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Hello.

Yes indeed, this is the program in which I'll be announcing the winner of this year's BBC, BSA Ethnography Award.

It's very exciting.

But before all that tension is resolved a few words about the peculiar formation of my football team allegiance.

It all began at my Catholic school in Liverpool where a corporal punishment was so prevalent that any opposition to authority had to be largely symbolic.

So my friend Jim and I would regularly refuse to drop any money at all into the St Vincent-de-Paul's charity box or would

subtly shift our desks out of the strict alignment insisted upon by Brother

Francis. But our greatest act of symbolic deviance was to defy the unofficial school line on football allegiance.

You see at that time Everton with its complement of Republic of Ireland players was regarded as the Catholic team.

So Jim and I, with not a little fear of eventual

hell fire, decided to support Liverpool. Well I only realized I'd finally sloughed off one

adolescent prejudice when I found myself

noisily celebrating with friends and frothing pints when Ireland qualified for this year's

European Championship with their two-nill playoff win over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Well my first guest today Max Marrow also has a distinctive interest in football in the Republic of Ireland, but in his case it is

ethnicity rather than religion which provides the focus.

For 17 months Max conducted a detailed study of a football youth team in the most ethnically

mixed area of Dublin in order to determine the meanings for black immigrant males of

participation in such a team.

How much did it help to create a sense of belonging, a sense of inclusion?

...