Above all the politics and tension underpinning A Game of Two Halves, Ian Woods’s engrossing documentary on the effects in Northern Ireland of the ancient split in Irish football, broadcast on UTV last Tuesday night, the greatest consolation was how the football itself could yet again rise above all earthly concerns. There was a rare piece of footage of George Best in the USSR with Northern Ireland, dancing past five Russian defenders, and his exquisite robbery of Gordon Banks in mid-kickout against England in 1971, nodding the ball into the net for a goal disallowed because the referee didn’t know what else to do.
As he recalled the moment and his lifelong devotion to the Northern Ireland team, actor James Nesbitt was able to find his father on screen behind the goal as Best wheeled away in celebration. “It’s lovely to have in perpetuity my two heroes framed in one shot,” he said.
There were wonderful bits of the Northern Ireland team from 1982 lounging on sunbeds, singing on their team bus, and getting to within a game of the World Cup semi-finals. Back in the present day, Gerry Armstrong from Beechmount, west Belfast, sat with his friend Billy Hamilton from Gilnahirk, east Belfast, remembering the street parties on the Falls and the Shankill; the old, grainy footage of pubs filled with people united in joy during the matches bearing witness to their memories.
“I’m very proud to say I was part of a team that brought the community together,” said Hamilton. “Even for a while.”
Mingled among scenes from Euro 2016 and the modern Windsor Park, it was the face Northern Ireland football would wish the world to know — and how it can be. Graham Kenny was a devoted Northern Ireland supporter who lived through the decades when Windsor Park was decorated in union jacks and Billy Boys was a highpoint of every setlist. Now the supporters get more mileage from Sweet Caroline than anything else. Alongside his Lambeg Loyal union jack, Kenny also unfurls a giant green-and-white flag. “You have to move with the times,” he said.
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But there was a limit. For many people God Save the Queen as Northern Ireland’s anthem is a curious remnant from a time when the flags, songs and symbolism of the football team was an abhorrence to half the community. For Kenny, changing flags was fine; no problem making the supporters’ songbook less intimidating, either. But the anthem?
“It’s something very special the fans hold dear to their heart,” he said. “Changing an anthem . . . is like taking a part of Northern Ireland away from us. From our identity.”
That outlook captured so much of the dual personality for ever at play across Ireland. Embracing green and white flags and jerseys and singing songs that bind everyone together joins the Northern Ireland support to the same version of modern Northern Irish identity epitomised by Rory McIlroy and a generation of Ulster Irish rugby players. Like Trevor Ringland from another era of Irish rugby channelling the wisdom of the Belfast poet John Hewitt, they can be of Ulster and Ireland, British and European — each one gently overlapping the other.
But dropping the anthem for many would mean letting go of too much. Arlene Foster insisted any discomfort about the use of God Save the Queen was “overblown . . . something people latch on to as an issue because they want to make it an issue.” As chief executive of the Irish FA, Patrick Nelson’s discomfort around the question of replacing God Save the Queen was palpable. “We will join any official, public debate if it ever happens,” he said.
Like it or not, it is an issue the IFA will end up addressing sooner or later. In his time as Northern Ireland manager Michael O’Neill saw the disadvantages of an anthem that silenced a portion of his own squad.
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“I could see how other countries would display real patriotism and real togetherness; real emotion, during the anthem,” he said. “We never got that.”
O’Neill did what he could. The players linked arms during the anthem. Players who traditionally bowed their heads during God Save the Queen were gently persuaded to raise them. Reflecting on a lifetime in rugby, Rory Best also found the use of the song at odds with his most fundamental principles. “In terms of everything I’ve done in sport it’s about including people,” he said. “It’s not very inclusive.”
It all recalls a line from a poem written by Nelson Mandela: “To let go is not to deny, but to accept.” Despite the weight of history and emotion attached to them, some songs don’t sit well with a shared future. Rather than diluting its identity, replacing God Save the Queen with a different anthem could encourage more people in Northern Ireland to marry natural affection for the place of their birth to its badges of identity.
That applies equally to rugby and gaelic games. After so many years of Amhrán na bhFiann and Ireland’s Call being played as a two-hander before rugby games, if Ireland’s Call is the anthem of the four provinces, what role does the Amhrán na bhFiann even play any more?
It’s six years since then GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail got a few hard stares for suggesting the GAA might in time ease back on use of the tricolour and national anthem as a way of opening up to anyone previously alienated by what they saw as the trappings of nationalist, Catholic, old Ireland. It didn’t matter that he had a strong point; restricting the use of the tricolour and the playing of Amhrán na bhFiann to the biggest matches might invest the moment with even more importance, but it can also provoke the same reaction as replacing God Save the Queen.
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Anthems were created to bring people together in common cause, not push them apart. Sport performs the same role; its songs and symbols matter. By embracing the songs of a shared community sport can take the lead again, not forgetting the songs of our past and present, but accepting the promise of a future without them.
