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It's not conscious I know, but I've always found it odd to hear English people using the bastardised Irish surname "Hooligan" to decry their fans' worst behaviour. Every tournament. For days on end. While Irish fans sing songs and make friends without thinking of attacking anyone
Like the worst thing an English fan can be is a hooligan. And it's not a nonsense word to Irish people, it's a very recognisable corruption of names like Houlihan and Olohan. Because we're violent and disorderly. Irish people. Compared to...???
This would still be weird even if Irish football fans HAD a reputation for violence. But we don't. We're almost professionally sound. To the point were nearly sick of the mildly patronising coverage of us as happy, smiling chimps who are shit at football but make everybody smile.
Hushing babies to sleep on trains, serenading stewards, fixing cars and cleaning up after ourselves - all while singing and drinking. I love it personally, and the almost-kind-of but-not-quite-ironic sheen to things usually keeps us amiable without appearing totally gormless.
Meanwhile, each time that minority of English fans riot or fight or start xenophobic - and, no matter where they are in the world, anti-Irish/Catholic - chanting, their soberest critics decry them as.... no better than a pack of Irishmen. Empires are mad.
I should STRESS that this is more a comment on the weirdness of the thing rather than a rebuke to people for using it. I don't think most Irish people have thought about/realised it ourselves. I just personally find etymologies, and the power relations they describe, fascinating.
And as other people have pointed out, Irish people do use it themselves, though not nearly as frequently, and almost exclusively - oh, irony of ironies - when describing the antics of English football fans.
As an addendum, to prove how much of this slips the net, I've lived in London for eight years and have only now, through this thread, encountered the phrase "throwing a Paddy" for the first time. There's also the term "donnybrook" for a fight, I'm sure there's loads more
