A recent posting on the OWC website set me thinking about supporting Northern Ireland in the seventies. A young lad posted the following; "thought there was an away section at the 78 game in Dublin but I was only a kid then and can't remember too much about the game.", I couldn’t resist not sharing my experiences with the younger ones.

1978 was the first match between the two Irish teams and a boring 0-0 draw. I took a bus load of North Belfast hallions down, all totally pished and up to our necks with 'Prodfest gear', no green in those days but more about that later.

A few memories of the day; Sammy, our keeper, sitting on the back of the bus and tossing empty beer cans out the emergency door at a Ford Fiesta goading us with an Irish tricolour. They overtook us and reported it to the Garda in the next town who stopped our bus as we went through. Needless to say "it wasn’t us ‘Sir’" and it was the word of fifty drunks against four sober wee lads. Garda assessed the situation, reckoned it would be easier for them to let us go on our way and told us they’d be watching us closely for the rest of the day. We certainly had a ‘we are the people’ attitude after that!!

As we moved into Dublin, our bus was stuck in the middle of a Dublin traffic jam and the ROI team bus pulled along side us. It was literally a foot away from us. You think the hate was bad at Windsor for Billy Bingham’s last match, this was unbelievable. Abiding memory etched in my mind was of Liam Brady sitting at the back of the bus smiling and waving to us as the thugs on our bus went daft, thumping our windows to try to get at him. Needless to say, nothing happened.

We had the area behind the goals where the Dutch supporters were in the 2002 WC qualifier. Mate sat down when the Soldier's song was played, fell asleep, and missed the rest of the match. I personally can’t remember much about the match, bar that the older ROI supporters didn't seem to mind the NI flags but detested us flying the Union Jacks.

As we were leaving the ground, some of the NI support were stoned by the crowd on the hill. The NI boys ran out of the stadium and the ROI supporters came down to the area behind the stand to celebrate. They hadn't reckoned on the guile of the Belfast seasoned rioters who regrouped and came back in and knocked the crap out of the revellers!

We were the good boys and stood and watched the whole affair, but as we were leaving, the Garda started to beat us with their batons (to quickly move the NI fans away to their buses) and anyone at all was a 'legitimate target'. One funny bit was when a Garda sergeant looked at a pile of building rubble and told two of his rookie officers to "Guard dem stones" in case we got them!

So up until then, the Northern Ireland support wore red white and blue and each Northern Ireland match was an excuse for denouncing all things republican and celebrating our Britishness. The next away match was against England at Wembley and we felt we couldn't go there with our red, white and blue regalia. How could we differentiate ourselves from the smug English?

Northern Ireland played in green so we should all bring anything green we could find. (Didn’t want anyone mistaking us for ‘them uns‘, so we had to adapt our regalia. In those days there was no such thing as replica NI kits so we had to make our own colours! I went into the Athletic Stores in Belfast, bought ten Celtic hooped scarves and sewed small Ulster flags onto them. We made green banners and that was the birth of what is now Sammy McIlroy's Green and White army.

Again, I was taking a busload over via Stranraer, an overnight trip starting on a cold February Tuesday evening, arriving in London at 6.00 am on the Wednesday and leaving straight after the match to get the Thursday morning boat back to Larne. Total cost £19 plus drinking money.

We arrived in Soho about 7.00am and traipsed round like lost sheep until the entertainment and the bars opened, grabbing breakfast in the small Soho cafes. Best bargain I remember was a booth with a wooden, 50p slot which opened for about 60 seconds to allow the lucky punter to watch a lady strip on a bed in the middle. My mate told me it was great!!!!!

The match was really crap from our point of view. Kevin Keegan excelled and we were drubbed 4 - 0. Another mate, Bugsy, was caught in the middle of twenty English skinheads when he went to retrieve an Ulster flag which they had taken. They didn’t realise he was with us and when they began to get aggressive, he pretended he was deaf and dumb until he got back to the safety of the Northern Ireland support, from which position he proceeded to give them the fingers.

The overnight trip back home, complete with massive hangovers was lightened when Sammy’s long hair froze to the bus window as he slept. I’d never been so glad to see Belfast the next day.

For the next home games, we had some convincing to do with the locals in Mosie Hunters (now KFC Bradbury Place) that NI played in green and that nobody should be wearing red white and blue to any of our matches in the future. Shortly after, we qualified for Espana ’82 and the sports retailers saw the market for green Northern Ireland gear.

The green and white army had arrived at last!

Jim

www.ourweecountry.co.uk