A new anthem - We must rise to Ireland’s Call for today

WE CAN ask no more of the Irish rugby team than they deliver optimum performance at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is upon us and we all hope they are at their very best in Stade de France this evening.

Irish victories in Paris are as scarce as vegetarian props in Argentina so, even if the team was not performing very badly and awash with destabilising rumour and innuendo, it would be a career high for most Irish internationals to beat their hosts in Paris. That it’s a do-or-die mission for France makes the challenge all the more daunting.

There have been suggestions that the Irish team’s performances have been undermined by being denied the inspiration of a call-to-arms rendition of Amhrán na bhFiann.

Ireland’s Call is an indefensible dirge — as most compromises are, but the purpose of a compromise is what it facilitates, not what it achieves. The achievement comes later.

Suggesting that a team representing 32 counties should turn to the anthem of just 26 counties — even if there is no Ulster man involved — is the kind of two-fingered bullying that sustained the hatred and bigotry that destroyed the North since partition was established. It is a variation on the minority theme that would have made the last great day of Irish rugby impossible — the defeat of England at Croke Park.

If, as is expected, the North’s First Minister Ian Paisley, broadcasts a message of goodwill and encouragement to the Irish team today, the one representing all of the island, things have certainly changed for the better.

No matter what kind of charges of political correctness and bad taste must be endured we are stuck with Ireland’s Call until an alternative acceptable to all traditions on the island can be found.

Maybe the time has come to use this momentum of change represented by Mr Paisley’s cheerleading to consider a new anthem to honour the new Ireland.

Amhrán na bhFiann was written a century ago by Irish Republican Brotherhood activist Peadar Kearney. If South Africa’s powerful Die Stem can evolve into Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika — with an original verse retained — then there may be hope for an Amhrán na bhFiann, if for no more than its melody.

If we cannot find an anthem that honours the two primary traditions on this tiny island how, in the name of God, can we incorporate all of those immigrants so anxious to join us?

If, as many concerned Irish supporters fear, France inflict a significant defeat on Ireland this evening anthems will be the last thing on coach Eddie O’Sullivan’s mind.

We will have failed to deliver the optimum performance at the appropriate time, a performance so dearly anticipated from “the best Irish squad, the best prepared Irish squad”.

If the worst comes to pass, and how we hope it does not, there is only one honourable option open to the coach and the cabal of IRFU powerbrokers who prematurely extended his contract to the 2011 World Cup.

Will it be taken? As likely as Munster signing a vegetarian Argentine prop.