God save the national anthem at Northern Ireland games

I've sent the following to the editor for publication in tomorrow's Belfast Telegraph, but it's a little lengthy for the letters page and am not holding my breath.

Nationalist players who opt to play for the Republic of Ireland are quick to cite the Belfast Agreement with regard to their right to an Irish passport; but appear less keen to recognise the Agreement’s more fundamental tenet – the principle of consent. This principle, subscribed to en masse by all relevant peoples and governments, as well as the international community, recognises Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom for as long as its people wish it. In short, GSTQ is played before international games at Windsor Park because it’s NI’s national anthem. We shouldn’t expect nationalist players to favour this; but in a spirit of tolerance we should expect them to respect it. By using it as an excuse not to play for Northern Ireland, they’re rejecting the principle of consent.

It’s important to note that Scotland and Wales don’t play their own national anthem. Instead they opt to not play their national anthem in favour of more local folk songs. This is a significant variation from the norms of international football. By doing so they have fulfilled their own prophesy by abandoning GSTQ and leaving it to become the “English anthem”. It would be a shame if Northern Ireland provided the coup de grace.

Those who play for Northern Ireland or attend the games either recreationally or professionally can be in no doubt that the experience is overwhelmingly distinctive to our wee country. A stranger wandering into Windsor Park on an international night could not possibly mistake the occasion for an England, Scotland, Wales or Republic of Ireland game. For nationalist players – and the media – to focus on the 45-second pre-game rendition of our national anthem and ignore the hours of other Northern Irish-specific content is surely political obsession.

Regardless of the legalities, the FAI is clearly acting in an unsporting manner by actively recruiting players from outside the 26 counties; indeed, taking these players from their nearest neighbour and supposed friend. The primary focus should therefore be on the actions of the FAI and not the IFA. In the absence of an all-Ireland team, we should also be more challenging about what motivates young nationalists to represent the 26 counties (that they’re not from) as opposed to the six counties (that they are). Rather than what’s played by the brass band before kick-off, more likely factors are the greater on-field success of the RoI and its absence of cultural pluralism. Put simply, there may be more pull than push factors at work.

Ironman Coeur d'Alene 2011

It’s now nine days since Ironman Coeur d’Alene and I’ve forgotten much of the race.  Only certain moments remain as snapshots, engrained more through post-race storytelling than original memory.  It’s a strange sensation.  Something so important to me – the first half of 2011 was essentially dedicated to it – and such an immersive experience on race day, and yet the 11 hours and nine minutes that passed between the starting gun and me crossing the finish line are reduced to a small number of basic, emotionless stills.  For example, about 15 miles into the run, somewhere between nine and nine and a half hours into my race, I remember thinking “this is hell, I’m in my own personal hell”.  At the time it didn’t feel like I was exaggerating, even in a small way, but now as I write I can’t actually recall the suffering.  I can remember not being able to lift my knees very high, and my running stride being half of what it normally is, and greedily gulping down double cola’s with ice at each aid station, but I can’t recreate the distress in my mind or return my consciousness to the state of deep depression I felt between miles 14-20 of the marathon.  It’s a delayed anaesthesia – I definitely felt the pain at the time, I’m just somehow numb to it afterwards.  This forgetfulness is probably one of the reasons I have now completed five Ironman triathlons and will probably do five more.  And five after that.

I live in Vancouver and in North American terms, at only 448 miles from home, IM Coeur d’Alene is a local race.  Coeur d’Alene is a city of 50,000 people on a lake in north Idaho.  It was founded by French-Canadian fur traders who christened the city after the Francophone name they’d given to the local Indian tribe.  These days, Coeur d’Alene is 95% white, very sleepy, and pretty far from anywhere else that most people will have heard of.  The three most famous things about it are that 1) since 2003 it has hosted an annual Ironman triathlon in which athletes swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and run 26.2 miles; 2) it hosts the world headquarters of The Pita Pit; and 3) it is home to Ellen Travolta, the eldest sibling of John Travolta.  It’s also stunningly beautiful, especially on a sunny day, and we were lucky to be there during good weather.  In fact, it’s my favourite Ironman race town so far.  The locals matched the residents of St. George for their hospitality and excitement for the event, and yet unlike St. George it’s a town built for pedestrians, not cars, and so with a discernible town centre packed full of independent shops, cafes, bars and restaurants (each offering a deal or simply a ‘good luck’ message to Ironman competitors and supporters).  Being on the lake, it’s a holiday town and so in late June is just coming into season, not like Jurere in Brazil, which was picturesque but closing down for autumn by the time of the race.  And it’s not too big to suffer from Zurich syndrome, where the organisers boast of an urban race when actually they mean multiple run loops around some paths several kilometres from the heart of the city.  I’ve left out a comparison to Sherborne, former host of Ironman UK, but the less said about that town as a race venue the better.   Yep, no doubt helped by clear blue skies and temperatures in the low 70s, Coeur d’Alene had it all – good coffee, plenty of hotels (that were ok with bikes being left in bedrooms and constantly wheeled through corridors), friendly locals, cheering crowds, and a town centre venue for start and finish.

Dave, my buddy and triathlon nemesis, flew from London to Vancouver a week before the race and spent a few days in BC before Andrea, him and I drove for nine hours to the venue on Thursday, three days before race day.  We took turns during the journey watching the wind catch and play with our expensive bikes hanging on a rack from the boot of the car.  But it was nice, for a change, to be driving to an Ironman and not having to dismantle my bike and pack it with all my other gear into a case for a flight.  We survived on the S-diet – Starbuck’s, Subway and Skittles – and got to the Best Western bang on schedule and with enough time to unload and relax before bed.

On Friday morning Dave and I did loops of the hotel car park to check our bikes.  Mine had had a pre-race service only a few days before and as I hadn’t taken it apart for travel and then reassembled it, I didn’t expect any issues, but it’s calming to check.  You train for six months for an Ironman and five miles into the bike you don’t want to hear a creak or feel your gears slipping.  After four laps I was satisfied with my machine but was enjoying the pedal following several days of rest and so we did about another ten “ok, last one” laps before grabbing our wetsuits and heading down to race HQ for registration and a practice swim.  The water was cold and choppy.  It was worrying.  After a couple of minutes I couldn’t feel my hands, feet or face.  And it was difficult to see above the swell to sight.  Scores of other athletes were down swimming but no-one looked happy.  The cold I could deal with – it’s a fact of life in all British triathlons, regardless of time of season – but the wind would make matters unpleasant.  We heard there was a similar issue last year and the medics struggled to cope with competitors’ seasickness.  I tried not to dwell on it, had a short massage, registered and we went back to the hotel to lie down. 

Andrea and I in the days before the race

That evening we drove to Spokane, the city across the state line in Washington, to collect Stephanie who had just flown in from London via Seattle, and Andrea and I managed to make it back into town in time for the race briefing.  I was excited about the race, but it was comforting going to bed knowing that tomorrow morning was still the day before the race and not the day of the race.

Race briefing

Saturday.  Probably the most chilled out day preceding any of my Ironmans.  I had some breakfast, did some final tinkering to the bike, cleaned the chain, checked the bolts, and then went for a 15 minute run with some pick-ups.  Then I loaded my bike onto the car and took it into town for racking and my T1 and T2 bags for drop off, and undertook a quick orientation of the transition areas.  Following this, Andrea and I had lunch in our quickly-becoming home-from-home coffee shop, Java, on Sherman Avenue.  We strolled around town and finally ended up back at the hotel for a few hours of lying down to read and watch TV, before dinner at 7pm with Dave and Stephanie in a lovely Italian, in which Dave and I drank water and ordered the blandest food available from a rich and very tempting menu.  We were in our rooms for 8:45pm and after final gear checks and leaving everything I’d need for the following morning neatly ordered by the door, I was into bed.  I was fairly calm and I was tired, so I expected to sleep.  But I couldn’t.  Every time I started to sink into drowsiness a panicked thought about the race would rocket through my head.  I drifted around in semi-consciousness, trying not to look at the clock and worry about how I wasn’t sleeping only a few hours before having to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and run a marathon.  Eventually I gave in and looked.  It was 12:15am.  My alarm was set to go off at 4:01am.  Don’t panic, 3:46 sleep will be enough, just relax.  But it just didn’t happen.  I don’t remember checking the time after 2am, so I must have dropped off around then.  The alarm sounded at 4am and it was game on.

