Old Scores

The year is 1969.

The Star Of The Sea Football Club

has one of the most successful youth teams in Northern Ireland.

The Star Of The Sea is exceptional.

It's a mixed team,

with Protestants and Catholics playing together on the same side.

Around them, communities are dividing swiftly,

brutally and efficiently into sectarian ghettos,

and soon this team too will divide.

Two of the Protestants will go to jail for terrorist offences,

as will one Catholic.

Bobby Sands will be elected a Westminster MP

and will die on hunger strike.

Yes, go on, Andrew!

Go on, fella, get in there!

FLUTE BAND PLAYS

Bobby Sands did not come from a hardline republican background.

He grew up in what was then a mixed housing estate -

Rathcoole, just outside Belfast -

an estate that is now fiercely loyalist.

But when Bobby Sands was a child,

one family in four in Rathcoole was Catholic.

By Northern Ireland standards,

it was an exceptionally well-integrated estate.

It attracted many mixed marriages.

Bobby Sands was a child of one of them.

His father was a Protestant, his mother a Catholic.

Catholic children played with Protestants,

and Protestant children seemed happy to join the youth club

just down the road from Rathcoole with a Catholic name -

the Star Of The Sea after the Virgin Mary.

All this was a measure of the harmony in that community before the Troubles,

a harmony mirrored by the football team itself,

split equally between Protestants and Catholics.

Bobby Sands' best friend was Thomas O'Neill, a Catholic.

They grew up together and joined the club as young boys.

Joined the Star Of The Sea when he was what...

..eight year old.

The two of us joined at the same time, eight year old.

I stayed till I was what...

..20 years of age. Bobby left about...

He was about 18.

Terry Nichol, a Mormon.

He later joined the illegal Protestant UVF.

When he went to the Star Of The Sea he had one passion.

Just football. I'd have played 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 were out playing football.

Dessie Black, a Catholic,

and Willie Caldwell, a Protestant.

They've been close friends since they first met 15 years ago.

I think, basically, it was through being in the Star Of The Sea.

Through the Star.

Although I knew Dessie a bit before I joined the youth club.

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

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

Where is it - round Mill Road?

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.

Dessie used to run off with the ball crying if he got beat!

-They used to win all the time.

-Took the ball home!

Geordie Hussey, a Protestant. A football fanatic.

Just like ordinary fellas. Nobody asked whether you were Catholic or Protestant.

If a new fella started, you didn't ask, are you a Catholic or Protestant?

If he was a half-decent footballer he was on the side,

if he wasn't, that was it.

Denis Sweeney,

the grammar-school boy, and later the doctor, a Catholic.

I must say, at the Star Of The Sea Football Club,

you basically found out afterwards when you were on the team

who were the Protestants and who weren't, who were the Catholics.

But it was imperceptible.

Strangely enough, it took a long time

to find out who the Protestants and who the Catholics were.

Raymond McCord, a Protestant.

Emigrating with his family to Australia,

depressed by all that the Troubles had destroyed.

They were all friends.

And there was never any animosity at all.

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

play teams from the South,

and they would have sang The Sash with us going down to Dublin,

and we would have sang rebel songs.

It was just a singsong.

It was just probably songs

that their parents had taught them and our parents had taught us.

But there was no bad feeling, even when the songs were getting sang.

Michael Atcheson, a Protestant.

He later joined the UVF

and he's now serving 18 years in the Maze prison for his part

in the shooting and wounding of three Catholic labourers.

Rathcoole, on the northern shores of Belfast Lough,

is a good five miles from the city

and in 1969, that distance protected the estate

from the spreading sectarian conflict in Belfast.

Rathcoole was still mixed, and that's the way it almost stayed.

Belfast was burning, but Rathcoole stayed aloof.

Even during the height of the Protestant celebrations

on the night before 12th July,

when an effigy of the Pope is traditionally burnt on a bonfire,

even then, Protestant Raymond McCord remembers

how the Catholics would join in the fun.

Most of the streets in Rathcoole were mixed.

In fact, every street was mixed and at the time of the year,

when the Protestants are supposed to hate Catholics

and Catholics are supposed to hate Protestants,

say around 11th, 12th of July,

on the 11th night when we were lighting the bonfires,

there was two families on our street,

one was a Protestant family and the other 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 when the Troubles were going for a couple of years.

