Old Scores What Happened Next?

In 1983, BBC Northern Ireland broadcast the documentary

Old Scores - the remarkable story behind an unremarkable photograph.

'They were all friends...'

..and, er, there was never any animosity at all.

Star of the Sea was a successful youth football team.

By 1983 two players had served time for loyalist paramilitary offences,

while another, Bobby Sands, had died on hunger strike.

To be honest, I never thought he would end up as he did.

It's just hard to believe. Just, the Troubles brought it on.

I don't blame anybody, I just blame the Troubles.

For the first time,

Bobby Sands' teammates spoke about their utopian dream team

and how the Troubles had scattered and shattered Star of the Sea.

Well, I left Northern Ireland because of the situation.

Because I was a Protestant playing in a Catholic youth club,

living in a Catholic area. All my mates were Catholic.

If the people outside the club had been like us inside the club...

there'd have been a lot of people still alive today.

Now the programme's reporter, Olenka Frenkiel,

has come back to Northern Ireland.

She'll meet three of the surviving team members

to find out, after the cameras were switched off, what happened next.

Olenka Frenkiel had come to Belfast in the late 1970s

as a young BBC reporter.

'I arrived here and I knew almost nothing.'

I knew what I'd read in the papers but every day I was reminded of how

little I understood and how little I knew, which is what made this

place is so wonderful for me because every day I was learning so much.

She heard about a photograph of a football team taken in 1969.

The team was based at the Catholic Star of the Sea Youth Club,

although you didn't have to be a Catholic to play there,

just a good footballer.

One of them was Bobby Sands.

'What really mattered was this group of young boys,'

who had played in this team

before the sectarian influences had divided them,

and an attempt to try and understand the context

that changed their lives and this place so much.

So, that photograph, with those of faces in it,

were the subject of the film.

If ever a single photo epitomised the tragedy of the Troubles

and its effect on young lives, this is it.

15-year-old Ray McCord, a Protestant, played at centre half.

'Two or three times a year we used to go down to Dublin,'

play teams from the South.

And they'd have sang The Sash with us going down to Dublin

and we'd have sang rebel songs and...

it was just a singsong.

It was just, probably, songs that their parents had taught them

and our parents had taught us.

The goalkeeper, Dessie Black, was 15 years old and a Catholic.

Willie Caldwell was also 15 but a Protestant.

We used to play football over, there used to be a big field.

In Greencastle there used to be a big area, it's all knocked down now.

-Where is it? Round Mill Road.

-Up where there's a new,

it's all housing estates now but it used to be a big field.

We used to play football there, like, street against street,

and I used to play against his street,

-and Dessie used to run off with the ball crying if he got beaten!

-THEY LAUGH

-You used to win all the time!

-Took the ball home!

Bobby Sands was the left back,

his best friend in the team was centre forward, and fellow Catholic, Tommy O'Neill.

'I was dedicated to the football, he was more dedicated to the running.

'Cross-country and escaping. He loved that.'

I loved the football.

He took his turn, I took my turn.

He wanted to go running, I'd go running with him.

I wanted to play football, he'd play with me.

If we played table tennis, he'd have played me.

What he done, I done, what I'd done, he done.

Just...like brother, two brothers.

Terry Nichol, inside right, was another Protestant teenager

who'd made it onto the Star of the Sea team.

Just football. I'd have paid for anybody.

I'd have kicked about in the street if I wasn't getting a football match.

Even with kids two or three years younger than me.

As long as you're out playing football.

Most of the Star of the Seas players came from Rathcoole,

a housing estate five miles north of Belfast.

'Rathcoole had started as this rather utopian idea of a housing estate'

where Catholics and Protestants would live absolutely together,

mingled, and they really did happily do so.

'And...this is where most of the people in the team grew up.

'In, what they describe as,'

a completely mixed environment without any sectarian concern.

What's amazing to me is how well kept it looks now, so many years later.

It's not at all the way I would have imagined it would have developed

when I was here last time.

It looks much more prosperous,

much better looked after than I would have ever thought.

On The 11th Night, when we were lighting bonfires,

there was two families on our street,

one was a Protestant family and another one was a Catholic family,

and they collected the money from the kids,

and the kids' parents would have parties for us.

'And this happened every year,

'even the Troubles was, were going for a couple of years.'

-Terrible moustache!

-HE LAUGHS

Looking back, the style of the hair!

The hairstyles and everything, you know?

Did we really look like that, you know?

But, you know, what I see there is...we were all friends.

We belonged to a team

which was the best junior soccer team in Northern Ireland.

Local GP, Dr Liam Conlon,

set up Star of the Sea Football and Youth Club in 1964,

a mile from Rathcoole.

Dr Conlon wanted a place where Catholic and Protestant boys

could meet, play sports and make friends,

just as Dessie Black and Willie Caldwell did.

