Oireachtas members braved a Sinn Féin picket and a complete lack of match fitness in their historic Gaelic football match with players from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) last night.
While his Dáil and Senate colleagues were being soundly thrashed on the pitch, Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris led about 20 party colleagues in a peaceful picket outside the match at Kilmacud Crokes GAA club in south Dublin.
There was tight security for the first footballing encounter between the Republic's politicians and the PSNI. A large force of uniformed and plainclothes gardaí outnumbered the few dozen spectators who turned up for the match and all parking near the ground was prohibited.
Mr Ferris criticised the match as "regrettable and shortsighted".
He said: "This match sends all the wrong signals and reinforces the lie that the PSNI was the new beginning to policing we had all been promised under the Good Friday Agreement."
However, Fine Gael TD and former Co Kerry GAA star Jimmy Deenihan, who organised the friendly match, said it was "just a game". He expressed pride that Oireachtas members had come together to form a team for last night's match.
The PSNI team included a number of police officers from the Republic. Team captain Peadar Heffron, from Randalstown, Co Antrim, said: "We're not down here for politics. We're here for a game of football". Asked about the picket, he said he hadn't seen it because "we came in the back door".
The Oireachtas team included a large Fine Gael contingent led by party leader Enda Kenny. Among the Fianna Fáil TDs who lined out were Conor Lenihan, Tony Dempsey and Seán Power, and Independents were represented by Niall Blaney.
All this cross-party support and Mr Kenny's fearless tackling was to no avail. When the whistle was blown, the younger, fitter PSNI team had run up five goals and six points, against 1:11 for the Oireachtas. Whether the Oireachtas team performed better in the post-match dinner is not recorded.