But Rathcoole was an exception.

If you didn't live on a mixed estate,

your experience was very different.

As a child living in a Catholic area of Belfast,

Denis Sweeney never met any Protestants.

They were all Catholic.

I'd no Protestant friends that I can remember as a child

before the age of ten, say.

So even before the Troubles,

there was certainly very clear sectarian division?

Absolutely, yes. I didn't know why. I remember probably...

I remember on holiday in Portstewart

at the age of about five, six,

meeting other kids on the beach et cetera,

and being told afterwards that they were Protestants,

feeling that strange, to a certain extent,

that I had met Protestant people.

I didn't have any Protestant friends before the age of probably ten or 11.

Rathcoole had managed to maintain a religious mix

that Denis Sweeney had never known, but it was to be short-lived.

Over the rest of the province, a total of 60,000 people

had fled their homes in mixed areas for Protestant and Catholic enclaves.

Rathcoole held out...

..until the spring of 1972,

when the estate was suddenly swollen with Protestant refugees,

who found themselves homeless

after being forced out of Catholic areas of Belfast.

They came to Rathcoole demanding shelter and protection,

seething with bitterness against Catholics.

The police were helpless,

unable to control the chain reaction of hatred sweeping Northern Ireland.

Loyalist vigilantes took over patrolling the estate

and Catholics living in Rathcoole were 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.

Among them Bobby Sands and Tommy O'Neill.

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

They just threw bottles through the window, stones through the window.

My 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.

Lived in Ardoyne since it.

No life down in Rathcoole, just couldn't live in Rathcoole.

Just intimidated, just coming home at nights, me and Bobby Sands...

had to walk home at nights, couldn't even get the bus home, just got hit.

Hit, waiting at the bus stop for you.

If you were a Catholic, that was it, you just got hit.

One time there, the police came and I was lifted for...

it was supposed to be intimidation,

and was held for questioning for a while.

When I told them I was on the committee on Star Of The Sea

the policeman concerned, he rung up the club

and when he found that I was on the committee, that was the end of that there,

because I was let out after about two minutes after he made the phone call.

So the fact that you were on the committee of the club was enough to convince him

that you couldn't have been intimidating any Catholics?

Yeah, the club was well respected. They were known throughout the area, to be honest with you.

A lot of people went to it and there was never no trouble

within the club or outside the club, to be honest with you.

And yet at that time, when Catholics were being put out of the estate,

you must have known of people who were intimidating Catholics,

you must have had Catholic friends who were being intimidated?

Yeah, there was good Catholics put out, to be honest with you.

-There was.

-Did that not put you in a difficult position?

-Playing for Star Of The Sea, like?

-Yes, and living there.

Yeah, it was more embarrassing because you went down to train and they were mentioning it.

-Fair play to them, like.

-What happened if you knew mates of yours,

who were with you at school, say, who were putting Catholics out?

-Was there anything you could do?

-No, it would be a waste of my time.

What could I do?

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

The family facing us one night, they tried 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.

What about among your friends,

was there ever a difference of opinion between you and your friends

about whether Catholics should be living on the estate?

There was many times.

You fought more with your Protestant friends

than you fought with your so-called Catholic enemies.

But for a Protestant to be sticking up for Catholics

in what was now a hardline loyalist Rathcoole

was then, as it is now, a dangerous business.

Got my two hands broke, so I did.

And, er...

How?

Well, members of the paramilitaries...

..I didn't agree with some of the things that they'd done and...

..they'd a couple of fellas that

belonged to one of their organisations,

and I didn't like them, they didn't like me, so...

What had they done?

Well, they were just members of... They were well-known members,

fellas the same age as myself

and they were trying to make a name for themselves

so they picked on me one night and...

..they broke my nose and broke my two hands.

And...that was their great thing about it.

Were they wearing masks or were they wearing their own clothes?

No, they were just... No masks on.

Friends of mine didn't like it, so they just dished it back to them.

By now, Terry Nichol, despite his Mormon upbringing,

was identifying totally with Ulster loyalism.

He stopped going to the Star Of The Sea.

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

Not the club. Inside the club, it was usually all right -

you'd have got snide remarks or you'd overheard a remark,

but there was never any blatant saying anything to you,

but as I say, I was going down into Greencastle

and even my own thoughts were going away from Catholics.

