Sport, Identity, and the People of the Irish Border Lands

Among the border people of Northern Ireland—mostly members of the minority Catholic community—the most popular cultural pastime is sport, specifically Gaelic football, hurling, and camogie. These and other sports play a role in the construction of a unique identity for this section of Irish society. Understanding the interplay of local and national forms of representation, within the inherently limited context of sport, lies at the core of any complete understanding of how identity is formed along the northern part of the Irish border frontier. Until recently, research into the socio-historical role of sport in Ireland has been insufficient to allow us to address these issues with complete confidence.

The seminal work of Alan Klein in Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos (1997) constitutes the most widely regarded study of the social significance of sport in the construction of border identities. Spanning the spectrum from the complete recognition of the legal and physical imperative of borders through to the acceptance of cross-border institutions and structures, Baseball on the Border provides a theoretical backdrop for research in "border studies." The observations of Hastings Donnan and Thomas Wilson in Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation, and State (1999) help to reveal how sport has allowed some border nationalists to generate a regional identity that assumes preeminence over association with either of the two states on the island of Ireland. Referring specifically to the cultural rituals and symbolism played out at borders, Donnan and Wilson assert that despite sport being one of the least offensive aspects of border cultures, "it generates some of the most emotional forms of cultural integration and disintegration at local and national levels."¹

In an Irish context, the term "border people" requires definition. While this essay focuses on the specific experiences of Irish nationalists living along the Irish border, it also recognizes that, although this grouping represents the overwhelming majority of people who live in the region, there are also others who live there but would not define themselves as Irish nationalists. In particular, members of the Protestant and Unionist communities populate such border towns and villages as Richill, County Armagh, and Sion Mills, County Tyrone, and these people may also be termed "border people." Although the experiences of the latter require close inspection, Irish nationalists do constitute the largest percentage of the border population.

In the main, academic writing specifically portraying the experiences of border nationalists with sport have been rare. Donnan and Wilson currently offer the most sophisticated depiction of this often complicated interrelationship in an Irish setting. That said, their analysis is brief and comparatively simplistic, leaving the complexities of identity construction to be more fully elucidated. Consequently, work still remains to be done concerning how border nationalists have appropriated sport, in a variety of forms, and have utilized it to express a multitude of identities. Such enquiry seems particularly pertinent in view of the findings of the 2001 Northern Ireland Measures of Deprivation report, which demonstrated that, with the exception of Belfast, the majority of wards experiencing high levels of deprivation were in border areas.² As sport is thought to possess cohesive qualities and to act as a point of reference for rural and disparate communities, it is quite possible that involvement in sporting pastimes may partly offset some of the inherent drawbacks of border life. Sport also remains one of the few mediums through which ethnic and national identities may find local meaning. Given the evolving political climate in Northern Ireland and the added significance such developments have for border nationalists, it is clear that there are numerous forces shaping the identity of this community.³ Sport plays a specific role in this process. Conversely, sport reflects the unique ways in which the liminal effects of borders affect the lives of nationalists who reside along the Irish border frontier.

The decade 1996–2006 witnessed increased levels of scholarly...