SOCCER ANGLES:The bullets in the post from Northern Ireland for Celtic's Neil Lennon show that the old
sectarian hatred is as prevalent as ever, writes  MICHAEL WALKER

JUST LIKE the dreary spires of Fermanagh once did for others, the dank fields of Mallusk made a questionable return to the memory this week

The word, the place, Mallusk, means a lot to a certain section of lads who grow up in Belfast, it being where a swathe of the City Council’s playing fields are inhabited every Saturday. “Where are we playing?” you’d ask.

"Mallusk", would come the reply. It didn't make your heart sing Take Me Home Country Roads.

For a start, Mallusk is on the fringe of Belfast, out in Glengormley, and if you come from another part of the city, you’re never going to be happy with Glengormley.

It always felt like a trek. And it always seemed to be damp, the pitches heavy. You’d share changing rooms with opponents and you know all about that when you’re up against teams like Woodvale Young Men.

Mallusk, like a combination of malice and musk. Yet it’s part of you, part of your upbringing. In late spring, when you’re playing catch-up with the fixture list, the sun might even have shone. It might have been all right. My brother might have put his boots on the correct feet.

Mallusk was named in the alarming bullet-point reports about Neil Lennon. The bullets aimed for Lennon in Glasgow were intercepted at the post office in Mallusk. The news in itself was depressing enough but for that certain section of Belfast lads, it will have come coated in those damp connections.

It meant being transported backwards in more than simply the obvious way. Then came the follow-ups, the bullets for Paddy McCourt and Niall McGinn. Even Peter Robinson protested about it all.

We are supposed to be beyond this. The next Good Friday marks the 13th anniversary of the Agreement but agreement – lower case – was always going to take longer to grow than the time required for signatures to be written.

Of course, had they known back in 1998 that Lennon was not only going to join Celtic but then go on to manage them, there could have been a clause inserted.

Lennon is apparently guilty of gross provocation due to his choice of football club. Bertie Peacock (former Celtic player from Coleraine, 1949-1961) got off lightly, it transpires.

But then Peacock was not from Lurgan, didn’t have ginger hair and, all in all, was not a “dirty fenian bastard”, which, if we are honest, is the sectarian perception of the Celtic manager. Hence bullets for Lennon, then McGinn and McCourt.

In Monday’s Belfast Telegraph, Lennon was quoted talking about how he became the figure he is at Celtic, when he had been nothing of the sort at Leicester City.

“I became a sort of symbol because of my background,” he said. “I’m a nationalist and a Catholic, but I’ve never rubbed it in people’s faces. Then suddenly I’m tarred with this tag, a kind of IRA-pumpkin footballer, but I wouldn’t have played for Northern Ireland if that was the case.”

Indeed he would not have. Like Manchester United’s Darron Gibson and others, Lennon would have grown up in the Irish Football Association’s jurisdiction, then chosen to play at senior level for the Football Association of Ireland.

It is just that Lennon was born in Portadown in 1971 and those are two facts that restricted his options. So he played for Northern Ireland.

It was not under duress, but would Northern Ireland have been his first choice? Maybe not. Not that that was expressed with repeated public conviction for Lennon to have his life threatened if he turned out at Windsor Park in August 2002. But the LVF were on the line anyway. That terminated Lennon’s international career but not the abuse that had started to flow his way after joining Celtic in December 2000. It hasn’t stopped since.

The man himself has not always helped – being filmed on a mobile phone singing anti-Rangers songs in a bar is not something that happened to Martin O’Neill. Having New Labour bully John Reid rally round may also not be considered soothing.

O’Neill, too, knew hatred. Sitting with Billy Bingham in Preston recently, Bingham recalled what he received in the post after making O’Neill Northern Ireland captain back in the early 1980s. Not a lot of it said “congratulations”.

O’Neill got on with it and Lennon has had to. He probably never gets very far before something brings him back to the LVF and in that sense the new bullets are not new. But they are deeply worrying and, lest it be overlooked, they come not long after Chris Baird (Catholic, plays for Northern Ireland) heard about his mother’s house in Rasharkin being firebombed.

Watching Celtic and McGinn being denied a legitimate penalty at Hamilton on Wednesday night, having already had James Forrest sent off harshly, was to see Lennon twitching on the sidelines about Celtic’s well-known issues with Scottish referees. Celtic’s critics accuse them and Lennon of a persecution complex. But then, you might have one if you were a manager in those circumstances. You might have one if you got what Neil Lennon got in the post at Mallusk.

Return to Anfield a gamble for Dalglish and Liverpool

TO BE at Anfield tomorrow. What a noise, what emotion there will be when Kenny Dalglish retakes his seat in the famously humdrum Anfield dugout.

But if Liverpool’s underperforming players are not inspired by this against, of all teams, Everton, then the next few months could be excruciating for Dalglish. His historic status at the club will never be in doubt, the four words And could he play will always be sung. But this is still a risk for him as much as it is an optimistic gamble by Liverpool’s new owners.

Dalglish has inherited a squad that has been in decline for some time and the fact that he was one of the greats on the pitch, and a success as player-manager over two decades ago, is not the most important factor in how he turns Liverpool around and rekindles their sense of purpose.

That is all about 21st century management of 21st century players, of whom quite a few think they are better than they are and have the wage slips to back up this opinion. It is about rearranging a squad and a team mid-season. It’s not like it was when King Kenny arrived at the club’s Melwood base and wore a black jumper in training.

When you meet Kenny Dalglish you are not just struck by his great presence, there is also his deliberate ordinariness. Ordinary is the last thing he was. How Liverpool need him to be extraordinary again.