Three teams in green illustrate tale of different sporting cultures

What a night for Irish football. Or, if you prefer, what a night for Irish soccer. And all that lies therein.

On Thursday men from the 32 counties of Ireland – and the diaspora – came together to form two teams, one of which beat the world champions, Germany, and the other the Euro 2004 champions, Greece, to reach next summer's European Championship finals in France. Win-win, as they say.

In Belfast and in Dublin there were men in green jerseys being lauded for their achievement and there were fans in green jerseys filling the streets with noise and celebration.

In Belfast the police had to seal off Shaftesbury Square such were the numbers taking to the road to shout of Northern Ireland’s victory over Greece. Meanwhile, in Dublin there was a fresh clip to those departing the stadium named after an insurance company.

The Republic of Ireland, via Shane Long’s thunderbolt, had staged an act of resuscitation on its qualification campaign. Suddenly tomorrow’s trip to Warsaw does not look so daunting. Suddenly ‘the Republic’ or ‘Eire’ or ‘Ireland’ could be joining ‘Northern Ireland’ in France next summer.

And wouldn’t that be a hoot. It is part of the Irish international soccer routine for the fans to self-describe and be described as happy-go-lucky, colourful etcetera, but would the gendarmes want them in the same city next summer?

While Irish rugby fans descending on Cardiff for tomorrow's World Cup match against France will be one support for one Ireland team representing one Ireland, at the same time, there will be Ireland football fans in Warsaw and Helsinki watching two Ireland football teams representing – depending on your politics – two Irelands. There will be two national anthems.

The politics are in a wider constant debate, and the source of a wider constant dispute, but administratively at least this ‘two Irelands’ status is undeniable. There are two associations governing two separate soccer entities. The FAI in Dublin and the IFA in Belfast. They are both recognised by Uefa and Fifa.

Whether you recognise the Border or not will dictate feelings, but if yours is a 32-county Ireland there may still be a recognition, if not acceptance, that there are two Irish football teams. There may also be a recognition that if they do not represent two Irish countries, they represent two Irish cultures.

Broad-brush terms

In broad-brush terms these are Irish and Irish-British. They were cultures that were separated and intensified by the Troubles, by the Border.

Rory McIlroy, at Windsor Park on Thursday to watch Northern Ireland, tip-toed through the issues with a Twitter comment: "Great night for the island of Ireland, north and south."

Rory, born in 1989, has had enough, heard enough, about all this. His Olympic selection was evidence of the delicacy of the situation.

McIlroy is a Northern Ireland supporter from a Catholic background who is culturally Irish-British.

There is a chance McIlroy came from an Irish News-reading household. The Belfast-based paper speaks to and for the Northern nationalist community. You don't see many people reading it in east Belfast or south Dublin.

There is a lot of GAA in the Irish News sports section – Shane Long was brilliantly described in the opening paragraph of the Republic-Germany match report as "the former Tipperary minor hurler".

Yesterday morning's edition also brought a split front page – pictures of Long and Steven Davis – and a split back page – pictures of Michael O'Neill and Martin O'Neill. Only the most wishful of thinkers, though, would suggest that this was the start of a rapprochement, sporting or otherwise.

There have been moments since the late 1960s when there has seemed to be a mellowing brought on by sport. For the month Northern Ireland were at the World Cup in 1982 in Spain there were no sectarian murders in the North. The murder rate had been one every three days before that.

Someone like Martin O’Neill, captain of Northern Ireland at that World Cup, straddles both cultures.

O'Neill has described himself as "Irish to the core", a GAA man, a Celtic man, but also a Northern Ireland footballer who was awarded the OBE "for services to football", not soccer.

Then there was also the cross-community following that Barry McGuigan attracted. At Windsor Park on Thursday the atmosphere and decibel-level was reminiscent of a McGuigan fight. Except that when McGuigan fought they never sang: “Are you watching, James McClean?”

Chorus There was a chorus of that at Windsor Park. McClean – the soccer/football player from Derry/Londonderry – has come to personify the Northern Ireland/Ireland divide. McClean will not wear a poppy; his colleague at West Bromwich Albion, Larne-born Gareth McAuley, wears one with pride.

Apparently, as lads, as West Brom team-mates, the two get on. But would their social circles mix?

McClean is from a place – Derry – where the Troubles mattered, and still matter. The peace process is that, a process. As the UDA reminded us this week, it’s not finished and until there is something as interventionist and decisive as integrated education there won’t be integration. McClean and McAuley are the example of Irish segregation, cultural, then sporting.

McClean is the focus of some official and unofficial Northern annoyance because he played for Northern Ireland as a youth before choosing to play for the Republic of Ireland as a senior.

On one level that’s an administrative decision but what informed that choice – McClean’s political, religious and cultural background – is the real story.

Another aspect of it all though is that if there were only one Irish football/soccer team, as in rugby, the likes of James McClean would have no choice to make.