St. Patrick's Day is going to be an extra edgy affair this year what with the socially irresponsible scheduling of the 'Ireland derby' for that day.
This correspondent has long believed that the next civil war in this country will not be between free starters and republicans, or even between water charge advocates and anti-water charge folk, but between supporters of Liverpool and supporters of Manchester United.
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There are many divisions emerging in Irish society. But the division between supporters of the 'Pool and supporters of ManU is perhaps the most bitter.
However, there is another division emerging, one which has been simmering for a while but which truly revealed itself in all its gory detail over the weekend.
The division I speak of is between common or garden fans of Conor McGregor and those fans of Conor McGregor who began following the sport five minutes before everyone else and thus refer to those no-marks as bandwagoners as often as possible.
Of the two groupings, the former are by far the more numerous. But, what the latter lack in numbers they make up for in pomposity and after the fact wisdom.
This correspondent is neither an MMA fan nor someone pretending to be an MMA fan and thus has no dog in this hunt.
He has written about five articles on McGregor, exactly four of which were urgent news stories which broke while there was no one else in the office. You'll be pleased to learn he got to end of these posts without referring to UFC as a sport. The last thing he wants to do is add to the sum of commentary on McGregor and his doings.
The captain hindsights who proliferate among the 'real fan' grouping has something of a field day yesterday.
Here's a flavour of some of the comments of facebook as a host of folk came out of the woodwork to trumpet their correctness.
No shock to proper mma fans. Diaz is one of the best boxers around and has a high quality of jiu jitsu...
He didn't stun the MMA world. He stunned the bad wagoners and the mcgregor dick riders. Delighted....
Any 1 who is stunned by nate submitting conor ain't no MMA fan. Gracie BJJ Beast on the floor !!!!
Not a shock! Only s shock if you don't know anything! 25lbs is a lot of extra weight
Not shocked, Connor believed the hype like the rest of us. Gutted I didn't put money on it!
At this point, we can only speculate on their relative circumspection in the build-up to the fight. One imagines, at his point, that they kept their doom-laden prophesies to themselves in order to give the bandwagoners enough rope to hang themselves.
Jonathan Bayley on our facebook page delivered an interesting riposte.
