We must all learn how to play the game in peace

I WELCOME the fact that there has been a wave of condemnation against the sectarian abuse directed at Darren Graham, the young GAA player from Co Fermanagh.

I believe everybody in the North and everywhere else on this island needs seriously to reflect on this case and carefully consider what we can all do individually and collectively to tackle sectarianism.

In February 2000, Seamus Heaney wrote: “There is a cynical definition of peace which says it is merely the suspension of war. One of the paradoxical blessings of the past two-and-a-half decades of Northern Ireland’s history has been an emergent vision of peace as a creative condition in which cultural, political and doctrinal differences can be actively confessed and intelligently contested”.