Bike ready to race

The hotel laid on an early breakfast (small bowl of Cheerios, plain bagel with peanut butter, banana) and shuttle bus to the race HQ and we arrived a comfortable 1:45 before the start.  Plenty of time to stand around and try to sense any inclination for my bowels to move, as well as visit the body marking station, pump my tyres, attach my nutrition to my bike, pull my wetsuit on and shuffle down to the beach.  At 6:50am with a clear sky and the sun low on the horizon I stood on the beach next to Dave and scanned over the heads of 2,600 others to see a backdrop of thousands of spectators.  There were scores of safety boats, kayaks and boards waiting for us in the water.  Someone sang the Star Spangled Banner and most around us put their hand on their heart and sang too.  I was crapping myself.  It never gets easier.  Then we were off.  It was a running start into the water but felt neither as manic as what I’d expected nor as what it looked when I subsequently  reviewed the video taken by Andrea on the sidelines.  There were no high winds and the water was still, apart from the turbulence caused by 5,200 rotating arms and 5,200 kicking feet.  A two loop swim with a short out, run along the beach and then back in at the end of the first loop.  I like those swims – getting out at half way, even if only for 5-10 seconds, gives you something to look forward to.  At the half way mark I checked my watch to see 00:35, which was ok.  I was hoping for my regular 1:10 swim so I was on target and feeling good.  By the second loop the field had strung out and I had plenty of open water.  I was concentrating on my technique, thinking about an early catch and a strong pull.  I exited in 1:13, a few minutes slower than planned but I’d slowed to pee a couple of times, which I knew was time well invested as I could then survive the full bike course without having to stop.  Peeing on bike and run courses used to be easy but race directors are now getting strict and impose time penalties if you’re caught doing it anywhere but the portable toilets set up around the course.  But you can always bet they don’t have enough of those and so you often see a queue of two or three guys losing valuable minutes waiting outside a reeking plastic port-a-loo by the side of a huge empty field in the middle of nowhere.  That’s what I wanted to avoid.  My slow swim time was compounded by a sloppy T1 as I struggled to pull my tri top onto my cold, wet torso and then wipe the sand and wet grass off my feet before putting my socks and bike shoes on.  I didn’t plan on changing my socks all day and so it was important to know there was nothing in there to cause friction over the next ten hours.

Swim start

A two lap bike.  Each lap was 15 miles of out and back along the side of the lake from the town centre before going onto a 41 mile loop through Hayden and around Hayden Lake.  The road surfaces were sublime, probably the smoothest I’ve ever raced on at any distance.  This was my first race on my new bike and using my new race wheels.  My cycling has always been a puzzle.  My physique, commitment to training and overall levels of fitness suggest I should always be quicker, and yet I normally lose places on the bike and have to fight to regain them on the run.  I’ve tried all sorts of things to improve and dropping several thousand dollars on a new Cervelo P3 earlier this year was really the last throw of the dice.  Yes, I was a bad workman blaming my tools.  Actually, the best thing wasn’t the new bike, however lighter and more aerodynamic than my old (Blue) one it is, but the free bike fit that came with it.  I spent valuable time with Murray at Speed Theory getting the positioning of seat, headset and aerobars just right to allow me to spend as much of the 112 miles as possible in as efficient an aero position as possible.  I know from experience that in still conditions on a flat road the difference between being on my aerobars and being on my bullhorns was ~0.5mph.  Which doesn’t sound much, but it delivers a 10-12 minutes faster bike split in an Ironman.  I knew from my training that my set-up on the Cervelo is significantly more comfortable than the Blue, and I’d finished each of my long training rides strongly without experiencing any of the back, shoulder, neck and arm pains that I was now coming to associate with the bad set-up on the Blue.

I’d no idea where Dave was.  I’m normally ahead of him on the swim but with losing a few minutes and faffing around in T1 I expected him to be in front.  Shortly before the first turnaround at 7.5 miles I saw him and calculated he was four minutes up on me.  Game over, as far as I was concerned.  Despite me being considerably quicker at IM UK and IM Brazil, Dave had a breakthrough in 2010 and beat me to the finish by 45 minutes in Switzerland last July.  He’d ramped up both his bike and run training for this race and entered our dual as clear favourite.  I expected that to beat him I’d need to steal several minutes on the swim, hold off for as long as possible on the bike and try and enter the run course within 15 minutes of him to eventually run him down somewhere around mile 20 of the marathon.  But whatever, I was feeling good and tried not to let it bother me.  As Andrea had advised, race my own race and if that ends up good enough to beat Dave then consider it a bonus.  But most importantly, race my own race.  I was feeling good, hardly trying and yet coasting along the flats at 23-24mph.  The hills between miles 25-45 were a shock but I knew they’d be tougher the second time.  I saw Dave in his Union Jack bike jersey again at the next turnaround and figured out that he hadn’t extended his lead and was still four minutes up.  Oh, that’s interesting.  The return into town was fast and it was fun time-trialling through the intersections and streets closed off to traffic.

I was making a determined effort to consume more calories than normal on the bike.  In all I took one gel at T1, three Clif bars (which were very dry and hard to swallow as I got more dehydrated later into the bike), most of a packet of Gu Chomps, two gels, one bottle of Gatorade and two bottles of Ironman Perform sports drink.  Probably around 2,000 calories in total.  By the end of the bike I’d probably already burned 6,000 calories and so I was in major deficit, but not nearly as much as previous long course races.  I knew from experience that I wouldn’t want to take any solids onboard during the run and so had to maximise my intake on the bike.

It was nice seeing Andrea and Steph as I came through town at the end of lap one and I gave them a thumbs up.  I’d nailed the first 56 miles in 2:46 (and so 4:07 in total was on the clock).  On a good day I was hoping for a 5:45 bike but as a backstop I just wanted to break six hours and so I was on a high to know already that barring mechanical or injury I was on target to smash my bike hoodoo.  I was watching for Dave in the minutes leading up to the next turnaround.  I was just coming to terms with missing him and thinking he must have surged when I saw him coming down the other side of the road only 200 metres in front.  I’d gained four minutes in the last 25 miles.  Now this is what I call a race.  He didn’t smile or wave as before and I knew my performance was getting to him.  One established ‘truth’ of our friendly rivalry is that he’s stronger on the bike than me.  For him not to have been pulling away would’ve been concerning enough, but to be getting caught was unthinkable for us both.  I caught and passed him in the town centre at the mile 70 marker.  As I moved alongside he asked “what did you have for breakfast?”.  I tried to play it calm, chatted about the swim and only moved ahead when we got some open road a few hundred yards out of the town centre.  I got into the aero position and pushed.  I expected him to step up his game and stay with me.  For the next 10-15 miles I didn’t allow myself to look back, frightened to discover him only a legal seven metres back and me showing my insecurities.  And yet despite starting to hurt and having to stand to get up some of the hills, by the time I saw him at the next turnaround I’d put four minutes into him.  This lifted me again and I rode strongly back into town, by this stage confident that he wouldn’t catch me today.



Mile 70.  The pass.  Andrea thought she was photographing Dave and didn't spot me ten yards away over his right shoulder.

I got to the dismount line with a bike split of 5:38.  I’d averaged 19.9mph over a rolling course and in my overall targets had more than compensated for a slow swim and T1.  Despite having to be dragged back from entering the women’s changing tent at T2, I got through transition quickly thanks to a kind volunteer who I left to repack the scattered contents of my T2 bag, and entered the run course on an accumulative 7:02.  A 3:58 marathon and the sub-11 was there for the taking.  I smiled when I saw Andrea at the start of the run course to let her know I was happy and in confident mood.  While Dave’s running is much improved, I somehow knew at this stage that in our private battle he was beaten, and so all I needed to concentrate on now was running my own race.  I was pleased to settle naturally into 8:15-8:30 minute/mile splits, with a brief interruption at the end of mile two to stop for a very painful pee (I’ll save you a description of the sensation or colour).  The twists and turns through the residential streets in town were a little annoying.  I hadn’t driven the run course and so hadn’t realised it would take so long to get out onto the path at the side of the highway along the lake.  When I finally got there I was starting to hurt but my spirits lifted when I brushed shoulders with Craig Alexander as he ran back into town on the final few miles of his race.  This is a two-times World Champion, one of the greatest ever Ironman triathletes, and here I was on the same course as him.  Only two and a half hours behind.  As it happened, he went on to finish in 8:16 and break the course record.  Not bad, especially when you consider he was only clocking his mandatory Ironman to qualify for the World Championships in Hawaii later this year, and that they’d modified the run course this year to add two extra hills on each of the two laps.

