Neil McCarthy: Having the two anthems played at Northern Ireland football matches would put fans into ethno-political blocks

This latest campaign comes upon the heels of ex Northern Ireland manager Michael O’Neill opining in a recent television documentary (A Game of Two Halves, broadcast on UTV last Tuesday) that the problem with God Save the Queen as an anthem for the teams he had managed had been that it failed to sufficiently and equally motivate all the members of those teams and that they had thus been at a competitive disadvantage to other international sides whose anthems more effectively bound every team member into a cohesive tribe (I am putting my own gloss on his words here but this was the gist).

O’Neill did not come up with a solution to the problem he had diagnosed, but implied that an anthem with a broad Northern Irish theme would be preferable.

Then along came Gerry Carlile, football agent (and also, tellingly, CEO of the united Ireland pressure group ‘Ireland’s Future’), with a much more radical suggestion, to wit that the Republic of Ireland national anthem, Amhrán na bFiann – A Soldier’s Song – be sung alongside God Save the Queen, to represent any members of future Northern Ireland teams coming from a nationalist background.

It was certainly a pragmatic suggestion and also has the merit of pluralism: he was seeking to add something, not take away anything.

There is also of course a kind of precedent of which I am sure he was aware: since 1995 the Phil Coulter composition Ireland’s Call has been sung alongside Amhrán na bFiann at rugby internationals in Dublin (in fact Ireland’s Call is now sung on its own at all away matches).

It is nevertheless an inexact precedent.

For a start, Irish rugby was not affected by partition in the same way Association Football was in 1921.

There has always been only one, all Ireland, side.

It is only natural then that a ‘neutral’ anthem or at least one that can commend itself to all shades of island of Ireland residents should have been considered by the IRFU, albeit at such a comparatively late date.

The Northern Ireland football team however is a result of the partition of Irish football in 1921, a partition which occurred due to the ‘southern’ teams and the Leinster Football Association breaking away to form their own association.

There were many reasons for that split, some at least of which had nothing to do with questions of political allegiance or identity.

There is no doubt however that one imperative for the newly formed Football Association of the Irish Free State was the ability to project and express an Irish nationalist version of Irishness.

When it came to strip and anthem and ability (in fact inability) to play in the ‘British Home Championship’ internationals — which sadly no longer take place — they would be henceforth able to paddle their own canoe.

The Northern Ireland football team is thus what remains of the original all Ireland team.

It is therefore unsurprising that it formally retained the name ‘Ireland’ right up until the 1950s, and informally until some considerable time thereafter. Its governing association still bears the original descriptor of the ‘Irish Football Association’.

Not only has the southern breakaway association had at least two names, its crest has also undergone numerous rebranding exercises.

Northern Ireland players’ shirts to this day bear a crest almost entirely faithful to the original 1880s one, replete with celtic cross and shamrocks.

It is this very consistency from 1880 onwards which has left the Northern Ireland team where it is today in terms of the anthem played before international matches.

Until the 1970s the only anthem played at the British Home Championship internationals was God Save the Queen, until rising Scots and Welsh nationalist sentiments led to those countries adopting anthems which spoke to their own distinct identities.

Ironically if the southern Football Association of Ireland in the years following the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement had not insisted upon their right to select players born in Northern Ireland who ‘declared’ for them, after many years of this practise falling into abeyance, this whole issue might have resolved itself organically, perhaps along the lines tentatively suggested by Michael O’Neill.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of O’Neill’s comments on that UTV documentary, it is beyond question I believe that he was and is motivated by a genuine concern for the esprit de corps of Northern Ireland squads.

Crucially he appears to want one anthem redolent of a distinctive Northern Ireland identity which all players could link arms to and sing together.

Gerry Carlile’s apparent pluralism, on the other hand, would lead to an ugly situation where teams would be broken down into two ethno-political blocks, each singing their ‘own’ anthem lustily, whilst at best mumbling, at worst lowering their heads in disapproval, during the singing of the ‘other’ anthem.

More broadly, nationalist Ireland might want to have a word with itself.

Having successfully obtained an Irish state and accompanying national football team outside the British orbit, it should ask itself why it is so keen to gobble up that part of Ireland with its accompanying football team which was, of necessity, left behind by that choice.

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