OUT OF THE NIGHT/THE EMERGING NORTHERN IRELAND:Overt sectarianism at soccer matches in the North is being eroded thanks to initiatives such as the "Football for All" and "Sea of Green" campaigns
IT'S NOT easy being the drummer at Glentoran Football Club. First of all, there's the multi-tasking; bashing out the rhythm to the team songs while distracting the Cliftonville goalkeeper with the loudest possible whack just as he makes his goal kick.
Then there's the George Best traffic. During last Friday's Irish Premier League match against Cliftonville at The Oval, no fewer than four planes descended into the adjacent George Best Belfast City Airport; formidable competition for the mini-Lambeg drums.
The rivalry between the two teams is especially intense tonight. A Glentoran victory would put the team on equal points with Linfield at the top of the table, but a loss would effectively hand the title to the local rivals.
For those uninitiated into the world of Northern Irish football, a quick glance around the grounds gives clues to another kind of rivalry. On the terraces occupied by the Cliftonville fans, Tricolours and Basque flags are draped over the railings.
At the opposite end of the pitch, Red Hands of Ulster, Union Jacks and St George's crosses form the backdrop to the goal. Matches between Glentoran and Cliftonville are mild encounters compared to the ultimate religious face-off that is Linfield versus Cliftonville (Northern Ireland's equivalent of the "Old Firm"), but at The Oval religion is still very much at play.
Like any football fans, the Glentoran faithful have a full repertoire of songs to rally their team. And, like all football songs, or heckling from the crowd, the chief targets are referees, linesmen and players who aren't pulling their weight.
Tonight, it's the reserve goalkeeper who takes most of the flak for his persistent fumbling. Amid all this footballing normality, songs such as If you hate the Fenian b*stards, clap your hands, drummed and sung loudly at the start of the second half, pass almost unnoticed.
The chief lung-power for the Glentoran chorus comes from a 20-strong group of teenagers nested in the top corner of the home stand. Here they are as close as possible to a group of young Cliftonville fans, pressed against the fence which divides the adjacent terrace about 200 yards away.
Stirring things up, some Cliftonville supporters make exaggerated signs of the cross over their Glasgow Celtic jerseys. This is greeted with the unfurling of a Union Jack in the Glentoran corner and shouts of abuse - mostly sporting, some sectarian. All this takes places under a large billboard directly opposite the Glentoran stand containing a single word: Jesus.
The majority of fans within earshot of the taunts pay them no attention and concentrate on the close-run second half. The volunteer steward policing the Glentoran stand doesn't intervene either, despite the club's purported zero tolerance of sectarianism.
Much has been made of ongoing sectarian tensions in the North in the light of the Good Friday agreement's 10th anniversary. Even in the most symbolic sense, divisions between Protestant and Catholic communities are growing.
Today, there are more peacelines - the euphemistically-named fences which separate Protestant and Catholic neighbours in so-called "interface" areas - than when the Good Friday agreement was signed.
But it is the world of sport - especially football - that throws up some of the worst kind of sectarian violence. Last month, a football fan wearing a Celtic jersey had his throat slashed in a Belfast bar following an Irish Cup semi-final between Linfield and Cliftonville.
"Some football clubs just don't know how to deal with this," says Colleen McAuley of the Irish Football Association's "Football for All" campaign, which was set up to combat the overt sectarianism at Northern Ireland international games.
So hostile was the atmosphere at Windsor Park in the 1980s and 1990s that at one point attendances plummeted to a mere tenth of the stadium's capacity. "We realised that sectarianism could not continue," says Jim Rainey, a lifelong Northern Ireland fan. "Even from a business point of view, companies didn't want to be associated with the team and it was difficult to find sponsors."
Rainey helped to set up the Amalgamation of Northern Ireland Supporters' Clubs (ANISC) in 1999 and set weaning Northern Ireland fans off sectarian chants and symbols.
Songs long associated with the terraces of Windsor Park - such as the darkly threatening We Are The Billy Boys, which contains the lyrics "we're up to our necks in Fenian blood/surrender or you'll die" have been replaced by the darkly humorous We're not Brazil, we're Northern Ireland.
ANISC's "Sea of Green" campaign encourages fans to wear Northern Ireland's green and white colours to international games instead of the red, white and blue regalia previously favoured in the Windsor Parks stands. The Irish Football Association (IFA) has also suggested replacing God Save the Queen, which, unlike in Scotland or Wales, continues to be played before international matches in Belfast.