I was trying to stay controlled through the aid stations, hoping to ‘race’ at least the first 13-16 miles before succumbing to aid station-to-aid station survival mode.  The sun felt hot, the cold sponges felt good, but my legs were starting to hurt.  The views along the side of the lake were pretty but I noticed I was withdrawing into myself, keeping my head down and staring only at the asphalt or gravel five yards ahead.  I was speaking to no-one.  I hate out-and-back courses.  26.2 miles is 26.2 miles no matter how it’s configured, but it’s depressing to be running away from where you know you ultimately need to return.  The hills before and after the turnaround were killers.  Many others were walking them, knowing they still had two or three hours until the finish and determined not to spike their heart rates at this stage, but I’m stubborn and shuffled up them.  I hit town and the halfway mark at an accumulative 8:59 and knew deep down I hadn’t left myself enough time in reserve for the inevitable slowing in the second 13.1 miles.  I saw Andrea and Steph and struggled to raise a smile or a wave.  I wasn’t in a happy place.  My target shifted from a sub-11 to a sub-11:06 to ensure I beat Dave’s Ironman PB from Switzerland.

The third quarter of the run, the notorious third quarter.  You’re too far into the run for it to be fun anymore, a welcome change from cycling.  And you’ve been racing hard for over nine hours – in a single session, without interruption, more than six times the total government recommendation for healthy physical exercise in a full week.  Yet you’re still not close enough to the finish to let that high carry you.  In fact, on this course, I was running away from the finish.  My hips were tightening and my knees were dropping and while I was overtaking many slower swim-bikers who were just beginning their first lap of the run, I knew I wasn’t moving very fast.  Within a couple of miles I took two 30 second walk breaks to try and shake things up.  After the turnaround I saw Dave for the second time and calculated that my lead had extended to 24 minutes.  At least that was something.  Head down, only six miles to go.  I picked up pace and crossed off each mile marker.  By mile 24 I was back in the suburbs and with plenty of support around I decided to finish strongly.  The sub-11:06 was lost but making sure I beat 11:10 became immensely important to me over those last two miles.  Finally I turned into Sherman Avenue and the five or six block decline to the finish chute.  I picked up another couple of places and allowed myself a few hand pumps to the crowds while still a couple of hundred yards out.  As I approached the chute I could see the Northern Ireland flag waving behind the barrier.  The clock was on 11:09:35 and so I didn’t stop to kiss Andrea as there was another guy to overtake and that sub-11:10 to secure.  I crossed the line in 11:09:40 and was caught by two guys in their fifties who congratulated me and propped me up as my timing chip was removed, I received my finisher’s medal and t-shirt and had my photo taken.  When they eventually realised I wasn’t going to collapse they let me go and I doubled back to the bleachers and found Andrea for a hug.  Job done.

Five minutes after finishing in 11:09:40

Dave finished in 11:52 and we were both pleased with our day's work.  Rivalry to be continued.

I came 315/2187 finishers overall and 55/228 finishers in my M30-34 age category.  My splits were:

• Swim: 01:14:27 (disappointing)
• Bike: 05:38:18 (excellent)
• Run: 04:07:48 (must do better)

I’m happy with a PB on my fifth Ironman and with the big gains achieved on the bike, but I know I can go quicker overall.  I can run a fresh marathon in just a shade over three hours and so it’s crazy that an Ironman run takes me a full hour longer.  Definite low hanging fruit there.  I’m capable of a 10:30 and should soon be doing 10:45s as my default time on a standard course.  If I keep working, I know I’ll figure this thing out.

The Motor City: in search of the Detroit Cougars

The Homeland Security officer’s day suddenly improved.

“So, let me get this straight. You’re a UK citizen, live in Vancouver, Canada, and you’ve decided to come to Detroit for four days...just to look around?”

I’m standing at a counter in a scruffy immigration office on the US side of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. The driver of the Tunnel Bus and its four other passengers are waiting for me to clear so that the bus can continue its journey to various drop-offs in downtown Detroit. The suspicious reaction of the tiny red-headed DSH officer isn’t unexpected; I’d been getting similar winces and raised eyebrows from friends since booking the trip several weeks before. You’re going where? At this point I have a choice: I can continue to mumble monosyllabic answers and hope she loses interest, or I can come clean – admit I’m not just here as a tourist, but as a football fan....no, that’s soccer...and in search of the Detroit Cougars, a little known team that played in the city for seven weeks nearly 44 years ago. This second option would probably ease my border crossing, yet I know I’ll sound peculiar. As ardent as I am in my sporting interests, I’m aware that they may appear somewhat niche to the average North American.

I stick to the minimal answers. She shouts to the bus driver “On you go...”, while nodding towards me “...he can walk”. After a baggage search and further questioning (Her: “What’s the back pack for?” Me: “To carry things”) I’m sent out through the forecourt of open-boot vehicles, up the slope and onto Jefferson Avenue, downtown Detroit’s main waterfront thoroughfare. Walking into the Motor City.

Let’s get a few scene setting and downright dumbfounding facts about Detroit out of the way.

• Latest census data shows that since 2000, the population of Detroit has dropped 25%. That’s 238,270 people; an average of one resident every 22 minutes. The population of the United States as a whole has grown 9.7% in the same period
• That means that today’s population is the lowest since 1910, four years before Henry Ford started mass producing cars
• The city’s population peaked at almost 1.9 million in 1950, then making it the fourth largest city in the United States; today it is 713,777 and ranks as 18th largest
• Michigan, in which Detroit is the largest city, is the only US state to have experienced population shrinkage over the last ten years
• There are 80,000 vacant homes in Detroit, 22.8% of the total housing stock

I’m in Detroit on the trail of the Cougars, but I’m also here as a traveller, lover of cities, and voyeur – curious to witness a once great city slowly die.

It’s Thursday. The first thing I do, as a proper tourist, is go to the Visitor Center. Now this is a Visitor Center that plainly isn’t used to seeing many visitors. To begin with, it’s on the 10th floor of an aging high rise. I’m greeted by a kindly looking white woman in her late 50s. I mention her race because frankly, in Detroit, it still matters. The city itself is 87% black or Hispanic, the more affluent white population moving out in droves to the suburbs and surrounding municipalities following the notorious 1967 race riot, which changed the city forever and occurred only one month after the Cougars squad returned to Belfast. While helping me with maps I notice the woman’s accent and she confirms she’s originally from Dublin and has been in Detroit 23 years. So I try my luck and tell her the real purpose of my visit. She shows no recognition of either Glentoran or the Detroit Cougars, although expresses her curiosity that I’d return to the city after having being here several decades ago to play on a football tour. I don’t correct her, politely change the subject and soon leave when I notice her check her watch (4:50pm) and begin to shut down her computer.

It’s now 10pm and I’m standing in The Old Shillelagh waiting to meet Paul Altesleben. Paul is Corresponding Secretary of the Metro Detroit Soccer League. His wife serves as Recording Secretary. I’d set-up the meeting prior to my trip and despite Paul not being familiar with the story of the Cougars I still wanted to meet someone involved in football in the city today. The Old Shillelagh is in Greektown, less than a 10 minute walk from my hotel and yet Paul had recommended that I catch public transit, which I hadn’t. When he arrives he explains that he knows people can be nervous walking around Detroit. But in fact, the streets were just too quiet to be scary. They were quiet in the business district earlier that afternoon, even when I was leaving the Visitor Center at rush hour, and they’re quiet now in the heart of the entertainment district at 10pm on a Thursday night. We’re meeting this late because Paul has been playing his weekly mixed indoor five-a-side. He’s wearing a US Soccer track top, a Lamontville Golden Arrows FC shirt (Durban, South Africa) and an Altesleben FC cap. The guy on the guitar is playing I’ll Tell Me Ma and most patrons are watching the Detroit Tigers baseball team lose in Baltimore on TV screens above the bar. He explains later that the football club logo on the cap is copied from the emblem of Stroh, a former Detroit brewery, and I like his senses of priority and localism. Paul tells me that following our email exchange he’d researched Glentoran online. He compliments me, sort of, on The Oval. He doesn’t know about the Cougars but seems pleased to find out that Detroit is a founding city of North American professional soccer and appears proud when I tell him about the Glentoran Community Trust wall mural in an east Belfast street that depicts the Cougars name and logo. I ask if there has ever been a movement to bring a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise to Detroit. Apparently the owner of a third tier side somewhere north of the city has aspirations for moving his team through the divisions and finally entering the MLS, but Paul doesn’t sound hopeful. The nearest MLS teams are Chicago Fire and Toronto FC, both about four hours away by car.

