All-Ireland SFC Semi-final Fermanagh v Mayo: Seán MacConnell recalls Fermanagh of the 1950s, when local football was about friction and passion

A new leather football bouncing on hard ground makes a distinctive sound. The sound that is made comes from both ends of the register, a dull thump from the bottom of the scale and a ringing tone at the top.

That sound had the capacity on late spring evenings in my part of 1950s Fermanagh to bring boys and men from four or five townlands for a kickabout on a makeshift pitch with goalposts made of birch trees liberated from the local bog.

I remember the sound well because every year my father, who ran the local Art McMurrough Bellanaleck GAA club with his neighbours, would return from Enniskillen with a brand new football.

He would get off the Ulsterbus and sometimes quite unsteadily, launch a high kick, and the beautiful, shiny, all-leather brown ball would hit the ground, sparking off a game which would continue at that venue for the rest of the summer.

The Irish rural countryside was never short of children in those days. Cubs, we were called, pre-puberty boys who were intellectual angels and 100 per cent wild animal.

We played football as often as we could avoid being hauled off to do farm work. The cubs held the pitch for most of the working day. In the evening, older lads, on their way home from work, would stop off, throwing their bikes against the hedge and join in the fray, trousers stuffed into their socks.

There were Maguires and Corrigans, McManuses, Mac Conails, Boyles, McGurns, Curnyns and of course, the D'arcys, all lured by the sound of the ball and we would play until only the bats could see and the sun was long set.

We would be bruised and battered and bone-weary but we only had thoughts of playing on a bigger pitch, facing real enemies from other parishes like Killesher, Kinawley, Teemore, and the despised townies from Enniskillen.

And we were well served because we had a direct line to one of Fermanagh's greatest footballers, Hugh D'arcy, who was father of Gabriel and Brian D'arcy, who lived across the fields from us.

Hugh D'arcy was a legend. He had played football not only for his native Fermanagh but he had also played for Tyrone. He had been on the 1935 Fermanagh team that won a jubilee competition, which had given Fermanagh the right to contest the National League final which we lost to Mayo.

Most readers will know his second son, Brian, as Fr Brian, the Passionist priest, the acceptable face of the Irish church, a man who loves his football, his music and his country. A media star in every sense of the world and a gentle man of God.

Let me tell you, I remember a different Brian D'arcy. When he joined in our battles - and battles they were - he seemed to have come from the dark side. With a football in his hand be became what could only be described as "a right hoor", prone to losing his temper and fighting.

He was a fine footballer and had his father's skills, but alas Bellanaleck and Fermanagh lost him to the Passionists where he confessed to me this week that he had made a secret pilgrimage to Knock during the week to pray for a Fermanagh success tomorrow.

We agreed that prayers said on enemy territory are probably more potent than those delivered in the safety of one's own camp.

The relentless play in our back garden prepared us well for the rest of life which for most is a battle against enemies, either real or imagined.

In the divided society we came from we did not need to use much imagination and in every way, playing Gaelic football was a real way of expressing your identity as a nationalist and a gael.

For that reason the game did not attract the open support of our Protestant neighbours. A tiny number of the mainly Church of Ireland community in my area would have attended the games or would have played, but always under an assumed name.

My Protestant neighbours were interested in the sport but could not, even 40 and 50 years ago, express that openly.

Another barrier to attending GAA matches was that they were held on Sundays and there was a very strict Sunday observance culture in the non-Catholic population.

For instance, I know my father had taken a Protestant neighbour to see both an All-Ireland football and hurling final in Dublin but on the strict understanding the trip was never mentioned publicly either by him or my father.

When I said that being a GAA supporter or player was a way of expressing your identity in my county, I did not say that it was a "non violent" way of doing so. Club football in Fermanagh and the north west was a substitute for tribal warfare in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

We would often travel to see games across the county not just for the football but for the inevitable row that would break out between various clubs who had a tradition of enmity, confirming the view that one of the roles of the early GAA was to curb, if not control, faction-fighting.

Most clubs were made up of three or four families and their extended cousins. I remember one team, St Joseph's in Ederney, had seven McGrath brothers on its team and the rest of the team was made up of cousins.

They knew how to handle themselves even at the Belcoo Assumption Day sports which featured the biggest seven-a-side competition in the north west and a chance to match our best against warriors from Cavan, Monaghan, Donegal, Leitrim and Sligo.

I once saw a visiting team having to retreat, in their sports gear but without their clothes, back across the bridge into Blacklion following a row.

We may not have had much success on the playing fields in the championship but we can boast the country's first GAA hooligans. They were two elderly spinster sisters who faithfully attended games every Sunday with the express intention of attacking the referees.

At the end of a game, no matter the outcome, they would charge on to the pitch and draw out their hatpins and attempt to skewer the referee. No one ever knew what they had against referees but they continued their attempted assaults until they became too feeble to travel.

Now, in gentler times not just across the GAA family but the entire community, the centre of Enniskillen was this week bedecked with green and white bunting.

The last time that happened was just before the War of Independence when Sinn Féin won the election there.

The unionist-controlled Impartial Reporter's lead story last week was about the Fermanagh win in Croke Park. The newpaper, the traditional voice of unionism in the area, carried, and continues to carry, extensive GAA coverage .

The Fermanagh voyage so far, has lifted the county and most of its people of which nearly half would not be known as GAA supporters. The council, however, took out a full-page advertisement in the local papers wishing the team well.

I suspect there won't be a "Fenian left in Fermanagh" this weekend and hopefully, some of our other neighbours will come too.

If I spot and recognise them, I won't say a word to anyone.