Twitter \u2013 or if we must, X \u2013 is often a pretty hideous place. But every so often, a chink of light breaks through.<\/p>\n
Remember when Sky Sports had the rights to the All-Ireland football and hurling championships? Each weekend there\u2019d be a flood of confused viewers in Britain turning to Twitter to voice their thoughts on what they perceived to be our lawless blood sports. Great times.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an enduring sense of delight when Gaelic games break through to the wider, unenlightened world. Such as Clare under-20 goalkeeper Mark Sheedy\u2019s penalty save earning the number one spot in SportsCentre\u2019s Daily Top 10 on ESPN back in May \u2013 there\u2019s a pride that comes with seeing people from around the world watching our sports utterly agog as to what is going on.<\/p>\n
Remarkably, the World Cup<\/a> has found a much more receptive international audience than the electric All-Ireland Senior Football Championship<\/a> we\u2019ve been enjoying this season. And yet, one moment from the All-Ireland semi-finals found a warm embrace online.<\/p>\n David Clifford<\/a>\u2019s penalty attempt during Kerry<\/a>\u2019s game Dublin<\/a> at Croke Park on July 12th was perhaps surprising fodder for social media. Evan Comerford saved the initial strike, only for the Fossa man to catch the rebounding ball and dispatch it to the back of the net. It was a long way from the best goal the Kerryman ever scored.<\/p>\n The GAA\u2019s social media team shared the 36-second clip of the score on X. In the week since it was posted, it\u2019s been viewed 13.7 million times. For comparison, the other goal in that game, scored by Kerry\u2019s Sean O\u2019Brien, has been viewed only 39,000 times. So what is going on?<\/p>\n We can probably start in the replies? They\u2019re a skit. Everything from confusion to contempt as international viewers tried to wrap their heads around what they were watching.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat in the handball, football, basketball, rugby is this sport?\u201d one X user inquired, while another asked, clearly mistaking Clifford for his fellow 13 Cristian Romero: \u201cDid everyone in the stadium blink at the same time or something? How was this goal allowed?\u201d Those who speak Gen Z will enjoy the \u201cFirst in my bloodline to know this sport\u201d take, and another reply was beautiful in its simplicity: \u201cWhat the f**k is this?\u201d<\/p>\n But one particular sentiment saw two footballing worlds collide. \u201cWhat in the Maradona,\u201d a replier remarked, the Clifford video coming at just the right time to draw such parallels, three days before Argentina\u2019s World Cup semi-final against England.<\/p>\n A repost along those lines was what saw the Clifford clip really take flight, garnering a whopping 24.6 million views and almost 900 comments beyond the GAA\u2019s original post. \u201cIf Argentina get a penalty on Wednesday,\u201d Oli Fisher captioned his retweet of the video.<\/p>\n The joke was obviously playing on the conspiracy theories going around that Fifa were allowing Argentina to bend the rules as they saw fit.<\/p>\n Fortunately for all Messi & Co pushed past England with an above-board 2-1 win to reach Sunday\u2019s decider against Spain.<\/p>\n Forty years after Diego Maradona\u2019s infamous \u201cHand of God\u201d goal against the collective old enemy at the 1986 World Cup, Kerry have their own hero drawing attention from around the world, and showing a similar divine touch for goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twitter \u2013 or if we must, X \u2013 is often a pretty hideous place. But every so often,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[76],"tags":[10416,42143,18,19,17,132,35350,879],"class_list":["post-596995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-kerry-gaa","tag-david-clifford","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports","tag-world-cup","tag-x"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116958706280215799","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}