GCT wall mural in Belfast depicting Detroit Cougars name and logo

We move to a more upscale bar where the drinks are served in glasses rather than plastic cups, past the workmen erecting beer tents in vacant car lots in readiness for tomorrow’s Opening Day festivities (first home game of the season for the Detroit Tigers). Paul has been to Belfast on his travels (“I wish I’d known about the Cougars and I’d have looked up your club”) and so, with some understanding of the intricacies of Northern Ireland, says he didn’t know what I’d make of The Old Shillelagh. When we loosen up around each other he talks about race in Detroit and I about religion in Belfast. He says he figured Glentoran is a Protestant club as he’d noticed we’ve been previous winners of the Ulster Cup. That’s why he’d decided not to wear his Celtic shirt this evening, although he claims also to own a Rangers shirt, bought when visiting Glasgow, and I notice later him wearing the light blue in photos on Facebook. We spend the next hour or so swapping stories from football trips, me especially curious to hear about his time in South Africa to watch all four of the USA’s games in the 2010 World Cup. He also talks about amateur soccer in Detroit and it sounds a familiar story of small time sport in any city – teams forming and folding, petty politics, last minute drops out and scrambles for players, the whole system kept afloat by the commitment of a very small nucleus of enthusiasts.

We’re getting on well and so I branch off from football and ask Paul what he does for a living. He’s an 8th grade maths teacher. He goes on to explain how his former school, which served mostly black kids, has been merged with another local school with a mainly white student roll. Schools and other public services are consolidating and closing all over the city.

As we say our goodbyes Paul promises to find me “an old timer” who would’ve been in the city in the late 60s, but this doesn’t sound like a straightforward task. I try to do some demographic calculations in my head. Factor one: the Detroit population was ~1.5 million in 1967 and is 713,777 today; therefore over half the population count during the time of the Cougars has since left or died and not been replaced. Factor two: average attendances at Cougars home games were only 5,708 i.e. one-third of one percent of the population of the city at the time. Factor three: I’m looking for someone born no later than 1950 to ensure they have more than early childhood memories of the Cougars, and yet no earlier than 1935 or 1940 to ensure they’re still in good health. Combine all three factors and I’m sad to realise there are probably no more than a handful of people left in Detroit who remember attending Cougars games.

Friday morning and I’m embarking on a full self-guided Cougars city tour. I stand for ages on Woodward Avenue – the spine of Detroit and epicentre of downtown – to catch a bus northwest but none arrive. I resort to walking back to my hotel and taking a taxi. The driver is friendly and so we chat. I explain my interest in Detroit. As we pass Cobo Hall I tell him that the team went there to see Frank Sinatra in summer ’67. While still on the freeway I spot the Fisher Building rising up in the distance, recognising its art deco design from photos on the internet. This was the office accommodation of The Detroit Soccer Co., Inc. 2400 Fisher Building, Detroit, Michigan 48202. Where W. Emmett Simms, Vice President and General Manager, ran the company and the great and the good of the Detroit auto and sports industries convened for Board meetings. I remark to the driver what a beautiful building it is and he doesn’t reply. As we draw alongside I notice the exterior is dirty and dilapidated. Before going inside I cross West Grand Boulevard to stand beside Cadillac Place, former world headquarters of General Motors, to get a photo, only taking out my camera when several shady characters have shuffled past.

Fisher Building, Detroit - former office of The Detroit Soccer Co., Inc.

As soon as I step inside I’m instantly impressed. Built in 1928, the Fisher Building is all marble, tiles, plaster moulds and gold leaf. The ceiling paintings in the atrium, which runs along the side of the Fisher Theatre, are Michelangelo-esque and 10 foot glass chandeliers hang from 20 foot extensions. I check out the wall mounted directory and scan for offices on the 24th floor. Two companies: 2401 – VMX International LLP and 2410 – Health Management Systems. No organisation listed for Suite 2400. I move past the security guards and catch the elevator to 24 and walk out into a dark rectangular hallway with several office doors around its perimeter. A woman emerges as I approach the only one with signs of life behind it. She asks if she can help and I tell her I’m looking for 2400. She’s unsure of the numbers but asks the name of the company. I mumble something about 2400, she again asks the name of the company, and I come clean with a “This is going to sound a little strange, but...”. Surprisingly, she doesn’t seem fazed by my quest and explains that the whole floor has been remodelled since the 60s and so there probably isn’t a Suite 2400 anymore. She presses the elevator call button and leaves. There’s nothing else I can do but circle a few laps of the quiet hallway and know that from within a few paces – forward, behind, left or right – the Detroit Cougars were administered and match tickets were sold. I regret not bringing a plaque to screw onto the wall.

Floor 24, Fisher Building

I go back down to the atrium, buy a coffee and today’s Detroit Free Press and sit down to read. There’s a front page story about a software tycoon buying downtown office space and moving large numbers of staff there: the city and its people attempting to diversify from the auto industry that has both made and destroyed it. The inside pages talk unconvincingly of the City’s plans for a light rail scheme on Woodward Avenue, another attempt to regenerate through a multimillion dollar mass transit project. The Homestyle supplement bizarrely contains no ads for homes for sale. House prices in Detroit have dropped by 25% since 2008. This is similar to Belfast, but Detroit didn’t enjoy any of the boom experienced by Northern Ireland, and most of the western world, in the earlier part of the decade.

I walk out of the main exit and take a right, travelling only one block west from 2nd Avenue to 3rd Street. I’m looking for the Howard Johnson New Center Motor Lodge. This was the team hotel, home to Glentoran players and staff for the duration of the tour, except when they were ‘on the road’ in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Toronto. All I see is a car park and a McDonalds, but this is definitely the spot as I see the Henry Ford Hospital rise in the background and recognise other landmarks from an old photo printed in the 25th Annual Reunion Dinner brochure. The hotel building is gone, there’s not much to see, so I discreetly snap a few pictures and walk back to the Fisher Building where I call a taxi to take me to the University of Detroit Mercy, McNichols Campus.

Former site of the Howard Johnson New Center Motor Lodge - Detroit Cougars team hotel

It’s 5pm. The University of Detroit Mercy is a private university that is affiliated with the Jesuits and the Sisters of Mercy. The McNichols Campus in northwest Detroit was home to the U of D Stadium, which hosted the Detroit Cougars. The stadium – venue of a W2 D3 L1 home record for the Cougars – was demolished in 1971 but I want to see its location and get a sense of campus atmosphere.

Large, low rise academic buildings intermingled with prison-like residential halls dominate the grounds. Only a few students walk around, either with tennis bags on their backs or beer crates in their hands. I assume that most have gone home for the weekend: like Queen’s University and the University of Ulster, few of the students of the U of DM are from far away. There are more attractive places than Detroit for non-locals to spend their college years. Outside the perimeter fence on the southeast corner of the campus I notice some residential ruins, by now a typical sight. Nearly a quarter of all houses in Detroit are unoccupied and most of these lie derelict, often the victims of arson and always of glass, plumbing and scrap metal looting. From what I can tell, these ruins aren’t limited to one or two isolated areas of town, but are sprinkled throughout. As I looked down residential streets at rows of detached timber and brick houses in most parts of the city I could see every fourth or fifth house in ruins. For the remaining residents, this of course renders their homes all but worthless. If no-one wants or is able to buy and fix-up the derelict house next door for a pittance, then an occupied home is also without any value. For a while I stroll glumly around this southeast corner snapping photos of a car park, mistakenly thinking that this was the site of the old stadium and looking at the cracks in the asphalt where once Trevor Thompson fired in goals.

