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Team Ireland shows what an all-island approach can achieve on the world stage

The football administrators on both sides of the Border should take note, but will they?

Team Ireland’s Rhys McClenaghan is British enough to accept a British Empire Medal for his service to gymnastics and Irish enough to respectfully stand for Amhrán na bhFiann and for the Tricolour. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
Ronan McGreevy's picture
Ronan McGreevy
Fri Aug 09 2024 - 06:00

Team Ireland is a vision of a united Ireland competing under one flag and one anthem. It is not the united Ireland as envisaged by those advocating for a 32-county state.

Sovereignty is the most important expression of nationalism, but it is not the only one. The Irish nation existed long before the Irish State. Nationalism can also be expressed through arts, culture, language and sport.

It speaks to the ambiguous position of Northern Ireland in world sport that the two teams its athletes compete for are not sovereign states. It’s Team Ireland, not Team Republic of Ireland. It’s Team GB, not Team UK, though the official name is the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team, a mouthful which, wisely, hardly anyone uses.

Great Britain and Northern Ireland together constitutes the UK, but it is not called Team UK because the Olympic Federation of Ireland represents the whole island.

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Northern Irish athletes have been able to play to these ambiguities brilliantly. Of the seven athletes who opted for Team GB, two have won gold, swimmer Jack McMillan and rower Hannah Scott, while another rower, Rebecca Shorten, won silver.

McMillan represented Ireland in the Tokyo Olympics. He balanced the risk of opting for a more competitive relay team with the reward of greater opportunities to win medals. The gamble was worth it.

Yet, he and the other athletes from Northern Ireland representing Team GB are the exception not the rule. Of the 41 athletes from the North, 34 have chosen to represent Team Ireland in Paris. For some of those athletes competing for Team Ireland is an expression of their identity, but for others it is a purely sporting decision.

[ Olympic homecoming for Team Ireland to take place in O’Connell Street on Monday ]

The various iterations in the past of the Olympic Federation of Ireland have fought like Kellie Harrington for the principle that the Irish Olympic team represents 32 counties, not 26. Eoin O’Duffy – yes, that Eoin O’Duffy – who was the president of the National Athletic and Cycling Association of Ireland, succeeded in having the name of the team competing at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics changed from the Irish Free State to Ireland.

Four years later, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) insisted that athletes from the North must compete for Great Britain, Ireland boycotted the 1936 Berlin games. The issue was not resolved fully until 1952, when the IOC conceded the principle that the North’s athletes were free to represent Ireland or Great Britain.

Team Ireland is a reminder that most Irish sporting organisations ignored the rupture of partition and carried on as if it never happened. The GAA is the most obvious example, but it also extends to most international sports. There is only one Ireland rugby, cricket, hockey, basketball, show jumping, swimming, boxing and athletics team.

National championships are 32-county affairs. It is not even a political point as it was ever thus. Sporting bodies in Ireland have long understood that it makes no sense to have separate entities on a small island.

For most Northern athletes the journey to the Olympic Games began on roads south to places such as the National Aquatic Centre, the National Boxing Stadium and the National Rowing Centre in Cork.

Team Ireland reflects the long-stated axiom of John Hume that you cannot unite territory without uniting people first

Olympic champion Rhys McClenaghan had already represented Britain and Northern Ireland as a youngster before his coach, Luke Carson, was made redundant from Rathgael Gym in Bangor.

Gymnastics Ireland stepped in and provided him with the training facilities that he needed. McClenaghan is British enough to accept a British Empire Medal for his service to gymnastics and Irish enough to respectfully stand for Amhrán na bhFiann and for the Tricolour.

Team Ireland reflects the long-stated axiom of John Hume that you cannot unite territory without uniting people first. The Irish athletes have done that with the minimum of fuss. They are the true team of us.

The exception to this is football. As the historian Cormac Moore points out in his book The Irish Soccer Split, the first ruling body for Ireland was the Irish Football Association (IFA), founded in 1880. Though the political atmosphere of the early 1920s did not help matters, it was a desire to wrestle control from the Belfast-dominated IFA which led to the split and the formation of the Football Association of Ireland.

Attempts were made to heal the split in the 1920s and 1930s but nothing came of it. It is somewhat ironic that, in the global game that unites countries like no other there are two international teams on the island and two leagues.

Team Ireland is an exemplar of what a well-funded, well-motivated, all-island team can achieve on the world stage. The football administrators on both sides of the Border should take note, but will they?

A united Ireland football team makes sense and has always made sense, but views are so entrenched that this century-long folly is no closer to ending.