Why do loyal wee Ulster’s sportsmen get the best and worst of both worlds?

RORY McIlroy – or Rory McIlbhoy as he’s now referred to in the Twaddell caravan – probably thought he had put the subject of his Olympic future to bed when he recently declared for Ireland. But unfortunately his decision hasn’t gone down well with every true-blue subject in loyal little Ulster.
His Sunday night victory prompted the good people at Proud to be a Protestant Banter to put up on Facebook an old picture of him wrapped in an Ulster fleg with the stirring legend ‘Well done Rory – Stand Up for the Ulsterman’.
If they thought that this would lead to an outpouring of patriotic pride in Our Wee Pravince they were badly mistaken. Here’s a few of the pithy replies that the post received, in no particular order of fury. (Squinter has tidied up the more grammatically challenged offerings.)
• The same Rory playing for the Republic in the Olympics?
• He’s a Roman Catholic.
• No Ulsterman wanting to fly that flag of dirt.
• Ffs he’s changing countries. The guy is a traitor. I don’t care what country you’re from but anybody who changes country is a traitor to that country. Lost respect for the guy.
• He may be from Northern Ireland but he chose to play for Ireland at the Olympics. Get the tricolours out for him.
• Well he clearly isn’t proud to be a Prod if he’s playing for Ireland is he?
• If a pig is born in a stable it doesn’t make him a horse.
• Lundy.
• Traitor.
• Bead rattler.
• Playing for f•••ing Ireland the. Turncoat.
Squinter remembers when Geordie Best provoked a similar storm of disapproval from a similar kind of people when he came down in favour of an all-Ireland soccer team. Suddenly, he wasn’t Ulster’s playboy hero any more, but a washed-up alco spending too much time in the company of Papes.
Newtownards still likes Geordie, though, if this mural off the main street is anything to go by. Or on second thoughts, and on closer inspection of the artwork, perhaps it doesn’t like him at all. Let’s be honest, here: this is not of a quality that you would find on the International Wall.
Last year there was fury (so much fury about these days, dontcha think?) when a Bestie mural in East Belfast was replaced by a mural of gun-toting UVF men. At the time Squinter joined in the furious furore, but looking at this thing, you have to wonder whether a loyalist paramilitary mural might not be a distinct improvement.