A Detroit ruin...in Glentoran colours

Then I realise my sense of direction is 90 degrees out and head to the far side of the large modern sports hall, where I’m delighted to discover a running track around an artificial grass football pitch. A women’s game is underway and there are about 50 people watching from bleachers on the half way line across the pitch from the team dugouts. This must be the Detroit Titans. Titans is the generic name for all sports teams at the University of Detroit Mercy. It refers most famously to its basketball team, which is housed in Calihan Hall – an 8,295-seater indoor stadium i.e. the ‘sports hall’, but also includes the men’s and women’s soccer teams. The pitch is within the U of DM’s perimeter fence on the very northeast corner of campus with a residential street to the side and a main road behind the north goal. I check the street signs and compare them to my notes: this is definitely the site of the old stadium and I get excited, wanting to explain everything to one of the players, coaching staff or fans, which of course I don’t for fear of sounding ridiculous.

Detroit Titians sports field at the University of Detroit Mercy - former site of the U of D Stadium, which was home to the Detroit Cougars in 1967

I stay for a while and watch the game, appreciating how technically good women’s college soccer actually is, and then wander around the adjacent car park. The old U of D Stadium actually straddled what are now the sports pitch and the car park. I walk down to where I guess the centre circle was, and then to both goal mouths, all the while trying to picture those six home games and think about the mark they have made on the history and heritage of Glentoran FC. Then I go into Calihan Hall. I poke my head into the basketball arena but a bunch of students are staging some kind of show, so I leave and walk around the Detroit Titans Hall of Fame, an impressive visual history of great players and games down through the generations of basketball, track and field, tennis, soccer and American football teams. Towards the end of the exhibition I see a beautiful backlit photo of the old stadium, full to capacity for what looks like an American football game in the first half of the last century. I recognise the distinctive floodlight pylons that I’d read about, positioned between the stands and the pitch. I note a few surrounding landmarks and go back outside to check my coordinates of where exactly in today’s car park and sports field the old stadium was located. Eventually I realise I’m exhausted and go back downtown to my hotel.

Photo of the old U of D Stadium in the Detroit Titans Hall of Fame

Now it’s Saturday morning and I’m running late for a group tour of Southwest Detroit organised by Inside Detroit, a private non-profit that seeks to promote and provide education about the city. It established in 2007 because no-one else was doing it, not even City authorities. Today’s two hour tour would take us around Corktown and Mexicantown, both areas named after the origins of their first inhabitants. Both areas depressed, full of vacant space where homes and other buildings once stood (locally know as ‘urban prairies’), and devoid of people on the streets. To be fair, Mexicantown is a little more alive, although one of the guides, who Monday-Friday works for the local business association, gets disproportionately excited about a supermarket that has undertaken two extensions in the last ten years. Everywhere I look, including downtown, I can see few options for discretionary spending: hardly any cafes, bars, newsagents or other shops, not even the classic indicator of UK inner city poverty – ubiquitous fast food outlets. Aside from in a downtown convention center which caters for the fly-in, fly-out business classes, I saw only a single Starbuck’s my whole stay. Many will consider this a good thing, but it’s not a sign of a thriving city in today’s America.

Both tour guides are white locals and advocates for Detroit. They are determined not to lead an urban decay tour and while we do visit a few derelict buildings the emphasis is all on the grandeur of the original architecture and prospects for refurbishment. I want to be convinced but am not. In their evangelistic zeal they only seem to be pointing out the exceptions that prove the rule: a community action group that occasionally organises litter pick-ups; a small business that has recently renovated its facade; a local artist that is splashing paint all over a burned-out house in some form of playschool attempt at social commentary.

Michigan Central Station - abandoned and derelict

We stop for refreshments and I get talking to the lead tour guide. He looks mid-twenties and is studying political science and economics at Wayne State University. He asks what I’m doing in Detroit and I tell him about the Cougars, their link with my home town of Belfast and my quest to visit sites of relevance in the city. He makes a small grunt of recognition when I mention the Detroit Cougars, but as he turns and walks off to make conversation with another group of customers I can tell he was just being polite.

As the tour ends I ask the same guide for directions to the Detroit Historical Museum. I’ve got a few hours to spare before the Detroit Tigers v Kansas City Royals baseball game late that afternoon. He says he lives close by and will give me a ride. As I wait for him in the Inside Detroit office I flip through the 624 pages of The Detroit Almanac: 300 Years of Life in the Motor City. I search the index under ‘Cougars’, ‘Detroit Cougars’, ‘soccer’ and ‘John Colrain’ and find no references. The tour guide asks if I’m ready and we depart.

Before my trip I’d shared several pleasant and informative emails with Joel Stone, Curator of the Detroit Historical Museum. Joel doesn’t recall the Cougars but seemed happy to help me on my mission and recommended some reading about Detroit so I could understand what was going on in the city’s politics and society in the 60s, especially in connection with the riot. He had spent some time studying at University College Cork in the late 70s and so was happy to draw comparisons between Detroit and what he knew of Belfast, despite his southern educators “suggesting that going to The North was not a good idea”. And so I wanted to visit his Museum.

I walk around the displays that tell the story of the city’s industrialisation and growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and panel after panel outlining its intimate relationship with the auto industry. I pass by a large display of ‘New Artefacts’ that have recently been donated to the Museum and notice some old Detroit Tigers memorabilia. The Museum will remain custodians of these artefacts and down through the decades they will be used both for private research and to publically tell their own tales of Detroit life. I start to weigh up how much I treasure my own small Cougars collection and how important it is that Detroit be reminded of this short chapter in its history, which has otherwise been forgotten.

I leave the Museum and walk back down Woodward Avenue towards the huge green floodlights of Comerica Park. The city or its suburbs host four major league teams and each of North America’s favourite sports are represented – Detroit Tigers (baseball), Detroit Lions (American football), Detroit Red Wings (ice hockey) and Detroit Pistons (basketball). During my stay I ask two people which sport rules Detroit: one replies baseball, the other American football. Despite or perhaps because of its modern day problems, Detroit remains a true blue collar sports town. I have a ticket for the baseball, only the second home game of the season, and munch peanuts with 33,809 others as the Tigers lose 3-1 to the Royals. Just about everyone is wearing a Detroit Tigers jacket, sweatshirt, t-shirt or baseball cap in dark blue and orange, but I notice several people with green versions emblazoned with shamrocks. Detroit is still Irish.

Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers, with Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, in the background

After the game I get a call from Nick Deren confirming a time and place for us to meet. Nick is Head Coach of the Detroit Titans men’s team, undoubtedly the best soccer XI in Detroit today. The Titans are an NCAA Division 1 side, and therefore among the top 204 college teams in the country. Due to America’s vastness, the league system is regionalised until the play-off stages; however the Titans still regularly travel the length and breadth of the nation to play in tournaments. Players aren’t paid, but Nick receives a significant annual budget both for travel and for either subsidising or paying in full his players’ tuition fees as an incentive to attract the best possible talent to the university. His college-team budget certainly exceeds the annual turnover of Glentoran FC. Academic entry standards can be quietly lowered for the better players. His whole 25-man squad of 18-23 year olds train 20 hours a week.

Nick has just finished coaching a 90 minute training session before a ‘spring scrimmage’ tomorrow against local rivals Oakland University. He doesn’t want to come downtown, preferring instead that we meet not far from the U of DM in a suburb called Ferndale. It’s only a 20 minute cab ride from my hotel but I arrive in a busy main street, full of restaurants and night life that feels a million miles away from Detroit. It’s the home town of rapper Eminem and, from what I can see, it’s almost exclusively white. When I arrive in Dino’s, Nick, 33, is already seated at the bar, finishing an iced tea, and we spend the next three hours talking football. He is a former Detroit Titans star player and after graduation and three or four years “in the real world” he returned to become Assistant Coach. 18 months ago he got the top job, a full time position. He’s a coach to the core. Before long he starts scribbling on napkins to show me the formations that he likes his team to play. He talks about the lengths he goes to scout and attract talented high school players not only from Michigan but surrounding states and into Canada. Recently the college has started offering places to footballers from east Africa and the current team’s top striker is Kenyan. Following three, four or five years of NCAA Division 1 football, many of his players go on to play in the lower division pro or semi-pro leagues. Some have made it in Hungary and Scandinavia, although none have yet been drafted to the MLS.