Every night on the news, you'd riots here, there, everywhere.

I'd just left for the summer, no summer football,

and just didn't go back the following year

in August, September, to train, to sign up again, just didn't go.

Did the other Protestants in the team feel the same?

I think mostly, yes, but a couple of them...

I think Raymond McCord was still back playing for them the next season.

I don't know whether Geordie Hussey was back or not, I don't think so.

I think it just sort of all happened in the one summer.

The team of 1969 had scattered.

Protestants and Catholics took cover in their own safe areas.

Each side would avoid meeting the other.

Except for two -

Willie Caldwell and Dessie Black would continue to be friends.

You could tell you were passing the dead ball. After four we got it.

Dessie Black, the goalkeeper, was a good friend of Bobby Sands.

They knew each other from school as well as from the team.

Let's try and speed it up a wee bit.

He has a new life now in Guernsey.

He's a construction worker

and, on Sunday afternoons, a football coach,

teaching fancy footwork to the Guernsey women's team.

He settled here with a Guernsey-born wife and young son,

middle name Zico after one of his daddy's idols.

Keep it going, Tracy. That's better, well done. Keep it going.

Round the cones, come on!

Dessie Black is a Catholic,

his best friend Willie Caldwell a Protestant.

The friendship has lasted.

It survived the Troubles. It's even thrived.

OK, now let's speed it up a wee bit!

But it's all happened outside Northern Ireland.

OK, when you get back here, stay.

In our situation, I think we'd have still been friends.

I mean, only time obviously would have told

and even in Belfast, you can't be 100% sure, but...

I don't know, I can't honestly say what would have happened

but I think we'd have still remained friends, yeah.

-What do you think, Dessie?

-Oh, aye, yeah.

Like he said, I reckon we'd still be mates, you know.

Obviously, you don't know.

You don't know, but we went through a lot together, you know,

I think we'd have been still mates, like, you know.

When it first came on to me that we were actually having, you know,

we were in the situation as it is now, became really bad,

was three boys that I knew and I'd knocked about when I was younger,

and they were building bombs in a garage in Bawnmore

and the forms blew up and the three of them were killed.

That's the first time it really struck home to me that

that sort of thing was going on around our area.

I think that was '69, wasn't it? Or maybe '70. '69, '70.

Because I thought that although it was happening on the Shankill

and on the Falls, it hadn't really come down our way yet.

That's when it first sort of struck home down there.

And how did it affect you, that?

I was pretty shocked, because I didn't know they were into that

because I'd known them, grew up with them lads

and I didn't think they'd have been into anything like that. That was, you know...

I can remember my mate calling down for me

to go up to the youth club that night.

It was the Friday afternoon that happened

and I'd heard it on the radio at work that three boys in our area

had been killed making bombs in a garage.

And I can remember going to the club with Chuck Toland

who was my mate, and he was saying to me,

"That was bad news about the boys getting blown up in the garage."

And I said, well, I says, "Yeah, it's pretty bad that they got killed

"but if they're into doing that, you know, serves them right."

I mean, that's... They shouldn't have been doing that.

In my opinion, you know.

While one bomb explosion may have hardened attitudes,

another, as in Denis Sweeney's case, determined a career.

He decided to become a doctor.

There was a local pub close to my house

and I would have gone there occasionally

on a Friday night for a drink

and I would have probably been in that pub that night,

only the fact was that we were off the following morning,

which was a Saturday morning, for a tournament in Donegal.

And the pub was blown up that night.

I walked past it, I was about 150 yards past it,

and then the pub was blown up.

The walls collapsed and the first floor collapsed

and there were people being carried out.

I just remember watching a soldier carrying someone down the street

and absolutely no-one having a clue what to do for the people,

for the person that was injured.

There were no ambulances there at that stage.

But seeing someone totally mangled being carried down the street,

with nobody having a clue what to do with him. I thought,

"There's a job for someone who wants to do something in the community."

Salt Lake City in the state of Utah, USA.

From the moment Terry Nichol first flew in

to this Mormon capital of the world

he knew, just like the first Mormon settlers, he wanted to stay.

Terry came to visit his sister and his mother, who'd been converted

by Mormon missionaries in Rathcoole more than 20 years ago.

The religion offered many splendours,

both spiritual and material.

The quality of life is somewhat better

in a Salt Lake City suburb than in Rathcoole.

