Another Irish League season, another year in the sectarian bearpit. Last Saturday, local football here emerged bleary-eyed from its summer recess with a season-opening Charity Shield game between Cliftonville, the League champions, and Glentoran, the Irish Cup holders. Not much to report there you would think, save the observation that these occasions do, on the whole, seem to be rather pointless, bland affairs.
But that is where sport Northern-style kicked in. The game was to be played at the Oval, the home of Glentoran in the heart of East Belfast and some local people - the Holywood Arches Civil Liberties Group - decided that they didn't want Catholic Cliftonville supporters walking through "their area" to the game. They mounted a street protest attempting to block the route and were moved off the road only after intervention and some scuffles with police.
In the context of the wider debate over marching, this is familiar territory and in fact Cliftonville have been here before. In the summer of 1996 residents of Dee Street, which runs down to the Oval, staged a much larger protest and prevented Cliftonville fans from getting to the ground. The game went ahead in eerie silence and was followed by serious rioting in the neighbouring Catholic Short Strand area.
The relative "success" of this protest sparked off a number of copy-cat demonstrations aimed specifically against Cliftonville supporters with the stated aim of making all other Irish League grounds "no go areas" for them.
This culminated in a large and well-organised blockade at Shamrock Park, home of Portadown, when Cliftonville supporters were attacked and prevented from getting inside the ground. The game was eventually abandoned when the Cliftonville players found out what was happening and refused to continue because of fears both for their safety and for the safety of their families and friends in the travelling support.
At the time, the air was heavy with talk that Cliftonville might, like Derry City before them, be forced out of the Irish League and possibly into the arms of the League of Ireland. In the end, it all proved unfounded and the heat was taken out of the situation by the onset of winter, the end of the marching season.
The wresting of the league title by Cliftonville last season provided the perfect coda to that particular script but none of that disguises the Irish League's fundamental problems. To say it has an image problem is an understatement akin to suggesting that Bill Clinton might benefit from a little marriage guidance. The football is second rate, all bluster and blunder. The attendances are paltry and those who do bother to turn up seem to do so only to wallow in the violence and the sectarian mire.
No one is blameless as everyone is seemingly sucked into the vortex. Pro-IRA slogans are sung at Solitude, the home of Cliftonville. Banners displaying the logo of Combat 18, the Nazi-linked organisation, flutter regularly from the stands at Linfield's Windsor Park ground. Nor is the attendant mean-spiritedness solely sectarian. A wickedly-tempered meeting between Glentoran and Linfield last March sparked off rioting which in turn resulted in 14 prosecutions for offences including assault, criminal damage and disorderly behaviour.
When Linfield played Cliftonville in a key game towards the climax of last season Cliftonville's Jody Tolan reacted to his sending off by blessing himself in full view of the Linfield support. At another point in the game the Linfield manager appeared to lead his supporters in a rendition of the provocatively sectarian "The Billy Boys".
In the midst of all this, the game is beset with a collection of unimaginative and indecisive administrators. Their responses to the regular blights bouts of violence - both on and off the pitch - are piece-meal and inadequate. Until the punishments match the damage that such incidents do, the status quo will remain. The contrast with the League of Ireland could hardly be more pointed. Ten years ago it faced similar problems, particularly from the predatory bombardment of the powerful amalgam of the English game and satellite television. Their response was to undertake a root and branch examination of their league structures and look at innovations to make their product more attractive. Primarily, games were moved to Friday nights and have blossomed under the oxygen of added publicity that the attendant television coverage has brought.
The Irish League's blind persistence with Saturday afternoon football flies in the face of both logic and all available evidence. Television has decreed that Saturday afternoon is a nightmare viewer ratings slot - the available fan-bases are at the game and the wider potential audience is out shopping or engaged in other "leisure activities". In England and Scotland the radical restructuring, with games moving to Sunday and Monday evenings, shows that what television wants television gets.
Except here. Normal logic doesn't apply and there are still some naive souls among football administrators here labouring under the happy misapprehension that it's only a matter of time before a satellite television company rides in on a white charger to save the game for the great and the good. That ignores the simple, seemingly unpalatable fact that the "product" being offered to those same television companies is wholly unattractive. The quality of the football isn't even the major factor - that could be remedied with the financial benefits that a new television deal would bring. But it is the advertisers who will call the tune and few, if any, will want to commit finance to a game with such accompanying negative publicity. The Irish League is a lot of things to a lot of people just now, but a cuddly, media-friendly little box of joy it certainly ain't.
One final thought. While the proposed relocation of Wimbledon to Dublin has caused considerable consternation, the Northern reaction to the fanciful reports that an English Premiership franchise was also planning a move to Belfast was distinctly muted. Apart from the predictable grumblings from the self-servers and vested interests, there has not been the same level of breastbeating or passionate intransigence.
Could it be that, secretly, everyone would be relieved to be rid of their old sectarian straitjackets for once and for all? And who is going to be first to stand up and say that?