Well, I think, basically,

it was through being in Star of the Sea, through the youth club...

The Star of the Sea...

Although I knew Dessie a bit before I joined.

More than 40 years after their footballing days at Star of the Sea,

Dessie Black and Willie Caldwell are still friends -

a friendship they owe to Dr Conlon.

'Anyone was welcome.

'When you went down to the club, you weren't asked were you Catholic or Protestant.'

You came in, if you wanted to take part in what was going on

you signed your book, you paid your subs and you carried on.

In fact, Liam Conlon was Star of the Sea.

He was going to keep you safe, know what I mean?

Cos he would never see us walking home or anything,

he always made sure we get a bus home or something like that.

You knew if you had a problem, like, you'd go and see him.

The Troubles exploded in 1969 - the same year the photo was taken.

Protestant families,

forced out of their homes in other parts of Belfast,

moved into Rathcoole.

Catholic families there were moved out,

as Olenka Frenkiel explained an Old Scores.

'Loyalist vigilantes took over, patrolling the estate,

'and Catholics living in Rathcoole told they'd be safer elsewhere.

'If they refused to budge their windows were broken

'and their homes attacked.

'By 1974, most of them had left.'

Families, like those of Bobby Sands and Tommy O'Neill,

has left Rathcoole long before the documentary was made.

They didn't even come to the door. They hadn't just got the guts to come to the door.

Just threw bottles through the window, stones through the window.

Mother's hands - she's still got the scars...

..for no reason at all.

We just didn't bother with politics then.

So what did your family do?

-Had to move.

-That night?

Next day. Moved to Moyard. From there, to Ardoyne. Stayed there.

We've lived in Ardoyne since it.

You could try to stop them and several times we did.

The families facing us one night, to try to put them out,

and we tried to stop them but you could stop them that night

and they'd only come back the next night or come back when you went to bed.

So there was very little you could do.

By the early 1980s, life for the boys in the photograph had changed utterly.

Goalkeeper, Dessie Black,

left Northern Ireland for Guernsey in 1972.

Soon his teammate Willie Caldwell joined him.

Well, I left Northern Ireland because of the situation

because I was a Protestant playing in a Catholic youth club,

living in a Catholic area. All my mates were Catholic.

The Catholic lads stayed behind but, what it meant,

socialising with the Protestants and socialising with the Catholics,

it meant I was going to areas where I shouldn't, I shouldn't go.

I was going to, like, discotheques on the New Lodge Road,

which is a Catholic area, one night,

the next night, going out with Protestant mates.

Going to an area, which is just three streets away,

Tigers Bay, going to Loyalist clubs in that area.

And, I mean, if someone had have seen,

I mean, they'd have been thinking, "What's this bloke trying to do?",

I'm, you know, breaking all the rules.

And, obviously, you don't want to lose friends

so I thought the best thing for me is get out.

So I left.

Raymond McCord also tried to get out.

He had set his sights on Australia.

'There's no work here.'

I've been paid off twice in the last two years,

the two firms I've worked for.

First firm closed down and the shipyard are laying men off,

and also because of the Troubles, because there's no end to them.

And...the politicians...they, they aren't doing much.

Terry Nichol was convicted of possession of handguns

and spent three years in the Maze Prison.

After release he headed to the US,

where the documentary makers filmed him.

'I just didn't want to play for them any more.'

Inside the club it was usually all right, you'd get a snide remark,

or you'd overheard a remark

but there was never any blatant saying anything to you.

But, as I say, it was going down into Greencastle

and even me own thoughts were going away from Catholics.

They, er, every night in news, riots here, there and everywhere.

I-I just left for the summer, the club, no summer football,

and just didn't go back the following year.

Terry Nichol was a peacock of a man and we interviewed him, I remember,

in his sister's garden, in Utah, with his top off

and I think he was flexing his fists on a ball to strengthen himself.

I mean, he's like all the others,

they all had dreams of being the next George Best

and he had a vision of himself being something of a film star

and was flattered that we were filming him,

and performed for the camera.

So a lot of vanity in the man

and he was a curious man simply because he had been in the Maze

and he had seen Bobby Sands across the wire, erm,

and he professed ideological, principled attitudes

towards Loyalism but, at the drop of a hat,

he would have emigrated to the United States and left all that behind.

His time in the Maze

coincided with that of his former teammate, Bobby Sands,

also serving time for possession of firearms.

I remember one day I called him over and he refused to come.

I think he didn't want his friends to know that he actually

associated himself with any Protestants.

He took a bit of coaxing,

I was shouting at him and...calling him names

and he kept on looking around as if, looking at his friends to say,

"Who's that? I don't really know him," you know?

But I was shouting his name,

even his first name, Robert, and things like that.

And one time he just shouted back.

I forget, I must've asked him about Tommy O'Neill

and he said that he was in England. I was like, "Where?"

