TT GROUNDHOPPING

Clive Hayward

@Byehorse

BELFAST (A)

I had never been to Northern Ireland. Growing up on the mainland in the 1970s and 80s it was hard to see the place as anything other than a grim example of history and politics gone wrong, with killings and sectarian hatred never far from the news.

Obviously the “Good Friday Agreement” in 1998 led to much better times but the place is still bursting with some of the aforementioned and I decided to spend the first week of October in Ulster to try to educate myself better about some of it. I planned an occasional pint of Guinness too.

An added bonus was a chance to see the biggest club game in Northern Ireland football. Because this is a football website I’d better mention that first, but I had a brilliant week so I hope you don’t mind if I also give you a bit of the old Judith Chalmers routine at the end!

Friday 06/10/23: Linfield 2 Glentoran 0, Attendance: 7,772

For those that don’t know, Linfield are the most successful club in Northern Irish competitions, having won what is now the Irish Premiership 56 times. Imagine that, Yellows fans!

They operate at the national stadium, Windsor Park. It was in a dreadful state a few years ago but has been nicely redeveloped since. I can highly recommend a visit, for the comfy seats if nothing else. There are 18,000 of them, and it was a bargain £13 to get in.

It might have been deemed too small for the Euros this week https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/67068561 but it’s a lovely ground now, and arguably there’s no point in building anything bigger.

Windsor Park

Linfield (“The Blues”) went into the match as league leaders and on a good run, doubtless having been stung by Larne’s effrontery at having won the title last season. Their manager for several seasons has been David Healy, the former NI striker most famous for his winning goal against England in 2005. There is a “memory wall” picture outside the ground of him scoring it. He also did well for Leeds back in the day, and overall it was a no-brainer for me as to who I was going to support.

Glentoran (“Glens”) are Linfield’s biggest rivals. Linfield are based in South Belfast whereas Glens are from closer to the old shipyards in East Belfast. The grounds are only 3 miles apart and on the evidence of Friday night the two supports don’t get on despite both being firmly rooted in predominantly unionist, protestant communities. Don’t get confused by the fact that Glens play in green: this is very much a “right-footers’” derby.

The game was all ticket, the bars were closed and the segregation looked to be very effective, with a good noisy away support housed in the upper deck of the stand away to my left (see below).

I would describe the atmosphere as boisterous rather than threatening. I was in the Kop, a sensible distance from (I kid you not) the “Linfield Ultras” (see below):

Neither team looked especially threatening in the early stages, and there were few proper chances at either end.

That changed in the space of 9 minutes at the end of the first half. Linfield had been able to apply some pressure kicking towards the Kop and were starting to get some crosses into the box. From one of these the Glens keeper slapped unconvincingly. It fell to Chris Shields 15 yards out and he buried a half chance with a powerful half volley.

Shields is every bit the Linfield fans’ favourite: shaved or bald headed and bearded, he very much nails the Deep Lying Midfielder/Viking/Night Club Bouncer vibe.

His and Linfield’s luck was in on 44 minutes, when they were awarded a penalty for a daft shove in the least threatening part of the box imaginable with the ball nowhere near the action. It was a crazy penalty to give away, but Shields didn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth. He buried it, sending the keeper the wrong way.

And to be perfectly honest, that was that.

Glentoran never threatened in the second half and the hosts were happy to see the game out with considerable comfort.

It’s not a happy time for the green part of footballing Belfast. They’ve not won a title since 2009 and this was a third straight league defeat. Their manager is former Linfield hero Warren Feeney and from looking at social media since the game he’s not exactly popular at the moment. That certainly won’t have been helped by the Linfield fans singing: “He’s one of our own” for most of the second half!

They also sang the National Anthem at the end, which I’ve never heard at a club game before, and there was a respectable pyro display too!

I should probably say a bit more about songs. There was an announcement pre-match that sectarian chanting could result in being arrested. I heard very little, although hand on heart there were songs I’d not heard before and could have been about anything. There was definitely one chant glorifying “The volunteers of the UDF” but the one the whole ground joined in with was:

“My old man, said be a Linfield fan, and don’t dilly dally on the way”.

There is clearly more respect for fathers in Ulster than you might hear at English clubs! Yer Da’s advice about arming oneself with hatchets and hammers and violently assaulting supporters of Glentoran and Coleraine is a real crowd pleaser, and they do in fact play it over the tannoy at the start of the second half!

But Dads and Lads was a real feature of the crowd too. Within a few rows of me there were half a dozen fathers with young sons (aged about 5 upwards) and the youngsters were clearly having the time of their lives. It was genuinely heart-warming.

Tourist Stuff

Monday

Quick flight from Exeter to George Best Airport, which is walking district from Belfast city centre and my East Belfast hotel. I found myself staying across the road from the Lagan Village Rangers Supporters Club. It didn’t appear to be doing a roaring trade. I wandered into town and found the excellent Robinsons Bar https://robinsonsbar.co.uk/ I got talking with the only other football fan in the place, a chap who had recently moved out to Downpatrick but had returned to the city to rescue an abandoned Doberman! He was kind enough to buy me a pint and let me pick his brains about local trains & buses. He has worked as a project manager in London & Grimsby, and identifies as a Birmingham City fan. It takes all sorts.

