ラグビーが統合する南北アイルランド

An All-Ireland Peace-Bringer
By William Underhill

When the world-beating Irish rugby team took to the field in Japan last week listened out for the tune at the pre-match line-up. It wasn't the national anthem of the Irish Republic, nor the anthem of Northern Ireland. Boosting the spirits of the Irish squad was a specially written melody, 'Ireland's Call', composed specifically for such international events with lyrics that ignore the vexed history of the divided island. On the playing fields of international rugby at least, Ireland's two communities can harmonise with a single team to represent both nations.

That's some achievement. For centuries Ireland has been a place of bitter religious and political conflict that has regularly spilled into violence. And almost 100 years after the creation of an independent and predominantly Roman Catholic republic in the south mutual animosity still taint the relationship with the majority Protestant north that remains under British rule. Division is the rule and sport is no exception: don't look for an all-Ireland soccer team. Yet in the words of "Ireland's Call", the island's rugby players are ready to stand "shoulder to shoulder".

Such a show of cross-border goodwill is all the more remarkable given Rugby's particular history. When the game evolved in mid-19th England, it was always associated with the elite boarding schools that educated the British ruling class resented by the Irish as their colonial overlords. Irish nationalists fighting for independence labelled Rugby an alien sport and pushed their own alternatives. To this day, Gaelic Football and hurling - an Irish form of hockey - attract a mass following. But the attraction of Rugby proved strong. A burgeoning Irish middle class quickly took to the game as well as the British and an official Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) was soon formed, governing the sport in the entire island.

And to the confusion of fans worldwide, for Rugby players there continues to be just one Ireland. When a bitter civil war ended in 1921 with the island's partition, the IRFU opted to overlook the new frontier. For an explanation, try class. Rugby was - and largely remains - a game played at private fee-paying schools whether in the North or South. And for much of the bourgeoisie the old ties of education were more important than any new line on the map. "All-island governance was maintained owing in part to the social class and political composition of (the IRFU's) members," says Katie Liston, of the School of Sport at the University of Ulster in Belfast.

There were good pragmatic reasons, too, for staying together. Creating two new nations meant sharing an already small Irish talent pool. "Keeping a single team required a lot of people to swallow hard but they had to do it to make sure that the North could still field a competitive side," says Paul Rouse who has written a history of Irish sport.

Given the ancient animosities, the path of unity has never been smooth. Especially challenging were the 30 years of The Troubles, the vicious sectarian conflict in the North which saw more than 3,500 people killed before the 1998 peace agreement. On the eve of the 1987 World Cup, three Northern Irish-born players were on their way to training in the south when a car next to them was blown up by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). They were not the target but injuries forced one of the players to retire.

Yet even in the darkest times old differences were somehow overlooked. At some points, the Irish team even included Protestant members of the security forces from the North, then fighting the Catholics of the IRA. "All differences were set aside when you put on that green Irish jersey for the afternoon," said former Irish Rugby captain Donal Lenihan, a Catholic from the republic, in a recent interview. Indeed, rugby came to be seen as emblematic of a spirit of co-operation. After a particularly bloody IRA bombing in 1996, the IRFU staged a "peace international" in Dublin between Ireland and a team of international stars with the proceeds going to a special North-South co-operation fund.

Today Irish crowds in the South are quite ready to make sporting heroes of players from the North. The five members of Northern Ireland clubs in the 31-man Irish squad in Japan can expect much the same level of adulation if the team lives up to its recent winning form. One of Ireland's greatest stars, Willie John McBride, who won 63 caps, is from a Protestant farming family in the North. So too is current captain Rory Best, who won a standing ovation when he played his last home match, in Dublin, the republic's capital, before setting out for Japan. Old differences, of course, are more readily overlooked if the side is winning, says Ruairi Croke who writes on sport for the Dublin-based Irish Times. "This is a small country and we will jump on board any sporting bandwagon that looks its successful."

Of course, fielding a single side brings practical problems. When the Irish squad travels to internationals, it takes three separate flags to fly at the host stadium: the tricolour of the Irish Republic, the Ulster (Northern Ireland) flag, and the flag of the IRFU. And new challenges continue to arise. The old tensions between North and South have eased since both the Irish Republic and the UK in the European Union. But the UK's likely departure from the EU will test the any spirit of cross-border understanding, and strain already divided loyalties. And knows how a post-Brexit "hard" border, needed for customs checks, across the island might affect relations ?

Yet history suggests that the spirit of all-Ireland rugby will be hard to quench. "The mind boggles as to how it has worked - but somehow it has," said former Ireland rugby captain Brian O'Driscoll in an acclaimed documentary he produced last year on the phenomenon of a single-nation side. "There is no commonality between fans (from North and South) about what it means to be Irish but for a few hours on a Saturday after we can be one country. And that fills me with huge pride". Rugby may be a rough, competitive game but in Ireland at least it is also a peace-bringer.