Rather than spend the rest of his life with no job

and no future back home, Terry is desperate to emigrate,

but his less-than-exemplary lifestyle,

his three-year stretch in prison

and his involvement with the paramilitaries

haven't helped his case.

When did you join the paramilitaries?

I joined... I'd say I was 17.

It was about 1970.

Why did you join?

Just ideological, to defend Ulster.

The security forces didn't seem to be doing anything.

When the British Army did come in, they were defending the Catholics.

They were doing nothing for us.

Rathcoole was quiet enough, but it was on the news and everything -

they were down on the Shankill Road,

people were fighting with the Falls Road people

who'd come in to defend the Falls Road people

and we were under the impression -

it's our army, why should we be defending them

that don't want to remain part of Britain?

So then I think that these paramilitary organisations sprung up,

people were disgusted with the British, the British Government.

Did you genuinely, though, feel a political commitment or was it,

at the age of 17, possibly an excuse for a bit of fun?

Part of both.

Probably mostly fun because if you had have been political-wise at all,

you could have joined the Young Conservatives or at home, Young Unionists, Young this...

You could have got in, but maybe they wouldn't have accepted you.

Even so, you didn't have to.

A lot of people felt the same, and didn't join any organisation.

Scared of going to jail, scared of getting into trouble.

Would you have joined the Young Unionists?

No, I'm not much of a debater.

While Terry's actions may have spoken louder than words,

they did land him in jail for three years.

But for him, the justice of his cause is still beyond question.

We were just fighting back. We never started it.

That's our point of view, they started it.

Our point of view is, if the army hadn't have come in,

then we would have finished it.

If they hadn't have come in, it would never have lasted 12 years.

-Do you regret all that now?

-No, not at all.

As I say, we grew up in an atmosphere like that

so it was just an initial progression for us at home, you know,

especially the like of myself.

The party was over now,

playing the football with whoever you wanted to play football with -

you just went on to other things.

The party was over

and this self-imposed apartheid had forced not just the team

but all of Northern Ireland apart.

This is Catholic Ardoyne, much of it controlled by the IRA.

It's jammed up tight against the loyalist Shankill area of Belfast.

Its densely-populated streets had once welcomed homeless Catholics

fleeing other parts of the city.

Now, almost everyone there is unemployed,

including Tommy O'Neill.

His close friendship with Bobby Sands was ended

when they both had to leave Rathcoole and went separate ways.

We split when we were 17 or so, 18.

Bobby went to go his way, I went my way.

We'd both to leave Rathcoole. He went to Twinbrook, I went to Ardoyne.

He got involved in the movement.

That was him.

I didn't see him after that.

-Never?

-Once or twice, just when he was up in Long Kesh.

-Did you go and visit him there?

-Yeah.

-Brought his child up.

-Sorry?

I brought his child up to Long Kesh.

First one to bring it up.

I don't know, he's just...

Bobby Sands, he wasn't bitter.

He just wanted...

He just wanted a united Ireland,

he just wanted the British out of Ireland.

Why did football have this enormous significance?

I was dedicated to football, he was more dedicated to running,

cross-country and this caper. He loved that.

I loved the football.

He took his turn, I took my turn.

He wanted to go running, I would have run with him.

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

Played table tennis, he would play with me.

What he done, I done. What I done, he done.

It was like brother and... Two brothers.

Four-year-old to what, 16-year-old, 17,

just never left each other.

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

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

I mean, it shocked me when I heard

that Bobby Sands was on hunger strike and that.

Well, he must have 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 to what 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 written a book about Bobby Sands with poetry in it. Obviously...

Bobby was, 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 just play football.

At times we spent more time picking football teams for matches than doing schoolwork.

Like I said, the memories I've got of Bobby are happy ones

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

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

I remember Bobby Sands probably as,

I felt, a fairly insecure...

..person who would at times try to cover it up

with violence on the football pitch or outside it,

but certainly not, not a leader by any means.

More a person who was led, all the time, not an innovator.

More a follower. All the time.

I met him afterwards,

after he came out of jail the first time I met him.

We were playing a match. I was still playing for Star Of The Sea

and we were playing a match close to the estate that he lived in,

and he came up and he talked to me.

I was the only one still playing in the team that we'd played in

in younger days and he came up and talked to me.

Even though we knew each other,

I was surprised that he came and talked to me.