Wouldn't answer, just went back and started playing football again.

I only knew Bobby Sands up until he was, like, 17 and...

to be honest, I never thought he would end up as he did.

I mean, it shocked me when I heard that, like, Bobby Sands was,

you know, hunger strike, on hunger strike, and that.

Well, he must've had the conviction of his ways

to go on and do what he did.

You have to respect him for that,

whether you respect his politics or not.

But, looking back, the way Bobby Sands was when I knew him,

at school he wasn't a particularly intelligent person

and now, like, he's dead and he's left, he's written a book

about Bobby Sands, with poetry in it.

He was always intelligent, you know what I mean?

But he was like myself, I mean, we were lazy at school.

All we wanted to do was play football.

Like, tended to spend more time round picking football teams

for matches and that than doing schoolwork and that.

Like I said, the memories of Bobby are happy ones, you know,

and they're personal to myself, like, you know?

He's... He's just the same as the rest of us, you know?

While making the documentary, Olenka and her producer hit a problem.

The club's founder, Dr Liam Conlon, objected to any association

made between Star the Sea and Bobby Sands.

Dr Conlon wrote to the BBC,

once he learned that the programme was about to be made,

and asked that it not be shown

and the reason he gave was that he felt for his safety.

He was worried about his safety as a consequence of that.

And I saw the BBC's reply to him,

which was fairly aloof but reassuring,

saying we were sure nothing would happen to him

and that we would take a very close look

at the editorial direction of the film

to ensure that nothing was said that would put him at risk

and he was, I suppose, thus dismissed.

Now, looking at that, I do wonder

because people in sport were at risk.

Whether there were any repercussions for him,

whether it did cast a spotlight too closely over the club,

whether it was something that did actually pose a danger.

Raymond McCord's plans for Australia came to nothing.

He remained in Northern Ireland with his wife and three sons.

The Australian authorities turned our application down.

Gave no reason for it...

..I couldn't see why we got turned down. Er...

..I was a tradesman, a skilled welder...

..no criminal record,

wasn't involved in the Troubles or anything.

Still turned us down.

Big disappointment -

didn't want my sons growing up in Northern Ireland

because of the Troubles.

We've seen what happened years later...

the oldest son was murdered.

In 1997, Raymond McCord Jr was beaten to death by Loyalists.

Since then his father has led a public campaign to highlight

what he claims is collusion between paramilitaries

and the security forces.

It affected us in a terrible way...

..wrecked our lives.

My youngest lad...

..er, had an opportunity of a promising football career in England - Millwall.

Actually signed for Millwall.

Chelsea were after him - they came over and met me - and Liverpool.

There's so much I'll not forget the pain...

..and 14 years later it's still the same.

Star of the Sea Youth Club is no more.

The site, on Belfast's Shore Road, derelict.

It's a long time since I was up here.

It's 30, 40 years.

It's just, it's amazing.

I didn't know the pitch was still here, the old goal posts and all.

Fantastic. We played a lot of games here.

For all three former teammates,

this is their first time back on the pitch.

It may be overgrown

but it still holds memories of their teenage friendships.

-Good to see you, Willie.

-RAYMOND LAUGHS

-Hey.

-Hey.

-How you doing?

-I'm very pleased to see you. I don't know if you remember...?

-Oh, aye, aye...

-I think if it had have been overgrown like this,

maybe we wouldn't have got beat so much!

Big Ian watching them lads -

that's centre half passing the ball back there, do remember?

-The ball going through his legs! And he was like...

-THEY LAUGH

Oh, this is a bit of a shame.

It's still a good pitch, all it needs is cut.

And the way we used to come up, the club used to be down there,

we used to come up the steps, there, at this side.

And then, when we had cup games they used to put ropes round to cordon it off,

so...the massive fan base couldn't get at us -

there was about ten people at it, like!

You know what's the amazing thing?

You see the club, the only time you realised, or it came into your head,

there was Catholic involvement in it, was at Christmas time.

There was a local priest used to come down

but I think he just come down to see if he could get in to get free drink and cigars, you know?

-Isn't that right? Isn't it?

-That's right, aye, yeah!

So...

-Star of the Sea. Do you remember who that was, Raymond?

-Jim McCourt.

Correct. Never seen him since that day that photograph was taken.

He went missing, never to be seen again.

That's John McCabe.

Terry Nichol. Great player.

-Do you remember our mascot...?

-That was our club mascot, there! He never got a game, did he?

-What are you even doing here(?)

-He hasn't remembered a name yet!

-THEY LAUGH

There's Dessie - and that's you there.

-Carlo from Ballymurphy.

-What happened to him?

-Never...

-Don't know.

-Never seen him again.

-No.

-Tommy. Tommy's dead now.

Seansy, he's dead.

Nobody would have dreamt then. There's one...two...