Tuesday

I work with a guy from Belfast, James. Check out his superb photos here: https://twitter.com/jjskeffington He tipped me off about https://deadcentretours.com/ They offer a fantastic “History of the Troubles” walking tour around the centre of Belfast. We saw the sites of several atrocities but it was so much more than that. A crash course in Irish history delivered by a brilliantly knowledgeable local guide who lived through the era. It’s a complicated tale. He is optimistic about the future and it was a pleasure to learn so much so fast.

Here is a football bit: what is now the Liverpool FC store in Castle Lane was built on the site of one of the worst bombings. In 1972 the then Abercorn Restaurant was blown up by the IRA on a busy Saturday afternoon, killing & maiming Catholics & Protestants alike: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/abercorn-bomb-50-years-on-she-went-for-a-coffee-and-never-came-home-1.4816692

In the afternoon, I went for a walk up the Shankhill Road (historically Protestant/Unionist) and then down the Falls (historically Catholic/Nationalist), either side of the “Peace Line”- the barrier which still separates those working class areas. Wandering around taking photos would have been a foolhardy thing for a Brit to do 30 years ago but it feels fairly safe now. There are clearly still deep traditions of Loyalism & Republicanism in those communities- something still prevalent across the city & province- and the many murals are mainly uncompromising refusals to give up the history of division. But of course most people there are now trying to get on with their lives and focus on today & tomorrow.

Loyalist memorial on the Shankhill Rd

Republican Mural on the Falls Rd

Wednesday

Giants Causeway

A coach trip along the beautiful Antrim coast to the Giants Causeway. Some great scenery, rainbows and lots of rain. On a clear day you can see much of Scotland. On a wet one Ross Marshall needn’t have bothered with that eye operation! The Causeway is probably a “must see”, but in pouring rain with an hour and a half to kill before the bus returned it wasn’t a great spot. It’s not a causeway. It’s a large pile of interestingly shaped rocks which goes about 50 yards out to sea.

The journey home was warmed by a whiskey tasting at Bush Mills https://bushmills.com/distillery/ and fans of Game of Thrones also delighted in seeing various caves and Dark Hedges. Wasted on me, that!

Thursday

Derry/Londonderry. Definitely not a day wasted.

It rained until about one o’clock, and the least said about the 2 hour bus ride along quiet dual carriageways the better. Similarly, you don’t need to know about how long it took me to find and photograph the “Derry Girls” mural to keep another workmate happy.

The place drips with several hundred years of civil conflict. It unexpectedly found itself remaining within the UK after Partition in 1921. Not unreasonably, the British government wanted to keep the strategically important port, which was a decision vindicated in the Battle of the Atlantic just 20 years later. Not unreasonably, the large Catholic/Nationalist/Republican majority were very unhappy about this, and sectarian tensions during the civil rights movement came to a head on a black day for the British Army and the 14 civilians they shot on Bloody Sunday in 1972.

That terrible day looms large in the city, as you can imagine. There seems an understandable wish for it never to be forgotten, as seen on the numerous murals, although on my way back to the city centre there were also some highly effective and touching installations about what it had been like for women during the Troubles and how reconciliation has to be the way forward.

Bloody Sunday Victims Memorial, Derry

Petrol Bomb

Because I am a football anorak, and despite the feeling that it somewhat trivialised the rest of what I had seen, I also had a walk around the outside of the Gaelic sports ground (“Celtic Park”- a much smaller and dilapidated version of its Glasgow namesake) and Derry City’s Brandywell stadium (where they were training on what I was horrified to note was a plastic pitch). For many years, Derry City have played in the (Republic’s) League of Ireland rather than any Northern Irish competition. It’s an arrangement that makes perfect sense https://www.derrycityfc.net/club-history/

The other Celtic Park

The sun came out in the afternoon. I got the train back to Belfast and it was an unexpectedly beautiful trip along the coast before turning inland at Coleraine. On a whim, I jumped off for an hour at Castlerock, where there are lovely views back along the sandy beach with the European Union in the distance (Inishowen Head in the Republic of Ireland).

Castlerock Beach, County Londonderry

Friday

Another really interesting day. The Titanic Experience in Belfast is superb, showing what a massive industry shipbuilding was at the time https://www.titanicbelfast.com/

Top tip: if you go before 10am you get a fiver off! I’m not going to do any jokes, because the list of the drowned is too sad for words.

At lunchtime I took a short bus ride out to Stormont, where they do free tours http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/visit-and-learning/visit/tours/

You honestly couldn’t make this up: the guide, Mickey, is James’ brother in law and true to Jim’s word he looked after me and the other people on the tour brilliantly. He gave us another detailed, personal and incredibly thought-provoking tour de force on the history of Ireland, Ulster and his own family. The picture below is Mickey in the Belfast equivalent of our House of Commons.