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Irish FA in Hot Water Over Sunday Football Rule?
It really is time the IFA sorted this out. At the minute, IFA clubs aren't allowed to play their competitive matches on a Sunday. It's the kind of thing you'd expect in 1950 but is more than a little outdated in 2005.
The vote was recently put to delegates from all the IFA-affiliated clubs who voted to retain the rule that football matches should not be played on a Sunday, but as it turns out this could land them in hot water with FIFA. According to FIFA's rules, FAs aren't allowed to discriminate against an individual or group of people based on ethnicity, gender, etc etc and religion. According to the Belfast Telegraph, that could leave the IFA facing expulsion if they don't change the rules.
Now the main argument I've heard online is that this is anti-Catholic. Ballocks. This is just another excuse for Sinner FAI supporters to have a go at the IFA and/or it's Northern Ireland team, which in their opinion, doesn't have a right to exist. These republicans have decided that because it's a part of Christianity that they don't like, it must be Protestant.
I'm not defending the rule. It's completely anachronistic. The IFA should ditch it at the next available opportunity - but it's not anti-Catholic. I suppose I could nearly see an argument that it's anti-Jewish, or anti-Atheist, since neither of these religions believe Sunday is a sacred day. However as Catholics also celebrate the Sabbath and their religion lays down the same laws as the Protestant one, I can only conclude this rule is a sign of Christian fundamentalism, not Protestant fundamentalism. Any self-respecting 'good Catholic' wouldn't work on a Sunday anyway.
Follow up:
The tone of their whinging over this is just more evidence, were it needed, that no matter what the Northern Ireland supporters and the IFA do to improve things at Windsor, there will always be a few republican shit stirrers determined to enforce their own vision of anti-Protestant apartheid on sport in Ulster.
Nevertheless...
The IFA Should Allow Sunday Football Because:
1. it would shut those nutcase paranoid MOPEs up
2. Why shouldn't I be allowed to play football on a Sunday if I'm not a Christian? (aside from the fact I'm shite at it)
3. The IFA could be in legal hot water with FIFA and/or my mates at the European Court of Human Rights and there's nothing the Fearonites of this world would like more than that. (Can't you nearly hear them rubbing themselves in glee?)
4. Plenty of people work on a Sunday anyway. Maybe the players could get time and a half