I’ve brought the 25th Annual Reunion brochure and flip through it with Nick, concentrating on photos that show the old U of D Stadium in the background. He quietly listens to me talk about the Glens, and the Detroit Cougars, but I know he knows it’s a long way from the English Premier League, which he watches on ESPN. He finishes his third iced tea and leaves, promising to get in touch when he comes to Vancouver on a planned scouting trip. Half an hour later I collapse into bed.

It’s Sunday and time to leave Detroit. Although it will continue to disintegrate, the city has charmed me and I know I’ll be back. I come from Belfast and have learned to see beneath the veneer of a place. Yet as I wait to travel through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel I can’t help but draw sad comparisons between the decline of the Motor City and that of Glentoran since the happier days of our union in summer 1967.

The story of the Detroit Cougars has faded and gone in Detroit, a city with other things on its mind, but it will continue to live on in Belfast. Like the 1914 Vienna Cup, 1941 Belfast Blitz, 1949 return to The Oval, and European nights of the 60s, 70s and early 80s, the Cougars will remain a cornerstone of our great club’s past. But these four days in this city has reminded me that standing still and expecting things to stay the same forever is not an option. It’s important for us all to continue to make history, not be doomed to merely playing it on loop in our memories.

Why am I bothered?

I never cry when awake but sometimes do in my sleep. Someone could probably explain the reason for this but I’d rather not hear it. Last night’s dreamworld sobbing was for Glentoran, a football club on the verge of extinction.

Just before sleeping I read that the attendance at the Oval last Saturday for our league game versus Lisburn Distillery was only 1,153. This would be a small crowd on any day, in any season of our history, but is especially remarkable because it was our first home game following the news that HM Revenue & Customs is readying to launch court proceedings to recover years of unpaid tax; court proceedings that will force the club into administration, cause panic grabbing from our other creditors (who to date have shown remarkable patience) and ensure the liquidation of our only real asset - the Oval Grounds. Following this news, broken with flourish by the BBC, a sense of urgency gripped Glentoran supporters and fan sites and forums were filled with rescue ideas. The club moved quickly to form Spirit of 41 – an umbrella brand for fundraising activities making an intelligent but high-stakes reference to the bombing of the Oval in the Belfast Blitz and marathon community effort to rebuild the ground and see the club return to Mersey Street in 1949. Supporters’ meetings took place, rallies organized, Facebook groups established, war cries screamed across the world wide web. I took some heart; from a distance it appeared like people cared. No substantial money raising ideas had emerged – the headline initiative being a small time raffle for a hairdresser’s car – but we weren’t short on passion from the keyboard army.

But the true test would be the size of attendance at the next home game. The best way fans can donate is not charitably, or in pity, but in return for Saturday afternoon entertainment. This is the proper relationship between fan and club. Collection buckets may be a short term necessity but do nothing for the club’s long term image. Going to the match, not ‘liking’ a Facebook group, is also the best way for fans to show their support, give heart to the team and demonstrate our collective power to media and creditors. And it didn’t happen. If anything the news, rather than boosting the crowd, detracted from it. Nobody other than our hardcore fan base wants to be associated with a club in its ugly death throes.


We’re doomed because the people of east Belfast and wider catchment area have given up on us. This is one tragic cock-up too many. A final example of our inability to function healthily in a modern world. Across the globe, and this is true also for the UK no matter how we try to pretend otherwise, only a very small minority of football fans are the most loyal of all sports fans. Most people fall in and out of love with both the game and their club many times in their life. They spend long periods with switched or more focused allegiances for other teams, always with valid excuses of geography or family. Their passion ebbs and flows with different life adventures. They go to the games because the team is winning and they’re with their mates; but fortunes change, friends move on, other hobbies take hold, people relocate. Despite the fireside tales of loyalty that are passed from football generation to generation, most people only want to be associated with success, they want to love a club that makes them proud; in fact, will only love a club if it makes them proud. If it doesn’t, or ceases to, they rarely make a public renunciation; they just stop going, stop caring, and start transferring their time and emotions to other things. We only have one life to live and being a martyr isn’t a fun way to do it. Except for the very few, Glentoran just doesn’t offer enough to people any longer to gain their attention, let alone loyalty or fanaticism. And certainly not their life savings. This is nothing new – it’s the end of a process, not the beginning, because our decline began 40 years ago. HMRC’s latest move hasn’t galvanised a community, merely embarrassed it.


As I sit and write on an autumn Vancouver Saturday morning, looking out over Burrard Inlet to Grouse and Seymour Mountains, rested after a short business visit to Toronto and anticipating another trip east across this huge continent on Monday, I wonder just why I care so much about a musty, dying old football club in the east end of Belfast. I struggle to link my own values with that of the club. It has no ambition, is addicted to being second best, has no inclination towards self-improvement, no work ethic, and wants to play no part, however small, in a networked European football community. In my own athletic life, for no more than solid amateur performances in a fringe sport, balanced with a busy career, I even train harder and lead a healthier lifestyle than many, if not all, of the club’s playing staff.


Further to that, I never quite fitted in to Irish League football. Despite strong and enduring links to the area, I’m not from east Belfast. I played rugby and went to Grammar school. For most of the many years that I lived locally, and therefore went regularly to games, I was either too young or too consumed with religious piety to drink mammoth quantities of alcohol.


And yet I do care. I cry for the club in my sleep. I’m obsessed with it. I love its colours, badge, ground and history. I revere Jim Cleary, Billy Caskey, Glen Little and Paul Leeman. I feel stabbed in the chest when we lose, even in the Co. Antrim Shield. And despite the glumness of what I’ve written above, deep down, I believe Glentoran to be the finest, most romantic, majestic and beautiful football club ever to exist. The thought of it no longer being (Glentoran F.C. 1882-2010) breaks my heart.


I rarely get to the games now. Being 4,392 miles from home makes that difficult. As many push as pull factors have caused me to move overseas, yet Glentoran is one cornerstone of my heritage, and my family legacy, from which I haven’t ran. It has stuck and will do for life, even if I outlive the club. I suppose there was something magical, or moulding, about the age and circumstances at which I started following the team. Many other interests from that era came and went – ornithology, rally cars, photography – but Glentoran remained.


Both my father and grandfather supported the Glens, although both only as big game attendees. They were there for the Terry Conroy cup final and the Benfica and Rangers games. I have to go back to my great-grandfather to find the last week-in, week-out fan. As often happened in the industrial era, he moved to Belfast from the countryside and adopted a local football team as way of identifying with his new city.


I went to primary school in Omagh where I saw my first live football game – Omagh Town versus RUC, Irish Cup, Omagh Showgrounds. I’d never seen the Glens but obviously spoke of my support for them because I still have the leaving present that my classmates gave me when I left at 11 to move to Newtownabbey – a Glentoran versus Juventus programme from 1977, the year I was born. As we settled in our new life just north of Belfast my older brother made friends at school with a Crusaders fan. Every Saturday this friend of my brother went to games and this seemed both glamorous and grown-up to us, thereby inspiring us to start going to the Oval. For four or five years we went regularly together. These were epic journeys. For the first few years we’d set out just after lunch to catch the bus from Jordanstown to Belfast city centre and then we’d walk to the Oval. As the crow flies, this was less than 15 miles from home, but at that age it felt like we were venturing to another, more interesting civilisation. These were good times with my brother. By this stage he was becoming too cool, and me too embarrassing, for him to speak to or even acknowledge me at school, but on a Saturday afternoon we became brothers, friends and fellow Glenmen. I can still feel the bulk of my hidden scarf inside my coat, under my armpit, as we made the double scurry past the entrance to Short Strand. Laterly, he passed his driving test and we’d drive into town. I’ll never, ever forget the September night we drove in together, parked on Templemore Avenue for fear of mass traffic nearer the ground, and went to see our wee team play Marseille, the finest side in Europe. My brother’s interest waned shortly after that. He continued going to Boxing Day games until the late nineties before stopping altogether. But I was hooked and pressed on. Often there was a friend to drag along with me – one or two of them becoming firm Glentoran supporters – and other times I went alone, which was equally pleasurable. In my mid to late teens I started going to more and more away games, catching Ulsterbuses to Seaview and Taylor’s Avenue and trains to Inver and Clandeboye Parks. By the time I passed my own test I was going to every single match, home and away, sometimes over 60 games a season. When I lived on the Lisburn Road during my time at Queen’s I’d set out before 6pm on a Tuesday evening to walk down through the Holy Lands, across Ormeau Embankment, down Ravenhill Road and Templemore Avenue, along Newtownards Road, then Dee Street, Mersey Street and Parkgate Drive for Gold Cup, Co. Antrim Shield or league games. A handful of times I even did that on a Friday night to see the Seconds. And I remember skipping tutorials only a couple of months before my final year exams to do the same walk to interview Roy Coyle for a fanzine I was thinking of writing. Around this time I joined a supporters’ club and this gave me access to new friends. I helped out in the souvenir and tuck shops on matchdays, helped repaint the ground during the summers, travelled to Israel, Norway, Denmark and Finland for European games, bought some shares in the club and wrote the odd article for the Gazette and official website.