I didn't like him that much. I don't think he liked me.

I must say, I thought there was a change in him whenever I met him at that stage.

He seemed to be a different person to me when I met him then.

-A nicer person?

-Yes, a far nicer person.

-What way?

-He certainly seemed to be a warmer person

and a more sincere person, a far more sincere person.

I was surprised, I must say, pleasantly surprised

whenever I met him after he came out of the jail first time.

I can't remember, he did two years, something like that.

But he seemed to be a better person after it.

Certainly a far more settled person, probably a more secure person.

Would you have thought in the early days in the team

that he would become a hunger striker?

Certainly not in the early days, no.

I wouldn't have thought he'd have been the type of person

to have high moral principles or been moved in that way.

But to a certain extent, when I met him the second time...

..after he came out of jail, he seemed to be a lot more settled person

and someone who seemed to, who would have been the type of person

who would have gone all the way with something.

As far as I was concerned he was just a left-half, that was it.

-What was he like?

-As a footballer?

A bit of a grafter, that was about it.

-He done his best, I suppose.

-So he wasn't that hot?

-No.

-Did he score goals?

-No.

-Never?

-He was a good man to get the ball,

he was a good winner of the ball, like, good tackler.

He hadn't too much natural ability, I would say.

And what about his nature - were you good friends?

So-so, you know. Yes, we spoke, we got on OK like.

If we were away anywhere, we got on OK, yeah.

What about him and Michael Atcheson?

Michael Atcheson is now in jail for Protestant paramilitary offences.

Did they get on well?

He was a right-half, to tell you the truth,

so as regards football they got on OK!

I'd say off the pitch they got on well enough too.

Terry Nichol's stretch in the Maze overlapped with Bobby Sands' sentence.

The UVF cages looked across to the nearby Republican compound, housing Sands.

Both men then enjoyed what was later to be taken away from paramilitary prisoners

and what Bobby Sands was later to die for -

political prisoner status.

What was it like in jail?

Butlins. Holiday camp.

In that sense, you didn't have to work.

You were a political prisoner. "Special category" in the jail.

We just called ourselves prisoners of war.

We were loyalist prisoners of war, they were Republican prisoners of war.

Bobby Sands was there at the same time. Did you see him?

A couple of times.

I was compound 12 and it faced onto the football pitch.

Compound 11 on one side,

they were loyalists, and 13 on the other side were Republicans,

and he was down at the wire there, speaking to a couple of them ones.

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 round as if, looking at his friends to say,

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

But I was shouting his name, even his first name, Robert, and things like that.

And one time he just shouted back,

I forget it - I must have asked him about Tommy O'Neill,

and he said that he was in England, and I asked where.

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

Was there no sense of friendship remaining

from the Star Of The Sea football team?

Some people, probably, yes, but I wouldn't have even have thought of smiling at Bobby Sands

when I seen him in Long Kesh, you know?

Other people I seen from Greencastle.

They were there playing football.

And Ginger Stewart, he'd come to the wire and was talking to him.

He offered to make me...

..an Irish harp if I would make him something in leather.

They didn't do the leatherwork, and we were just standing talking

and I would have stood and talked to him.

He played for Star Of The Sea too,

but he was maybe three, four, whatever years older than me,

and he came through. He was talking away.

But Sands had just turned completely, you know?

I even think at the time we were playing football...

Thinking back, I think he just sort of tolerated us

because we were playing football.

He didn't really want to get to know us well or be good friends, you know?

Bobby Sands spent eight years of his life in prison.

The first three, when Terry Nichol was also there,

were for the possession of handguns.

The government then recognised them both as special category prisoners.

Sands lived in the IRA compound as a prisoner of war.

He wore his own clothes and he did no prison work,

but in 1976,

this political prisoner status was withdrawn by the government.

The paramilitaries were now to be treated as ordinary criminals.

After his release, Bobby Sands was re-arrested almost immediately.

This time, he got 14 years for the possession of a gun,

but this time there were no political prisoner privileges.

He went on the blanket protest,

smearing the wall of his cell with excrement,

but the government refused to restore political status.

Bobby Sands went 66 days without food and starved himself to death.

I supported the hunger strike.

I supported the hunger strike...

It's not because of the hunger strike, I supported Bobby Sands.

Why?

You know why. He was my friend.

I supported, I...

