Shamrock Rovers in the Community is a research project being conducted by a team of academic researchers from the TU Dublin School of Media, Media Production & Digital Arts Degree program, located on the Tallaght Campus, and you can play your part!
Set against the 125-year anniversary of Rovers’ foundation, the 15th anniversary of the Club’s move to a permanent home in Tallaght, and the 30th year of the degree Programme on the Tallaght campus, the project will focus on the impact the Football Club has had on its match going supporters, historically, and in the present time.
Through a combination of informal interviews and digital and in-person observations the research team also intends to investigate and document the nature of the impact of Shamrock Rovers’ move to Tallaght, both on individual match-going supporters and on the wider community of Tallaght. This is where you, the fan, come in.
Using a variety of media formats, including film, audio and photography, the three lecturers within the research team are looking to explore various aspects of the club’s fan, volunteer and player cultures. This approach mirrors the diversity of production and research skills delivered on the Media Production & Digital Arts Degree Programme itself.
Research Team:
Dr Glenn Doyle hopes to photograph and audio record short interviews with club volunteers, He is to visually and audibly spotlight the essential role volunteers play in the matchday running of the football club.
Anna Maria Mullally will be carrying out research with Rovers’ fans using semi-structured audio interviews, in order to get a better understanding of fan motivations and associations with the club, such as stories/histories, traditions, memories and emotions.
Alan Fitzpatrick, together with his second year MP&DA students, has been gathering visual i.e. filmed data on the club. The data gathered will form part of the larger project in the form of a short documentary film.
Overall, the research will explore themes of community, participation and volunteer/fan culture through the testimonies of interview participants and capturing their photographic portraits. Drawing on theories of social identity and spectator and fan identities the aim here is to carry out a preliminary investigation into the nature and variety of Shamrock Rovers fan and volunteer identities. This research will open possibilities for further investigation and will also serve to generate a digital historical record of fan and volunteer voices and personal experiences.
If this is a project that you or any fellow club volunteers/fans would be interested in being involved in, please feel free to get in touch with members of the research team by emailing
Glenn.doyle@tudublin.ie or Anna-Maria.Mullally@tudublin.ie
The researchers approached Mark Lynch and John Martin at the club to bring this project to life, and we are delighted that they did. The club encourages anyone interested in this project to consider participating as the club continues to foster new and maintain existing ties with the Tallaght Community. Again, it’s email to Glenn.doyle@tudublin.ie or Anna-Maria.Mullally@tudublin.ie