The Oval Grounds, Belfast

Then, in 2002, I left Northern Ireland. First I moved to Glasgow, where when people asked which team I support I’d answer ‘Glentoran’. Only if they looked quizzical would I add ‘... a Belfast club’. Then I moved to Oxford, where I stayed for nearly seven years, and by necessity for the locals my answer became ‘a Belfast club, Glentoran’. Now I find myself transferred to Vancouver where I’ve learned that unless I answer Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Real Madrid or Barcelona, I’m going to be faced with extreme disinterest. Occasionally I try my luck and give a brief and mildly apologetic explanation of my support for Glentoran – that’s Glen-tor-an – a very small club from my hometown on the north-western fringe of Europe, but it means nothing to canuks. I don’t push the issue, in the same way that a Canadian ice hockey fan in Belfast banging on constantly about his favourite junior team in Manitoba may appear quirky at first but would soon become irritating.


My day to day and week to week personal contacts with the club are cut, but 22 years after my first game (1988 Irish Cup final, Glentoran 1-0 Glenavon, Cleary pen) I stay mesmerised. Glentoran became the footprint in the soft setting concrete of my life. As I get older and further and further removed from the Oval, the print remains forever because the impression was made at just the right time.


That’s why I’m bothered. That’s why I cry in my sleep. On many levels, and looking at the person I am now, it makes no sense; but on many others it’s entirely logical.


And so, I know I haven’t exactly sold it, but if you want to make a contribution to our survival, or at least assist with our palliative care, then grab your wallet and visit http://www.spiritof41.com/.

My annual rant about why the Glens are so crap in Europe (plus some comparisons with other Northern Irish, Welsh and Irish clubs)

This article was originally written with the intention of a wider readership, probably through publication in the Glentoran Gazette (subject to the editor’s approval). But as the club has got off to a flying start in the new Irish Premiership season, with four wins and one draw at the time of writing, there’s a certain optimism in the air and it would seem a little bah humbug of me to voice this right now. I know this is cowardly. If anything, our good domestic form is only masking the wider problems raised in this article. But there’s a time and place for everything. I suppose it’s safe to post on my blog now, since no-one reads my blog.

As the qualifying rounds for both Champions League and Europa League are now complete, this seems a good time to review events. What happens in either competition from now on is of little consequence to Glentoran, or any other Irish League club; but the events of early July to late August are of huge meaning, and their outcomes deserve detailed review.

First of all, let’s establish why that is. Why Europe matters, or why Europe should matter, to a club like Glentoran. To the pragmatist the answer is money – the prize money available from even first round elimination dwarfs anything on offer domestically, while successful progression through just one round in either competition would increase our annual revenue substantially. To make absolutely clear, for the club’s creditors, in terms of prize money alone, winning a single European tie is equal to winning two Irish League championships or going on a 1980s-style Irish Cup winning run. Considering the fiscally perilous situation of the club at this time, we have no choice but to be pragmatists. And yet some of us also remain romantics, and for our dwindling number Europe tempts us with an idyll that the Irish League alone cannot give. Some Oval regulars personally remember the European conquests of the early 60s to early 80s – a two decade span upon which our heritage was built and songs were written. Many others, myself included, arrived soon enough afterwards to hear the stories first-hand and grow-up as Glentoran supporters believing that fighting our corner in Europe, and landing the occasional blow, was the norm to be expected.

Glentoran v Rangers programme, 1966.  A famous night at the Oval when 35,000 saw a 1-1 draw.

And yet it’s clear to all that in the last decade, if not even earlier, the club has taken the decision to give up on Europe. To cease to try, to surrender, to happily conform to our bestowed role as Europe’s cannon fodder. This may never have been a conscious decision. It may never have been discussed in the boardroom or set out in a strategy that was issued to coaching staff, players and supporters. And yet it is unquestionably with this full understanding that we now proceed, year after year. Both the club and its supporters still seem to recognise the worth of European qualification, but our appetite or expectation does not extend to being competitive once we have secured our place in the draw. In short, we know the price of qualification but have lost the comprehension of its value.

Of course, this means something deeper than merely failure in one of the numerous annual competitions in which we take part. It means we’ve given up on ourselves. It means we’ve stopped trying to move forward as a club. It means we’ve stepped out of the rat race that is constantly driving up standards elsewhere in the continent. We’re no longer interested in measuring ourselves against any club from outside the six counties of Northern Ireland. We have decided that our only ambition, our only reason for existence, is to be one percent better than Linfield (and you could even argue that of late we’ve given up on that too) and five percent better than Portadown, Cliftonville and Crusaders. This malaise also explains our attitude to the Setanta Cup where, 2008 excepted, we have even displayed a lack of interest in competing against clubs from 100 miles down the road. Why bother with something difficult when we can return to the Irish League at the weekend, beat Newry City as usual, and go back to feeling good about ourselves? Being one of the ‘Big Two’ in, let’s face it, a pretty puny playground, is our comfort zone; being the underdog is not.

A few weeks ago I was channel surfing and came across the latest Shamrock Rovers v Bohemians game. Rovers were just back from their trip to Modena where they were narrowly beaten by Juventus courtesy of a wonderful Del Piero free-kick, and yet the match summariser was talking about how Europe was nothing but a distraction and that this Dublin derby, with points at stake in the chase for the league title, is what really matters. His central argument was that Shamrock Rovers will never win the Europa League but they’ve got a chance of claiming the Airtricity League title this season. What nonsense. Try telling Rovers’ players, supporters or club financial officers that the Juventus fixtures were meaningless. Of course Rovers were never going to win the Europa League, but probably only a quarter of the 48 mega-clubs that enter the group stage and hit our television screens this month have any hope of victory. That’s not the point. The point is to go as far as possible, to show self-respect, and to try and achieve beyond your own limitations, or certainly beyond the expectations that others have for you. It’s one of the beauties of the inherent inequalities of world football that an early round giant killing (or even just early round victory) for one club can have the same significance as ultimate triumph for another. It’s how Glentoran fans can get as much personal satisfaction from following our team as Manchester United fans do from theirs.

Juventus v Shamrock Rovers, 2010.  The type of game that some would have us believe is now impossible.

Some thought that Allianssi in 2004 would provide a watershed for Glentoran. This was the tie that blew the myths that ‘foreign’ automatically means ‘better’, that we could never get a result away from home, that the words ‘full time professional’ somehow bestow the opposition with magical powers. Surely now the club would get hooked on the prize money, the players would start believing, and we as supporters would demand regular wins? Sadly not. Instead, the Allianssi win has turned out to be nothing more than a statistical blip and our results since have actually declined further.

The main Glentoran internet forum has been lively with discussion on this and linked topics since early summer. The defeatists within our number, dressed up as realists, yet vastly overestimating the realities in other European footballing backwaters, have been arguing that any small steps we take – like resuming pre-season training earlier, playing more warm-up games and ensuring our full squad is available for selection – will be fruitless as we will always come up against more sophisticated and technically superior opposition. They believe that entering European games with better physical fitness would matter for nothing against teams still able to pass the ball quicker than our players can run. And further, they believe that Europe just comes too early now for us to take it seriously – it’s unfair for us to expect too much from part-time players in terms of June training and July competitive games. And so let’s look at the facts based on what happened in the qualifying rounds this season. And, especially, let’s see if we can learn anything that will influence our approach, and our attitude, for next season.

