Updated at 20.00
NO CHEERING IN the press box.
Whether your boyhood team scores a last-minute Champions League winning goal or the county of your birth lifts the Sam Maguire, the cardinal rule of the media area at any sporting event is to remember it’s a workplace.
Though that drive for objectivity does not cause you to look on sports dispassionately — it’s difficult to write about it if you don’t love it — you do find yourself moving away from being a ‘fan’ of teams.
But while it’s important to remember what being a fan of a team means to people, it’s equally important to remember just how important teams are for communities as well as individuals.
And that’s the crux of Celtic Soul, an Irish/Canadian documentary that sees Eoin O’Callaghan – and yes, there’s a real possibility you’ll see a piece by Eoin either side of this article as he writes for The42 among his many gigs — and Jay Baruchel examine the actor’s Irish roots and love of Celtic Football Club.
Baruchel, of course, has appeared in movies such as Knocked Up and Tropic Thunder among others, but it was stint on the other side of the screen that first set Celtic Soul in motion.
“I was in Canada between 2009 and 2012 and I presented this show on TV called Fox Soccer Report,” O’Callaghan told The42 from his Toronto base this week.
“We had highlights from all around the world and, at the time, it was unique to North America. If you were a football fan, you had to buy this subscription channel because they had all the rights to everything.
“Jay watched the show at the time so he kind of knew who I was. He didn’t know me well, obviously, but he recognised me.
“Fast forward a couple of years to around 2013 and I’m back in Dublin looking ahead to 2014 and I was putting together an idea of a documentary that looked at the centenary of the first World War involving footballers who served in the army and went to the front.
“One of the clubs I was really immersed in was Celtic because they go back so far and I found a really big link between the club and Canada.
“In the middle of all that, Jay followed me on Twitter and at first I thought it was a fake account, not actually him. I followed him back, we exchanged pleasantries and that was it initially.
“But then one night, I came back from the pub with a bit of Dutch courage and sent him a DM to tell him I was working on this Celtic thing and asked if he was interested in getting involved.
“The following day he got back to me and he was totally on board.”
Once a Hollywood actor was involved, particularly a comedic one, a documentary about WWI didn’t make much sense for O’Callaghan so he and Baruchel began to explore the idea of documenting the latter’s love of Celtic while tracing his Irish roots.
“Jay was heavily immersed in his family tree and spoke about his relatives leaving the west in the 1840s.
“That was the real light bulb moment for me, that we’re not just tracing his ancestry but we can help him figure out why he’s drawn to a club thousands of miles away and I think what he found was that, coming to Ireland, there’s a big difference between looking at a census or Google maps and actually walking the streets of your ancestral home.”
This leads to one of the documentaries most touching moments, when Baruchel is on Peter Street in Westport looking at the exact location of the home of his mother’s ancestors.
“I’ve walked this town dozens of times on Google maps. I know every inch of it,” he says before wondering about the conditions faced by his ancestors and how they coped with being treated like second class citizens in their own country.
“For me, I was very much the Robin to his Batman,” say O’Callaghan, “but you can see the power and effect of being at home. Watching someone find out about the dramatic journey his ancestors had to take, the fact they had to hop on a ship because they were faced with nothing but darkness and death in that home.
“They had a better chance just hopping on a ship, not knowing what was in store was still more appealing than staying in that place. Our time in Westport turned into a sequence that was quite lovely because, when you’re following a road trip with two idiots, there’s a lot of humour in it, but when you get those vulnerable, emotional moments, it hits you that bit harder.
“There’s probably about three or four of those throughout the film and I hope they come across to people watching it.”
While it is a road trip movie, the real journey is one of discovery, of taking that first trip to see a beloved team play in a flesh. While most of us experience that as children, what was it like watching an adult run the gamut of emotions?
“For the entire journey that we’re on, Jay is this childlike figure.
“Even in Montreal where we start, Jay is showing me what the Canadiens mean to him and we’re standing in the centre ice at the Bell Center and he can’t believe he’s getting to stand there in this iconic venue where his favourite team plays.
“And every point along the way, he retains this massive child-like enthusiasm and wide-eyed take that we’ve lost.
“For me, it was like feeding off a drug, it was reminding me of the love I had when I was a kid and what sport was really about, about losing yourself in the moment and letting sport wash over you.
“He reminded me that it’s okay to be really silly and romantic and optimistic when it comes to sport and the teams we grew up loving.”
And all those emotions come to life towards the end of the documentary when the pair arrive at Celtic Park and realise there’s a very good reason Bhoys fans call it Paradise.
