played from a 78 on a gramophone and launched the supporters into their own lusty rendition, a reminder that this is a place with real football heritage beyond the ken of whoever makes merchandising decisions for JD Sports.

Fans make their way to St Andrew’s to watch Birmingham City take on Crawley Town on April 18th. Photograph: Cameron Smith/Getty

In the section beneath us, a small but vocal contingent from Crawley offered the American visitors a masterclass in the mordant wit of the travelling English football fan, their songbook inventive and profane. “We’ll never play you again!” acknowledged that their wealthy hosts were heading upwards as they stood on the cusp of relegation. “You dirty northern bastards” was geographically inaccurate but then again they probably knew that.

And when it became clear City were going to fail to score against their team, that has conceded 81 goals this season, the visitors offered “You’re just a s**t Aston Villa”. Revealing a more cutting edge than either side evinced on the day.

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As is our biennial ritual, my two youngest sons and I had come to spend Easter break visiting friends, meandering Middle England, sampling football, imbibing Anglo culture, highbrow and low-down. One day, indenting the streets of Stratford-upon-Avon force feeding them all manner of Shakespeare guff, the next making pilgrimage at their behest to Chipping Norton. There, at 11am, we joined more than 200 other penitents patiently queuing for entry to Diddly Squat shop to purchase tat to support the farming evangelical Church of Clarkson the Irredeemable. Truly, we live in an age of awe and wonder when American teens consider this time well spent.

Diddly Squat Farm Shop in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

On the way back from that excursion, barrelling through leafy Warwickshire. we happened upon a darling Gaelic football field in Hockley Heath, the home of John Mitchel’s, a club famous as the place where a young Jack Grealish once learned to solo. I shared that info with the kids then gave them the mandatory lecture about Mitchel being an Irish patriot, unapologetic racist and shameless slavery advocate whose name shouldn’t adorn anything, anywhere. A parent who teaches history might just be the most hectoring of the species.

There were other educational opportunities. On a day trip to London, they heard a babel of languages during the mandatory stop at Classic Football Shirts in Spitalfields, where sporting fashionistas from all over the planet come to sift through nostalgia couture. A young Chinese man was fingering the merchandise with one hand while holding his phone up so his friend on a video call could decide if he wanted a San Francisco Glens jersey, replete with Guinness logo on the front, or a vintage Colo Colo number.

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My lads unearthed a white Ireland 1993 shirt with three green stripes over the right shoulder and recognised it as the edition I have proudly owned since I pilfered it from my older brother amid the following summer’s World Cup festivities. Now retailing for a bargain £299. Crime pays.

Ian Maatsen celebrates scoring Aston Villa's second goal against Newcastle United at Villa Park on April 19th. Photograph: Michael Steele/Getty

Near the end of a wonderful tour of Villa Park, as we loitered in the tunnel before visiting the dugouts, I argued with our octogenarian tour guide Keith about whether Peter McParland or Paul McGrath was the club’s greatest Irish player. Eventually we agreed to differ and he passed the peace pipe by asserting Eamonn Deacy was the truest of gentlemen. As this was playing out, my sons were wide-eyed at the Champions League livery being draped from every corner of the old ground that Sunday afternoon. A measure of the impact of the competition and its relentless branding that even the logo had them all excited.

Six days later, we departed the same venue so utterly exhilarated after watching Unai Emery’s side tear apart Newcastle United that the youngest kept breaking into, “The Villa boys from Aston, we travel near and far ...” Not boys from Aston. Just young fellas from Long Island, day tripping in a foreign land, cosplaying English accents. Travel broadens the mind. Or something.

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