We know what happened to our own club – we were beaten comfortably by a mid-table Icelandic side. In case you didn’t know, Iceland is an even more remote island than our own and has a population a fifth of that of Northern Ireland. The nation is also bankrupt and football isn’t high on its agenda right now. Yet the tie was over after 32 minutes of the first leg when we found ourselves 2-0 behind. Incidentally, a KR supporter reported his opinion on the internet that, based on our performance in Reykjavik, we are the worst European team ever to have visited Iceland (admittedly, there could be an element of exaggeration produced by post-win cockiness here). Ironically, following the Belfast leg, many of our supporters said the same thing about KR. The difference was, they won 5-2.

Gary Hamilton v KR Reykjavik, 2010

But I won’t linger on our performance because, as we’ve already established, we’ve given up on Europe and so our recent results aren’t really a useful guide as to what is actually possible. Instead, we’ll look at how comparable clubs from Northern Ireland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland got on.

Northern Ireland
Linfield has a confused relationship with European competition. Like ourselves, they can and do point to past (and rapidly fading) glories, and they have a small bunch of supporters that travels abroad to away games each year. Yet I get the clear feeling that David Jeffrey, and therefore his players, take the experience of participation much more seriously than the club hierarchy does. Both Jeffrey and the players seem to enjoy testing themselves against bigger clubs and full-time players, for example Rosenborg’s Anthony Annan who had played for Ghana in the World Cup in June. They go into games with both a self-belief and a tactical organisation superior to our own. And as a result, they’ve had more success than us over the last decade, albeit often in the form of honourable damage limitation against mighty clubs like Dinamo Zagreb, or positive results in home fixtures even if the overall tie is lost. This year’s performances in the Champions League second qualifying round against Rosenborg fitted that mould. A determined 0-0 at Windsor Park followed by an ‘immensely proud of my players’ 2-0 defeat in Norway. I’m realistic in my expectations in Europe and it has to be recognised that anything greater than this would have been a major upset, however I reluctantly believe that in the same circumstances the Glens would have settled for much, much less (as we did in the same competition last season when we tried to cover-up our humiliating 10-0 defeat to Maccabi Haifa by overstating the mastery of the opponents, whose true capabilities were shown to the world once they moved beyond the qualifiers). To prepare for the Rosenborg games, Linfield resumed pre-season training on 21st June for a first leg game 23 days later, which was nearly twice the training time allocated by the Glens. Although our friendly game time was disappointingly comparable – both clubs playing only a single match versus TNS and some in-house games during training.

Surprisingly, Portadown and Cliftonville were this season’s local success stories. Perhaps, being less frequent participants, they weren’t jaded by the routine negativity that surrounds our own annual European operations. Portadown played shrewdly to draw at home and win away to Skonto Riga – notably a superior club to the Latvian side we recently went out to – before losing at Shamrock Park to Qarabag and then gaining another good away result with a scoring draw in Azerbaijan. Cliftonville won at home and drew away to Cibalia of Croatia – an excellent achievement considering the strength of top Croatian football – before losing home and away with honours to famous CSKA Sofia. Both clubs received major boosts to coffers, morale, support and reputations.

Wales
The New Saints (TNS) led the charge this year; in fact, by opening themselves up to good fortune by achieving a single convincing win at home to Bohemians, they launched themselves on a six game run. When was the last time the Glens played six games in Europe in the one season? 1973-74. Winning 4-1 on aggregate against Bohemians – a fixture they were seeded to lose – gave them two glamour games against Anderlecht in the third qualifying round through which, while losing 5-1, they progressed to the play-offs of the Europa League before being eliminated 5-2 by CSKA Sofia. This shows the quirks of the system – by winning the Welsh league and progressing through a single round, TNS got six games and within a tie of reaching the Europa League group stages. Important lesson – good things happen to clubs that make themselves available to these possibilities. How did TNS achieve this? Well, they took Europe seriously, as demonstrated by returned to pre-season training on 1st June, six weeks before their first competitive game, and during this period they played a round robin tournament against the other Welsh qualifiers, in addition to a trip to the Oval. They put in the work and they got the rewards. There’s another lesson here. We often complain that there is no suitable opposition for us to face in warm-up games pre-Europe. TNS, and the other Welsh clubs, have shown that it’s as simple as picking up the phone to clubs next door.

In the Europa League, there was less, but still some, success. Llanelli were narrowly defeated 5-4 after extra time by Tauras of Lithuania and Port Talbot lost heavily to TPS of Finland. However, Bangor City salvaged some pride. An away draw in Finland and a home 2-1 victory against Honka meant that they progressed to the third qualifying round and glitzy, not forgetting lucrative, ties against Maritimo of Portugal, which they eventually lost 10-3 on aggregate.

Republic of Ireland
The most obvious point about the preparation of clubs from the RoI is their domestic summer football structure, meaning that Europe comes mid-season rather than at the very beginning. The significance of this cannot be ignored; although I’m not convinced that this advantage cannot be eliminated through better preparation on our own part (see TNS above), without having to overhaul the Irish League footballing calendar. Afterall, the change to summer football in the Republic had nothing to do with Europe, but rather was an attempt to attract bigger crowds to domestic games, and on this it, as a lone factor, has been a failure. But I’m straying off topic. The point is that all RoI clubs had played plenty of competitive games prior to their European fixtures and so issues of pre-season training dates and friendly fixtures do not apply to them. We can therefore assume that, aside from the regular pattern of mid-season injuries and fatigue, their teams entered the European fixtures at the height of their fitness and tactical refinement.

Bohemians screwed up, and surely they know it. They were heavy favourites to progress after being drawn with TNS in the Champions League second qualifying round. Afterall, RoI clubs now fancy their chances in Europe against Scottish clubs, never mind Welsh. They duly won their home leg 1-0 before mysteriously losing 4-0 in Oswestry.

In the Europa League first qualifying round, Dundalk were seeded and yet made heavy work of beating Grevenmacher of Luxemburg 5-4 on aggregate. They then lost convincingly against Levski of Bulgaria. In the second qualifying round, Shamrock Rovers showed us how to play against Israelis. After a 1-1 draw in Tallaght against Bnei Yehuda they went to Tel Aviv and won 1-0, thereby earning themselves a draw with Juventus in the next round. Everyone thought the days of facing clubs like Juventus in Europe were gone forever, but new European formats, and some determination, show that this simply isn’t the case. They lost 3-0 on aggregate and yet enjoyed a notable and proud event in their history, much like our own tussle with the Old Lady in 1977. Sporting Fingal – the new ‘community-based’ club from north of Dublin – played their first ever European games this summer and were fortunate to draw Maritimo of Portugal. On hearing the draw, manager Liam Buckley said “...we’ve waited a long time since winning the FAI Ford Cup last November to participate in European competition and we’ll approach this tie with the aim of winning it and securing a place in the third round.” Can you ever imagine a Glentoran manager, other than John Colrain, saying something like this, even when we’ve been paired with much more lowly opposition? And yet here it is, from a club only founded in 2007, with virtually no fans and zero European pedigree. Certainly it was good marketing – hinting that you’re going to put up a fight helps sell tickets – and it also helps establish the club as a serious entity. But more than that, it indicates a self-belief and an ambition that is sadly absent at the Oval. In actual fact, Sporting Fingal didn’t progress, but they can be content with two 3-2 defeats to a club that finished fifth in the Portuguese league in 2009-10.

Summary
So let’s summarise the performance of Northern Irish, Welsh and southern Irish clubs in Europe. The below table is a crude analysis – it doesn’t recognise seedings or luck of the draw, nor does it recognise the increasing difficulty of opposition as the clubs moved through rounds – but it is interesting nonetheless.

These are results from one season only, but a notable outcome is that each league performed roughly equal in terms of ‘points’ won; however, while the league table is never supposed to lie, I’m not sure it does full justice to the RoI clubs considering their stand-out performances such as an away win in Israel and a total of four narrow defeats to top Portuguese and Italian opposition.

Yet, the really significant outcome for Glentoran supporters is, once again, our own club’s underperformance. Linfield, Portadown, Cliftonville, TNS, Llanelli, Bangor City, Bohemians, Dundalk, Sporting Fingal and Shamrock Rovers can all be argued to have had more successful (or for some, less unsuccessful) European campaigns than us. Yet, from the list above, only Linfield, Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers can have any claim to be a club of the size, support, heritage and European experience of Glentoran.

Which begs the questions – how and why do others perform consistently better than us? Why are we content with clubs from countries like Wales and Iceland being superior to us? And do we care enough to do anything about it?

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