The Irish-American Presidents visits to Ireland - from John F Kennedy to Barack Obama

This week in County Offaly they celebrated the one year anniversary of President Obama coming to town by opening his ancestral home in Moneygall. There in attendance were the US Embassy’s director of communications, Barack’s long-lost cousin Henry Healy and Canon Stephen Neill (Trading – quite successfully - as “Paddy Anglican” on Twitter) to mark the event.

It might be seen by some as a tenuous attempt at notoriety on the back of the most powerful person in the world, but Moneygall is right to take its place among the surprisingly plentiful locations all round the island to which The 44 can trace their ancestors.

Of course, JFK’s visit to Wexford captured the imagination like no other, and Ronald Reagan’s trip to Ballyporeen, Co. Tipperary was as schmaltzy as you’d expect from The Gipper, but there have been plenty of other men who’ve taken up residence at The White House with deep connections to The Mother Country.

The family of James Buchanan, for example, originated in Ramelton in Co Donegal, which incidentally is also the home of Dave Gallaher, the first captain of the New Zealand All Black rugby team. A few generations before Woodrow Wilson dreamt up the League of Nations, his family were living outside Strabane, Co Tyrone. Andrew Jackson, most famous in modern times for his being mentioned in The West Wing for possessing a big block of cheese that was open for anyone in his White House to take a bite out of, had family from Carrickfergus in Antrim. Even The Presidents Bush, the most white bread, down home of all the Presidents, have relatives who hailed from Rathfriland, Co. Down. And lest we forget James Hoban, the Irishman who built The White House in the first place.

But my favourite story of a President of Irish extraction was one who can trace his roots back to my hometown of Lifford in Donegal. His three times great grandparents, one of whom was born at Cavanacor House on the outskirts of Lifford, emigrated from there to Maryland in the late 17th century. As the family moved inland, first to North Carolina and then Tennessee, they too had their name shortened, from Pollock to Polk. And it was James K Polk who became, not just the youngest President at the time, but also the one serving when the now famous Annapolis Naval Base, Washington Monument and The Smithsonian were all initiated. He also vastly expanded the nation’s landmass westwards and was Governor of Tennessee, Speaker of the House and Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Not bad for a Lifford fella.

And that’s why ancestral homes the likes of which we’re seeing opened in Moneygall are so important. They are in many ways a testament to the power of what people can do when they strive for something and take their opportunities and make something of themselves, even if they do so far away from whence they came. It can say to people from one-horse towns, “If a guy with relatives from my town can make it to the White House, what am I not capable of?” And most of all, it shows the extraordinary effect this island has had in shaping some of the world’s most influential leaders.

Irish sporting hero James McClean and football's culture war

James McClean

As last Sunday showed as clearly as is ever going to be shown, being a football (not soccer, not ever soccer) fan can be extremely dramatic. In the final week of the Premier League, Man City won the title in the dying seconds of their game against QPR, the kind of ending that would prompt you to roll your eyes if it came from a Disney film about a plucky team of loser kids who only needed an inspirational coach/mascot goat to believe in themselves.

The football frenzy is only likely to get more, eh, frenzied in coming weeks because of the upcoming European Championships. Ireland will of course be in there, and on the team will be Derry man James McClean. But in the last while he’s been making headlines for reasons other than his meteoric rise to stardom on the field.

After announcing on Twitter that he had been selected to play for the Republic at the Euros, James was subjected to all manner of abuse and threats, as being from Derry and having progressed through Northern Ireland’s IFA ranks, he essentially defected. McClean took the jibes (and worse) in good humour, even slagging the offending tweeters about the fact Northern Ireland will be nowhere to be seen at the tournament in Poland and Ukraine. He then unwisely suggested that Catholics don’t feel comfortable playing for the NI squad, in no small part due to omnipresent Union flags at Windsor Park. This caused his manager Martin O’Neill to suggest maybe sitting a few news cycles out for a while, but he has a point.

After all, Neil Lennon had to stop playing for Northern Ireland because of the abuse he got from his own fans, yet they react to the likes of McClean or Darron Gibson choosing to play for the Republic as if they’re Brutus getting ready to stick the knife in, as opposed to an often perfectly logical decision based on inherent cultural factors.

It would be lovely to think that in this post Good Friday Agreement era of shiny happy people that we could be a bit harmonious about things like this, but football, politics and culture are a troublesome mix. Especially so when you consider the fact that unifying Celtic and Rangers fans under one banner is about the most difficult thing you can do.

It’s frustrating that the Republic and Northern Ireland football teams still have this point of friction, especially when sports like rugby unify the whole island so well. But, the people who traditionally play rugby are not the same as those who traditionally play football, and therein lies the problem.

Working class people always tend to get the fuzzy end of the lollipop, and in Northern Ireland neither the most deprived Republican or Unionist communities have seen the full extent of the benefits of peace, love and understanding despite seeing the brunt of The Troubles. It is in these neighbourhoods that a lot of the old resentments still run deep, and in these neighbourhoods where the most diehard of fans inevitably reside. It’s only when we take the sting out of these tribal hostilities and we come to the point where a player can play for who he likes without opprobrium that we'll know we've truly moved on.