Most of the Catholic population supported the hunger strike.

If you ask me, I supported Bobby Sands.

I supported it the other blokes in it.

What good did it do?

People died over it.

How do you feel about it now?

Where did it get them lot? Hmm?

What good's it done Bobby Sands?

A friend of mine. A personal friend.

And he's lying up in Milltown.

Plus the other nine blokes are all dead too.

I still supported him.

It must have been a terrific shock to you personally.

There is a man who is your friend for most of your life,

a very, very close friend,

and suddenly he's starving himself to death.

Was it a terrific shock?

Yeah.

I prayed for Bobby Sands.

Yes.

It broke my heart when Bobby Sands died.

Too good a friend to lose.

Personally, if he wanted to die, let him die.

At the start it was the loyalists, really, that got the political status

for all prisoners and then in '77 or whatever, the government seen fit to take it off them,

well, nobody wanted to go back to having to work in jail.

Everybody still classed themselves as that.

When he was going on the hunger strike, I would let him die.

No thoughts about the man at all. If he wanted to do it, let him do it.

The UVF was to gain another recruit from the Star Of The Sea -

Michael Atcheson.

In 1978, he gave himself up to the police

after a Catholic was killed in a pub explosion.

He told them he'd given the UVF information

which helped them to plant the bomb,

but this did not lead to a prosecution.

Now, Michael Atcheson is in the H-blocks

for a completely different offence -

18 years for the malicious wounding of three Catholic workmen.

He's in block H7 with other loyalist prisoners

and he's one of a group of Christian, churchgoing loyalists.

The Northern Ireland office did not allow him to be interviewed.

When I heard about what he done, that was pretty...

You know, it shocked me a lot. I didn't think, even...

Cos I'd met Michael when I was home about four years ago

and it was Christmas and I was standing at the bus stop

and he came over and had a chat with me even then.

You see, cos he'd just been married and he'd just moved into a flat

in the same area as my sister whom I was staying with.

Just a couple of doors away, and I had a chat with him

and even then he didn't strike me as... This is after, actually, he would have done that.

And he came over and says, "Nice to see you again. Where have you been?"

You know, just general, you know, asking how I was keeping and things

and he'd already committed that offence

which led to him going to jail.

It's amazing to think that he could have done that

and that that was the same bloke that was standing talking to me,

being so nice to me.

You know, it's hard to fathom.

What about Michael Atcheson?

I think he was a hard player. He went to Morecambe to play football.

-And then, from what I hear...

-What happened?

Well, I don't know, he's in Long Kesh, isn't he?

Did you ever think then that he was the kind to get involved?

No. You could have asked me the same thing about Bobby Sands.

I never thought that about Bobby Sands, did I?

-No, I never thought it, no.

-Did you like Michael Atcheson?

Oh, yeah. Very fond of him. A good friend of mine.

Why, what were his qualities?

A good footballer, we always talked together, went to dances together.

Had a drink together.

I never thought Michael was like that.

I never thought Bobby Sands was like that either. You know, it's just...

It's just hard to believe. The Troubles brought it on.

I don't blame them - I just blame the Troubles.

They just went their way, Bobby Sands went his way,

Mickey went his way.

It was Protestant-Catholic again, you see?

What do you feel about somebody like Michael Atcheson?

What do you feel about him now?

-I feel bitter.

-Do you?

-Yeah.

And much of Tommy O'Neill's bitterness is that he's stuck without a job

in the Catholic ghetto of Ardoyne.

Walled off by concrete and steel

built to keep Catholics and Protestants apart.

This is the way into Ardoyne,

impeded by ramps and dwarfed by disused factories on either side.

Visitors are easily observed.

Leaving Ardoyne is more difficult.

The exits are mostly closed off and the problem is finding a way out.

Emigration's the only solution, but for most, that's impossible.

I've thought about it.

Australia.

Maybe down south. Anywhere but here. This place is just...

It's just a hell.

Bringing up a child.

What's he going to be like when he's my age?

He may be dead by then.

Bobby Sands is dead, he could be dead, too.

Go the same way. Which I don't want.

Raymond McCord has made it.

He had one advantage over the rest -

a skill. He's a welder by trade.

It's not much use in a dying Belfast shipyard

where there's so little work they've had to pay him off twice,

but it's good enough to get him two firm job offers

and a new life for himself and his family in Australia.

