The Life of Reilly
21 December 2024
Meet Pa Reilly, the Traveller Footballer, Club Secretary, and Football League Referee interviewed here by fellow Irish Traveller Thomas McDonald.
This interview comes from the anti-racist fanzine ‘A Sporting Chance’, created by the ERRC in 2024 to highlight the experiences of Roma, Sinti, & Travellers fighting racism through sport as part of the EU-funded Moving On project.
TM: Right, hello, my name is Thomas McDonald from the Exchange House Ireland. Thank you for coming today, we have Pa Reilly with us and he's a member of Travelling community. So, we're just going to kick off the interview here Pa, and the first question is what age did you first get involved in sports at?
PR: I think I was always involved in sport from say 8-9 years of age, but I never really got into sports fully until I was 18 or 19. We started up what we called a Traveller team and entered the league. And it was really from that age that I really got involved in sports. First and foremost, it’s soccer, soccer has always been the sport for me. I loved watching it, playing it, loved talking about it. And what brought me into it was, there was a few of the lads that I grew up with, played in the soccer team, and they approached me because I was able to read and write and stuff like that. They asked me: “Would you become club secretary, filling out the forms, registering players?”
So, I agreed and that was my role. Even though I was club secretary, I still played with the team and throughout the course of the couple of seasons you go to a variety of management meetings and such, mostly disciplinary!
But yeah, it was there that the opportunity came for the need for soccer referees, there wasn't enough referees. That brought me into the soccer refereeing. And I was at that for, four, five or six year, refereeing in the Meath and District league, which would have been local, and then the Leinster Senior League.
TM: It’s good that you’ve had a lot of different experiences within football because I want to ask you if during your refereeing and all your playing, all the years from when you started and all the way up, did you ever experience any racism or discrimination?
PR: Yeah, I think that there's a very important point in your question, Thomas. Did you ever experience racism? Because sometimes the racism part can get lost. The link between Travellers and experiencing racism can get lost. Some people can fall into thinking it’s about colour but Travellers experience racism, because they're Travellers.
TM: That’s a very good point.
PR: And yes, I have seen elements of it, but what was more concerning, Thomas, is because you're a Traveller when you’re going out to play soccer, or any sports, or you're going into refereeing or anything like that, you're always conscious of it. You're always thinking of it, that it'll happen. You're worrying about it before it even happens. It’s always there, and that is the worry, that you'll experience it.
And I've had that. I've played football and you'll hear the words “tramp”, “knacker”, all the derogatory words that's associated with your ethnicity. And I've heard it directed at me and other players, Traveller players. In refereeing, yes, I've seen elements of it as well.
It stays with you, it stays with you. Like, I remember with the football team in particular, we just wanted to play football you know? Win and get up to the table and win as much as you can. You didn't go out there for that. You know?
TM: What do you think are the issues for young people involved in sport in general now, and for members of the Travelling community?
PR: I think today's world is a lot different than say even when I was refereeing in the early 2000s and playing. I think if you look at the whole social media now, like I've seen Travellers involved, Thomas, and I'm sure you have, they've been involved in different sports. And when you ask them can we promote them through social media, they’ll say no, because the fear is of that comment section and it's that one thing all the time.
TM: I think one of the things that could be different now than it was for when I was playing football, or you, or any older people – not that we’re old! – but I think the younger generation now, we would have experienced stuff on the football pitch or whatever sports we are involved in and we could go home and it wouldn't necessarily follow us home, even though we'd be thinking about it. But young people now with their devices, their smartphones, and their tablets and stuff, it can follow them back to their own house. People can remain anonymous online and call you all sorts of names and everything. And it can really affect the young people. They can feel trapped and there's no escape from it.
PR: It's a big negative impact on Travellers’ mental health. I mean, look, we've seen that, Thomas, around accountability. There's no accountability when it comes to online. You report someone and they can delete their page, or they can be blocked or so on, they go back on and make another page, and they can do the same thing over and over.
I hear this an awful lot: “Well, it's not just Travellers that experience that”, and like, no one should be experiencing it, but the outcomes are very much different for Travellers, and they don't want to be identified at all because of those things.
I think one of the barriers for me, really, is there's not enough visibility of Travellers in sports.
You put on the RTE [national broadcaster], the stations we have here, on all these platforms and you don't really see Travellers. Yes, maybe at another Olympics every four year you might see a Traveller boxer. I've gone into town where I work, you have all these sports people up on billboards – rarely see Travellers. You know? We have Joel Ward there who's gone professional now, a well-known boxer. There's not enough. And I know, you know, us Travellers, they are there in sports, but it's just the barrier is being [self] identified.
And you know what, it's sad in one way, but I can understand it. Would you want to put yourself out there when you know what there's a high possibility, you're going to be called names because you're a Traveller? You're going to be all these negative stereotypes about your community. You wouldn't want that.
TM: No, I can completely understand where you're coming from. As you said there, when they do participate in sport, they don't identify themselves as a Traveller. That can have serious mental health effects as well, of course. It's like you're trying to be somebody else.
PR: I would love tomorrow morning – no matter what sports you'd be involved in – I'd love to be able to say I'm Patrick Reilly, I'm a professional or I'm whatever in such a sport, and I'm a Traveller. You know, like, imagine the proudness of that, to be able to say that without having to choose, “if I say this what will the club think of me? What will the officials, what will everyone think?”
I think what it is, Thomas, is that Travellers for years, historically we have tried to be what people say they want, that is “put them into houses and they'll be settled people, and we’ll get rid of the Traveller problem.”
I think it goes back a long way historically, like my father and mother, for example, their experience in school, like with the white line across the schoolyard.
TM: Segregation.
PR: Yeah. One would be forgiven for thinking, you know what? I'm not going to even open my mouth here, because of the historical treatment.
TM: It goes back to the thing we were saying earlier on that the fear is always there before it even happens to you. Maybe it might not happen today, but you're still afraid of it. And so, it's always in the back of the mind.
PR: I've seen it with young Travellers that we engage with and talk to, and it’s that you go into the shop and you're afraid of being followed around. You go for a job interview and if they see your address and it's a well-known Traveller halting site, your fear is they won’t give you the job. And that's before it even happens.
TM: So, it's happening in everyday life. It’s happening when they're going into shops, it's happening in their daily life. So, when they're going into sports, trying to get a bit of, maybe an escape from all that, the reason they might hide their identity is because they don't want to experience it there as well.
PR: Absolutely, the fear is that they'll be mistreated, probably not picked for the team, all these things coming on in to their mind you know, the club mightn't accept me, the players mightn't accept me.
TM: So, before we go, Pa, there's been a lot of very good points made there. The last question I'll ask you is what would be your recommendations for the governing bodies of sports and the people that can make a difference in sports today for young members of the Travelling community?
PR: I would certainly say, Thomas, there's a very good saying – “nothing for us without us”. And I think anything that's being developed around sports, where we're trying to target particular groups, they need to have those groups involved. They need representation there. Travellers on say, committees, government boards, feeding into that process. I am very much for inclusion over integration. Inclusion is warm, it's welcoming, and that's what needs to happen.
Wherever these bodies are identifying, or are going to develop strategies, or anything that's to do with particular groups – have the voices of those groups at the front of the table!
TM: I couldn't agree with you more. What was that saying again? You said nothing for us without us?
R: Yeah, I think the right saying is actually “nothing about us without us”, but I just put the ‘Pa Reily twist’ on it.
TM: Well, it's a very powerful quote and it’s very true, and I couldn't agree with you more.
