Sport is politics in Northern Ireland. For years Gaelic football and hurling were seen as a purely Roman Catholic preserve while rugby, cricket and golf were Protestant or at least Unionist-dominated activities. Enter the 100-per-cent Protestant township of Glynn and you see the rugby posts, rather like a border control, even before you reach the stretch of road that has “1690” and “No Surrender” painted on it.
Times have changed a bit since 1972 when Cliftonville cricket ground in north Belfast was set ablaze or when the world-champion boxer Barry McGuigan was written off as “Barry the Brit”.
There are still invisible dividing lines between the communities but new generations are getting more sensible about it. Emma, part of the Cooke women’s rugby team, tells me as she limbers up for the Torch events in Stormont that there are Catholics in the squad, that it is “integrated”. It has become irrelevant where your family go to church; the issue is whether you’re a good scrum half or whether you’re not. But there is nothing really spontaneous about “integration” in the Province; it has to be engineered.
When Antony Brown gets the youths from his charity group together — ten of them Catholics, ten Protestant, ten from the Irish Republic — his icebreaking exercise is to have them play a variant of bingo. “The kids take their questionnaire and try to find out who owns a dog,” he says. Or who paints, and who likes Bollywood movies.
The children of Northern Ireland, or at least in the tangled, troubled hotspots, need to be taught that people are not just defined by religion. “We have to give them self-belief, that’s the key,” says Brown, 35, who lives in Derry. About 300 children a year have gone through his workshops for the past eight years. “The Protestant children learn how to play Catholic sports and vice versa. And they are taught serious business skills. When they leave, they stay in touch,” he said with real pride.
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Then he held the Torch aloft and ran a 300-yard stretch down the Clooney Road in Derry. He was cheered on, of course.
Next year, public funding will be withdrawn from his project.