We’re not Brasil we’re Tuaisceart Éireann

Jeez, I still can't decide whether you are incapable of understanding simple issues, or just ignore them when they don't suit your case. Maybe both?

1. O'Connor: He was 20 when this whole switch thing sprung up, and playing for Linfield. In December 2018 he claimed:

“It is true that I’ve declared for Northern Ireland,” he said speaking to the Belfast Telegaph.“My nanny Patricia is from Dundalk like me but she was born in Belfast, and I think it is the right decision for me, so going forward hopefully I will be playing for Northern Ireland."

While in April 2019, he claimed he had explored no options beyond the ROI.

“I was never going to change, I played underage all the way up and I was never going to change my mind,” he told The42. “I’m from the Republic and that’s who I want to represent. It was just blown up to say that I wanted to declare for Northern Ireland.”

So we don't know who approached whom and besides, if you're relying on Mental Mickey to bolster your case, then it's a pretty weak one (understatement). Oh, and we never picked him.

2. Dunne: He was 21 and playing professionally in England when he first expressed "an interest" in playing for NI. This was a couple of months after being called up for the senior ROI squad for a friendly, but not playing and then being dropped from the squad entirely for the forthcoming competitive game.

Two months after that he was recalled to the ROI squad, meaning his flirtation was NI was a pretty transparent ploy to put pressure on the FAI;

3. Burns:

“Darragh is happy. He’s in with the North U17 squad,” says St. Patrick’s Athletic director of football Ger O’Brien. Darragh Burns initially played for Bohemians U15s before moving to the Inchicore club. At the time, both St. Pats and coaches from the Dublin schoolboys league contacted the FAI about the ability of the technical midfielder and recommended his inclusion. He was not selected. “His Dad is from Northern Ireland, he just wasn’t getting called up,” O’Brien explains.

Meaning he only turned to the IFA after the FAI ignored him. And in any case, playing for NI at under-age didn't tie him, he was still eligible to switch to the ROI, which he has since done. Good luck to him.

Hotlips_Hoolahan wrote: We're talking about lads who are 17 or 18 here, not little children. So you can stop with the emotive, inflammatory rhetoric.

When they can hardly afford coaches and training camps in ROI, I suspect that your suggestion may not go down too well at home.

Meanwhile, may I take that reply as being a tacit admission that your earlier whataboutery over Darragh Burns was, well,  dung?

Even a quick scan of that 2018 Blog you dug up revealed a number of factual inaccuracies and false arguments which I could take issue with, but I won't, for the following reason.

The most recent to-and-fro over this issue over on the ROI section followed the switch by Charlie McCann. McCann's case was mentioned in a number of posts on the Rangers thread, and then in the ROI section, but I happily ignored them, despite being name-checked, and even where I thought some of it was wide of the mark. This was because it was then just ordinary posters discussing a matter of interest from their own perspective, which is fair enough.

Until you, HH, waded in with another of your customary agenda-driven and provocative diatribes. On reflection, I should have declined to "bite", but I don't like to see my team and our support falsely disparaged, if only because other readers, who may not be so familiar with the issues, may be persuaded that your ranting has some merit.

But this time I will desist, not only because there is literally nothing I or anyone else could say that would ever change your prejudiced mindset one little jot, but also out of respect for the great majority of decent posters on this forum, who are at risk of dying of boredom at the prospect of another 100 pages of this thread.