There's no work here. I've been paid off twice

in the last two years, the two firms I've worked for.

The 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 aren't doing much.

The...

I suppose they've tried a whole lot of different solutions,

but I don't think there'll ever be a solution.

I think eventually there'll be a civil war here.

And you're not going to sit on the fence then,

you're going to have to take one side or the other.

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 didn't mind, but what it meant,

socialising with the Protestants and socialising with the Catholics,

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

I was going to 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, Tiger's Bay.

Going to Loyalist clubs in that area and, I mean,

if someone had have seen,

if they're thinking, "What's this bloke trying to do?"

I'm 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.

It's not a community that I would like to leave,

and I wouldn't leave it easily

and certainly I'm not disillusioned by the situation or the people.

Will you be happy bringing up your children in Northern Ireland?

Uh...

Yes. Because I'd like to think that my son will go and play

for Star Of The Sea in a few years' time. And he certainly will.

He's only five months old at the moment.

And he doesn't know it yet, but I'd like to think that he would.

It's said that you were the strongest player on the team.

You could have been First Division material,

that's what people have said about you. Did you ever try?

-I went to Blackpool.

-What happened?

Nothing.

-Just didn't materialise.

-Why not?

Just wasn't good enough. Or Wolves.

-Didn't go.

-Why didn't you go?

I just lost heart after Blackpool.

You were so depressed that you weren't good enough in Blackpool

that you didn't go to Wolves?

Yeah.

Just lost interest in the game after that. That was it.

-What do you think of that now?

-Oh, I regret it.

-Do you?

-Oh, yeah.

Do you think you could have made it?

Are you trying to make me a big head or something, like?

No, but face your qualities.

I mean, people have said that you were a very, very good player.

No.

That's honest.

No.

Whatever Tommy O'Neill's talents,

even if he really did have the makings of a professional footballer,

the chances of getting out at a time when everyone's energies were spent taking sides were slim.

The fact that three of the team went to jail

and that one died on hunger strike does not now, looking back,

surprise Dr Denis Sweeney. No-one was immune.

Well, there were...

There was no-one in Belfast at that stage during those times

that didn't come close to getting involved,

or very close to getting involved in the various organisations.

It would have been practically impossible

to live in working-class districts

and not have been either approached or become directly involved.

Well, then, what was the factor

that meant that some got into trouble and others didn't?

I...

I would always feel that they were probably the unlucky ones

rather than any preconceived master plan that they might have had

to become heroes of their various groups, but not...

I don't think that there was anything intrinsically evil

about the guys who became involved or, basically,

very good about the guys who didn't.

So, Bobby Sands dying on hunger strike,

Michael Atcheson in jail now. That was just bad luck?

I would think it's bad luck, yeah.

Considering the situation there is in Northern Ireland at the moment.

It's awful bad luck. They...

You know, certainly, there but for the grace of God go I, really.

What about the team? How many of them do you still see?

Very few. As I said, I moved away from where most of them were, like,

to be honest with you, but I've seen a few of them.

I've seen nearly them all from who have left, to be honest with you, like.

But, as I say, I don't really keep in contact with them.

The last ones really was McCord. We played football together, you know?

We were a team in the amateur league, but that was about it.

-You're still friends with Raymond?

-Yeah. I still see, like, Nichol and that again.

I've seen Sweeney once since he became the doctor, like, you know,

but that's about it.

Would you have liked to remain stronger friends with them?

The rest of the team?

Yeah.

Do you ever see any of the people in the team?

It's ten years since I've seen anyone.

Never. They've all went astray.

-Would you like to?

-Yeah, I'd love to.

Just to see them for old times' sake, plus at the same time

the Troubles are still in the back of my mind for me in Rathcoole.

Do you think your relationship with the Protestant members of the team

could be the same as it was before the Troubles?

I'd like to think it, but I can't.

-Could you play football with them again?

-No.

I can't play football with people that left my mother with a scar.

For no reason at all. Broke our windows.

Would you play football? Jeez...

No way.

For no reason at all. They've done no harm. No harm to nobody.

And you want me to play football with them again? Never.

John! Ciaran!

Come on, come on!

Mark, mark, mark!

Good boy, Colin. Well back, son. Good covering.

Ciaran!

-Close, close! Just close them!

-Unlucky.

Well played, Cia1ran.