There was a fantastic atmosphere last night in the Aviva Stadium. It was great to see some Poles with their Polish gear on but having an Ireland scarf around them and face painted green. I saw one Pole decked out in red and white whereas his two small kids had green on. A notable amount would have bought three tickets with the English and Scottish games included. Any way we can attract our Polish friends to Lansdowne more regularly cheering on the Boys in Green? They're clearly football mad and it would be great to have them along more often.

I was waiting for that. Can people leave the jokes to Sligo Hornet.

I think any of them who are involved in grassroutes here would go but perhaps not too many would commit to buying season tickets. .

Maybe the FAI could start targeting more polish through the media. (advertise in polish papers here, have a polish section on the FAI website, send some Polish tweets?)

Just a few random ideas, but i definitely think we can build on this. 

Indeed, there are a lot of kids and teenagers now from Polish and Baltic families walking around with perfect Irish accents. I'd say it's only a matter of time before we see a few such players start to appear in the underage set up.

a lot of folks who have moved here have integrated very well and i am sure many of their kids sound irish class themselves as irish of ghanaian/polish/nigerian extraction etc.

Yes, this is their "home" even though they are very proud of their country of origin and culture. It wouldn't be too big a deal for them to declare for us, especially as we are a small country compared to theirs and are not sporting rivals of their countries in any way whatsoever.

Also the fact that we are a small country and a bit of an underdog has to be a help. There's a bit of a difference between us and much larger countries with a colonial past as you say....I'd say it would be a much easier decision for people to declare for us.

from living in poland a while myself i was always very fond of the country and their national team (until the other night of course, diving bastards ) but i think no matter how long i lived there i wouldn't have gone to follow the Polish team, because no matter  how long i lived there i think itd have never been enough to consider myself 'Polish'.

Im honestly not sure if your being serious

If you want to attract non irish to football matches you have to targeted kids.Adults will go only if they are really football (sport) mad like me.

LOI clubs have missed a trick here IMO. A partnership between Polish and Irish clubs should have been made years ago. Polish club gets to loan players out, not a massive distance from their homeland, plenty of Polish/ethnic food and in return the LOI club may benefit financially.

As for supporting the national team, as Simon said (excuse the pun) you need to target the kids

Be interesting to see what people think now. The majority of polish adults who moved here will never support us as their main team and rightly so. But I feel this community has done an excellent job integrating and their kids born here are growing up as Irish as the rest of us with no grudge on their shoulders towards this nation. And as a result this new generation of Irish will support the national team. Obviously many will support Poland as well as Ireland due to their parents being from there and that's good to see also. 

Anyone else have thoughts on this? Can't believe it's nearly 10 years since this and 8 since euro 2016.

In terms of other ethnicities, we have a really small proportion of population; less than 10% "other white", 4% Asian, less than 2% black. 

I'm sure those coaching at home who are more aware of those from other ethnic backgrounds and who is more likely to playing football or not.

As you say, many Polish immigrant families in Ireland are probably transitory - they tend to go back after a few years. It's also only 20 years since Poland joined the EU. Poles who lived in Ireland before then led a fairly precarious existence - I knew a couple who got turned away by immigration on returning to Dublin after trips home - few would have been starting families back then, so there wouldn't be many Irish-born adult kids of Polish parents yet. That said, there have been surprisingly few Polish players in the underage teams in recent years. It could be the families don't stick around or maybe Polish emigrants don't take that much of an interest in playing football (it sounds strange but Polish names aren't exactly common in underage teams of other European countries either).

wicklowrunner wrote: I’ve had this conversation on numerous occasions. Just cannot understand why young lads here with Polish descent haven’t come through at adult level. Klose and Podolski are great examples where it’s happened abroad.

Klose and Podolski are different cases though as both were Aussiedler, descended from German citizens who stayed in Poland after World War II and therefore had a right of return (Sepp Piontek, Denmark's manager in the 1986 World Cup was a Warsaw-born German too). Both Klose and Podolski also had fathers who were professional footballers (and mothers who were handball players) so they had a slight advantage from the start.

I think its just the age profile, as pointed out Poland only joined the EU 20 years ago and many of the Polish who immigrated here were young and didn't have kids for a couple years.

All our players of Nigerian descent, their parents began coming to Ireland 25-30 years ago at this stage and most of the ones in the senior squad are only 20-23 years old now with a lot more emerging at younger age groups.

Give it a few years and there will be more Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Romanian names etc.. coming through, theres already a fair few at the various underage levels.