Last Wednesday night, Martin O'Neill made an extremely ill-judged comment to Matt Cooper at an event in the Opera House in Cork.
According to the Sunday Times, the Ireland manager was asked about his and his assistant's trip to the Super Bowl earlier this year to see the Denver Broncos defeat the Carolina Panthers at the San Francisco 49ers' Levi's Stadium. The Sunday Times reported that the 64-year-old responded to Cooper's question by saying that 'in case anyone got the wrong impression, he and Keane weren't "queer" and had been accompanied by two other members of his back-room staff, Steve Guppy and Steve Walford.'
O'Neill used his press conference on Monday to apologise for the remark:
Yes, I was going to address this, if I have made inappropriate comments in the Opera House in Cork on Wednesday evening, I obviously apologise for it and I will attempt for the rest of my time here not to make such inappropriate comments.
In response to O'Neill's remarks, Francis Fitzgibbon of the Dublin Devils - Ireland's only gay football team - appeared on the Ray D'Arcy Show on RTE Radio One this afternoon. O'Neill was criticised in many quarters for his clumsy comments, but many found little wrong with his use of the word. Fitzgibbon eloquently explained the problem with O'Neill's comments:
[When we heard the comments] We felt that sinking level of disappointment. We felt not so much anger, more so disappointment. It's not even the word, when we're joking among ourselves we occasionally call each other queers. I don't have such a problem with the word, but it's the sentiment of 'we're the lads, and ye are different over there'; that demarcation of 'us' from the gay people.
[The appropriateness of the word] depends on the context in which it is used. The context in which Martin used it was this separating notion of "us and them".
Fitzgibbon went on to stress that the use of the word 'queers' in such a separatist way causes difficulty for young people coming to terms with their homosexuality; that this idea of "us and them" can reinforce a feeling of being ostracised amongst their own society.
Fitzgibbon was happy to accept O'Neill's apology on the matter:
We would totally accept and are grateful he came out and apologised, and it is a really good thing he has. It raises awareness of homophobia in sport and of stereotypes relating to gay people in sport. It raises it as an issue.
You can listen to the full interview here.
[The Ray D'Arcy Show]
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