..three in the photo there who's went to, went to prison.

None of us at that time...

would have thought anything of it.

-Paramilitaries, politics, religion.

-No.

I'm delighted to be back here, especially to see Raymond because...

and see him in such fine fettle.

It's a long time since I've seen him and he's,

considering all the things he's been through, I think he's bearing up well.

'That's the memories still ticking in your head, and that. You can just see...

'you can still hear yourself shouting for the ball and that or...'

That's always there, like.

I mean, you still can hear,

"Gies that ball! Gies that ball! Dessie! Get that there!",

One of them, like. You can still hear,

you can still hear the, the ghosts of the past.

In September 2000, cross-community football in Belfast

received attention from an unexpected source.

West End audiences queued up for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton's

West End musical The Beautiful Game.

'The play is set in Northern Ireland'

and its based around a football team, where did that notion come from?

Well, funnily enough, just before I met Ben, I'd seen a documentary on BBC2

about a kids' football team, you know, sort of,

I mean, young kids, in Belfast, in 1969, and what it happened to them.

And, I don't know, it's funny, I don't know why,

but it, sort of, struck a chord in me and I, kind of, thought,

I wondered whether there was idea here of some kind.

I mean, I often think, got masses of ideas I've seen or, just,

or programs, or something and you, sort of, think maybe one-day they'll, kind of, surface.

And I sent the tape to Ben.

Well, I thought, probably, I wouldn't hear from Ben

but two weeks later came back a 40 page treatment with titles

and, more or less, what we have done today.

# Now and for ever

# There's only one love in the end... #

'It's a good acknowledgement of the team...'

and, I believe, anybody involved with the club who watched it or was associated with it.

'With, I say, the Star of the Sea under 16's.

APPLAUSE

'I left Belfast in 1982, to go back to London,'

to get married, have children, and work pretty well all the way through.

After a short stop at TV-am, for the BBC, I went to the Today programme,

and then Newsnight, and then on to documentaries and current affairs.

DOCUMENTARY EXCERPT : We went in search of this unknown Pakistan,

far away from the cities...

'What I learned in Northern Ireland, what I learned in Belfast,

'particularly with Old Scores'

was that as soon as you look at a story,

that you think you understand,

you discover depths of complexity, which nearly always come down to conflicts of loyalty.

So, the metaphor of the team that...

was used so obviously in Old Scores

replayed itself many times again and again.

'Raymond McCord, from the first day I met him, surprised me.

'That man has fought a lifelong struggle,'

from what I can see, against sectarian pressure,

to be loyal to something he doesn't believe in.

But what has made the greatest impression Olenka

is the enduring friendship between Dessie Black and Willy Caldwell.

'They've preserved their good nature and they preserved the same temperament

that they had when they were 15, playing football.

I mean, Dessie wanted to talk to me about football

and I'm hopeless, I couldn't.

I tried but I can't really have those conversations,

I don't know enough about football.

And you could see that football was the overwhelming interest in his life, still is.

His own son became a footballer, a point of huge pride for him.

Willie hasn't married, Dessie's marriage has ended.

In their lives, their relationship,

their friendship with each other is the strongest, most abiding

and probably the most deep running relationship.

You see them together, suddenly they are themselves at their best.

Something deep runs between those two.

Raymond McCord's campaign for justice continues

but his focus is the family he still has.

My two sons and myself are very close, my grandchildren.

You know, three grandchildren - Dylan, Leah, Nicole.

'Dylan plays football,

'the lads go to watch him play football on a Saturday

and he likes me to come and watch him play at the side of the house with him.

'Even a ball in a park.

'It makes me think about growing up in Rathcoole at that age,

playing on the streets, football pitches.

'And then, as the years went by...

'..you think about Star of the Sea, you know?'

Cos, you know, it was, to me, it was my first real love in football,

my first football team, if I can use those sort of words, you know?

And, er... I hope Dylan ends up with a team like that.

'You know, he's playing football on a Saturday morning

'in a great set up down in Greenisland - and it's mixed.'

So, maybe they'll develop into what I would say, the next Star of the Sea.

Hopefully they will.

Pass it into the net, pass it into the net!

Whoa!

Clearly now is the perfect time

to reconstitute the Star of the Sea football club

and yet, when you go there, it's overgrown and derelict.

You wonder where all this effort to build the bridges has gone

if it wasn't even able to reconstruct something

that still existed in the late '60s.

It's such a shame because...

..that club was not created by a people with a, sort of,

kumbaya, do-gooding attitude,

that club was created by people who believed in sport

and the power of sport to be...

..wholesome and good for young people,

and thought that they could withstand the onslaughts of sectarianism.

And yet now, when, apparently,

the people of Northern Ireland are there to reap the peace dividend...

it still hasn't been reconstituted and that's a huge shame.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd