What's sectarian about booing John Hartson? That's what bruised fans of This Here Province are asking after another pounding in the press over some less-than-inclusive behaviour at Fortress Windsor on Saturday past. Well, nothing, would normally be the answer, until we remember how my old neighbour Anton Rogan and Neil Lennon were treated at the same venue. It's in that context that the booing becomes undeniably sinister and sectarian. Add to that the lusty 'No Surrender!' in the middle of God Save the Queen and suddenly it's a case of 'Let's Kick Football Out of Sectarianism'.
BBC commentator Jackie Fullerton said that the booing of Hartson by THP fans was perhaps to be expected since there were so many Rangers supporters in the crowd. Apparently that remark prompted a few angry texts to Ormeau Avenue, but even if some people were upset by Jackie's words, at least it was a rare admission by a commentator, even if an oblique one, that the Windsor Park crowd is predominantly Prod.
Some THP fans chose to tell bare-faced lies, claiming that other players had been booed too, and that Wayne Rooney had got similar treatment when England came to Windsor last month. Fans may well have sounded off at other players over the course of the two games, but a brief rerun of the tapes will show that the volume and ferocity of the hostility directed at Hartson was of a completely different order. And while there are clearly plenty of fans willing to sit Canute-like while the tide of sectarianism laps over the terraces at Windsor, surely there are others who will at least admit that there's a big problem when there are more Catholics on the field and in the dug-out than there are in the crowd.
Of course, people don't have to cast their minds back too far to remember that Rangers winger Peter Lovenkrands got similar treatment when the Republic of Ireland played Denmark in Dublin. There's one crucial difference, though. Much and all as it would stir the heart to see the blue of Rangers beside the green hoops of Celtic in the crowd at Lansdowne Road, the stark fact is that the Irish team doesn't need Rangers fans, Prods, unionists, or whatever you want to call them. There's a Rangers Supporters' Club in Dublin, funnily enough. I know this because Belfast County Grand Master Dawson Bailie was wearing one of their polo shirts when he gave that extraordinary interview on the street in the wake of the rioting after the banned Springfield parade last month.
At the risk of sounding elitist, I'm going to say that Irish football will survive without Dawson and his chums. With the largest percentage of young people in Europe and a population that's 98% Catholic, the harsh fact of the matter is that Rip-Off Rovers will continue to pull the crowds and the money in, whether the game's played at the cattle mart masquerading as a football ground that is Lansdowne Road, or in the theatre of very expensive dreams that is Croker. The Ulster soccer team, though, can't survive without the very Fenians that are so regularly reviled on the South Belfast terraces for the very simple reason that the population of the North is nearing 50-50.
Fair enough, THP are regularly pulling in ten to twelve thousand for games at Windsor, a ground which makes Lansdowne look like the Stade de France. But even as they're patting themselves on the back, the IFA shouldn't forget that GAA club finals involving parish teams from the back of beyond pull in crowds of that size and larger. The four- or fivefold increase required to fill a new sports stadium for THP matches ain't gonna happen with just Prods fella, and the green-wigged faithful are going to have to spread out a fair bit if they don't want international soccer nights at the new stadium to resemble Royal Avenue on a Sunday evening.
Here's the bottom line. The part of the city I live in has a huge population, but I don't know anybody, not a single person, who goes to Windsor Park to support This Here Province. I expect you might find one or two if you looked hard enough, just as you might find a Grimsby Town supporter or a beekeeper. But that degree of apathy – hostility, even – among half of the population is ultimately unsustainable. It terrifies potential sponsors, advertisers and broadcasters and means that every match will be followed not by analysis of performance or tactics, but by a debilitating post-mortem of the kind we've seen this week and so many times before.
If that's what the fans want, then fine. If not, doing something about it means first admitting that a problem exists and that no-surrendering the Queen and booing Celtic players is not a bit of harmless terrace banter, but rather a kind of soccer suicide note.