Windsor Park may be shedding its old sectarian image, but rooting out prejudices at club level has proved a much trickier task. "We're very much in the early stages of this," says Maura Muldoon, a member of the board of Glentoran Football Club. "But dictating rules doesn't work. The fans have to decide for themselves what kind of club they want."
Muldoon, who also sits on the board of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council, believes that the attraction of "neutral" sports, such as the Belfast Giants ice hockey team, will force clubs to up their game.
"People are voting with their feet now," she says. "The facilities and atmosphere at Irish League games aren't necessarily conducive to a family day out. We have a lot of competitors out there and we have to create a better environment."
Under new IFA regulations next season, all domestic football clubs in Northern Ireland must appoint a cross-community worker in order to obtain a domestic IFA licence. "Community relations used to sit outside football here," says Colleen McAuley. "It's about time that it became a mainstream issue."
Catholics may be opting out of Northern Ireland matches less readily than before, but Gaelic sports continue to be regarded with distrust by many unionists in the North.
"With devolution in Northern Ireland, we entered a new political era. Everyone realised it was time to start reaching out," says Ryan Feeney, community development manager of the GAA's Ulster Council. "But reaching out to unionists has been the hardest nut to crack; it's a softly, softly approach."
Encouraging new sporting habits in the North is no easy task. Sporting segregation starts in schools, where games are divided along both religious and class lines. Football is one of the few sports played by both Protestant and Catholic pupils, but it is rarely played in grammar schools.
Gaelic football and hurling are the preserve of Catholic-maintained schools - both secondary and grammar - while sports like rugby, cricket and hockey are played almost exclusively in middle-class, Protestant grammar schools.
As well as being educated apart, most of Northern Ireland's children, especially those living in urban areas, have limited social contact with other traditions.
According to the 2001 census, the majority of Protestants and Catholics in Belfast live in areas in which at least 81 per cent of people share their religious background.
All of which makes the Belfast Cuchullains hurling team all the more unusual.
The team, set up by the Ulster GAA Council, has brought together about 20 young players from Protestant and Catholic schools in some of Belfast's most deprived areas. The success of the project has led the council to set up similar teams in all major towns in Northern Ireland.
"A lot of these kids come from strong Protestant traditions and would never even have considered playing hurling," says Ryan Feeney. "This isn't about changing each other. It's about fostering the kind of mutual respect that's been lacking here."
The success of the Belfast Cuchullains will soon be toasted in Stormont and Áras an Uachtaráin before the team departs for the GAA North American Youth Games in Philadelphia this summer. But can symbolic gestures such as multi-denominational youth teams, scrapping section 21 or allowing rugby matches in Croke Park really change attitudes?
"I think the last thing on the mind of a young guy from east Belfast would be to start playing hurling. But if he wants to, then he should be welcomed," says former Derry player and RTÉ pundit Joe Brolly. "Sectarianism isn't really the problem any more. There is frustration coming from working-class Protestant areas, but that's a socio-economic issue. Issues such as ghettoisation and poor housing need to be looked at now. They were ignored in the past because [ politicians] played the sectarian card for political gain."
The Centre for Educational Research at Queen's University last year published a survey of the social attitudes of children aged 9 and 10, the biggest study of its kind in post-ceasefire Northern Ireland.
As part of the survey, children were asked to give opinions on images of strangers wearing Celtic and Rangers jerseys.
The report concludes: "Segregation very much remains a reality in children's lives, [ extending] far beyond the fact that children . . . live in different areas and attend different schools. Segregation [ cuts] across a range of social, cultural and political activities."
Few are better placed than Trevor Ringland in understanding the complex network of allegiances of sport in Northern Ireland. The former Irish and British Lions rugby international and member of the Ulster Unionist Party regularly stood for the Soldier's Song during matches in Dublin.
Ringland, who currently chairs the cross-community group One Small Step, feels that rugby has set a good example for Northern Irish sport as it can "show respect for a British tradition that wants to be Irish too".
"I think it is nonsense to educate our children separately," Ringland says. "But the reality is that they are, and we have to deal with this. Sports clubs are one of the few places where kids have the chance to come together. Sport should start building the trust we need to make this community work."
• BRYAN COLL is the winner of the 2008 Irish TimesDouglas Gageby Fellowship, awarded by the Irish TimesTrust to a young journalist at the start of his/her career in memory of the paper's former editor Douglas Gageby.
• His series on the theme "Out of the Night - the emerging Northern Ireland" will appear on Thursdays in The Irish Times.