CAN US imports help to heal sporting divisions in the North? They're not the usual kinds of interjections normally heard around a Northern Irish sports field. And it takes a while to decrypt them. "Come on Dee!" screams the coach of the Belfast Trojans. "Make this a good one, Dee!" adds an injured team member from the bench.
Dee isn't some flagging player in need of vocal support. And his name isn't Deirdre, either. Dee is defence, as in dee-fence. "I don't know why, but some of our players put on American accents during matches. They get quite caught up in the whole thing," says Mark McGrath, linesman with the Belfast Trojans - Northern Ireland's newest amateur American football team.
Malone Rugby Club in Belfast's Cregagh estate doesn't easily lend itself to the popular image of American football. Instead of the pristine lawns of NFL games, the Trojans negotiate the hollows and troughs of the club's battered back pitch.
Hulking college studs may be in short supply, but the Belfast team is certainly more democratic in the body shapes it accepts. The "Dee" includes three beer-bellies and one player so skinny he looks unable to support the padding bulking up his wiry frame.
Only the hardiest of cheerleaders could have bared their midriffs in the bracing Belfast wind last Sunday, but an enthusiastic group of American football WAGS (wives and girlfriends) in Ugg boots and fleeces made up for their absence.
The match, which was followed by some 50 fans, attracted a group of dog-walkers and curious passersby. "I was watching the cricket and it caught my eye," says one spectator. "But don't ask me to explain the rules."
The Trojans' membership has almost doubled in the past year; an indication, says linesman Mark McGrath, of the sport's growing popularity in Northern Ireland. "We get people from all sporting backgrounds," he says. "We have rugby players and GAA players as well as people who feel they cannot fit into other sports here."
The Trojans bill themselves as a cross-community outfit, but the team's diverse membership came about largely by accident. "We wouldn't care if everyone came from the same place," says McGrath, "but having players from Portugal, Holland, the US and from here just makes it that bit different."
American football is not the first game to cross the Atlantic to try to woo Northern Irish fans. The baseball bat, once solely associated with paramilitary "punishment" beatings, is slowly gaining new sporting currency in the North: Antrim boasts its own youth baseball league with teams such as the Portstewart Mustangs and Portrush Eagles.
When the Belfast Giants ice hockey team set up residence in Belfast's Odyssey Arena in 2000, the event was heralded - primarily by the team's marketing department - as a new sporting era in the North. Ice hockey was promoted as a safe, family-friendly game with no historical roots in either side of the community.
"We didn't have to steal fans from other sports," says former Giants player and current team manager Tod Kelman. "Families came to watch us because they knew the environment would be different than at other sports games here."
Football jerseys and flags were banned from all Giants games and Ireland's only professional ice hockey team was kitted out in the non-sectarian hues of red, white and teal. The team played under the motto: "In the land of the Giants everyone is equal". For the next two years, games were played in front of capacity crowds, and the mostly Canadian players became local celebrities off the rink. After the Giants won the UK Superleague championship in 2001 and 2002, it looked as if Belfast had finally found a common sport for the city and a team known for on-pitch success rather than off-pitch notoriety.
However, as the Giants settled down in their adopted home, financial problems soon beset the team. The club was unable to maintain the financial packages it had put up to lure star players to Belfast, and the business accumulated heavy debts, said to have totalled over £1 million, by 2003. As the team lost its shine, audience figures soon dropped to about half their initial levels.
Today the team has largely weathered the financial storm and attendances have increased, yet the Giants still struggle with their image as a "showcase" sport, which, some argue, has made little grassroots connection in the North. In this, the Giants' eighth season at the Odyssey Arena, only three local-born players have places on the team roster.
"The sport is developing here, but it can only go so far," says Canadian-born Jim Graves, former coach of the Irish national ice hockey team. "There are only two rinks in Northern Ireland and the sport can only grow if you have more facilities. It's difficult for [ ice hockey] to develop outside the cities."
Northern sports fans may sometimes bemoan the overt political nature of their games, but in a place where sport remains a major symbol of religious identity, a sense of sporting belonging is vitally important. In the popularity battle, local sports, troublesome as they can be, still maintain the advantage - leaving US imports, despite their good intentions, squarely on the Dee.