There’s nothing we can’t do if we do it together — and that’s no cliché

A RANGE of experiences this past weekend began to make me wonder if there is something different going on in Ireland.

It’s taken me a while to put my finger on it, but the atmosphere is, I think, starting to change.

It was in the air quite a bit while Queen Elizabeth was here, but as powerful as all those experiences were, they were planned and orchestrated. Our reaction to a lot of the things that happened might have been spontaneous, but the visit itself was a highly stage-managed affair.

No, the first experience of something different was in the Oak Room of the Mansion House in Dublin on Saturday morning. Along with thousands of others I had gone to pay my respects to Garret Fitzgerald. It was sad, and unexpectedly moving.

A simple wooden coffin lay in the middle of the room. It was open, so we could each bow our heads in his direction as we passed. I thought he looked smaller, somehow, and there was a palpable sense of that energetic life-force being missing — the thing in many ways you associated most with Garret. But he looked peaceful, and calm.

The thing that surprised me most was that looking around the room, I saw tears in most people’s eyes, and I felt them pricking at my own. We were crying for a politician — imagine that. And the woman behind me in the room, a woman I’ve never bet before in my life, said to me “he spent his whole life trying to bring us together, and he has finally succeeded.”

And then I went home, because life goes on after all, and turned on the telly just in time to watch the Heineken Cup final. I had missed the pre-match build-up, including the apparently unanimous consensus that just because Leinster had arrived in their team coach they would be swanning home with the cup.

As everyone knows, we watched a horror story unfold over the next 40 minutes or so. Northampton flair was matched by Leinster butter fingers, their power by what seemed like our melted butter. At half-time, more in hope than anything else, I texted the rugby fans in the family (which is all of us) to say that a game of two halves was still a possibility. I figured they would have to grind it out, point by painful point (the way Munster would have done one time), but I can’t claim to have any confidence it would happen.

But happen it did, and in the most awesome way possible. The Leinster 15 came out of their dressing room after half time looking like a team — a team with irrepressible purpose and irresistible fire. From the moment the whistle blew until the last second of the match, they played for each other like no team I have ever seen before. I don’t think there was a single dropped pass in the half, and if any Northampton player managed to evade a tackle he was immediately dumped by the next Leinster player he met. It was spine-tingling stuff.

And the key to it, obviously, was whatever happened behind the closed door of the dressing room at half-time. They’re saying in the papers it was Jonny Sexton, and after the match Brian O’Driscoll said that Sexton had the bit between his teeth at half-time. But whatever happened, someone pulled a disparate group of talented players together. And together they were simply unwilling to be beaten.

On Sunday I went down to Waterford to watch a soccer match. Or rather, a soccer tournament — a tournament for under-9s and under-10s from all over Munster. This tournament was started a few years ago by a few guys from Rockmount in Cork, and has spread all over the province. In addition to being a great sporting event for kids and families, they use it to raise money for other kids — the kids we work with in Barnardos.

This year, Southend, in the heart of the Ballybeg community in Waterford, were hosting the competition. And it was fantastic. A really welcoming club with a proud history and decent facilities, Southend had created a great family atmosphere. Six teams at both age levels played out a round-robin and then a knockout tournament in really competitive matches.

And when the kids weren’t playing they were queuing up to knock their coaches and managers into a “dunker” — a giant barrel of (hopefully) warm water. (The managers had all volunteered, by the way!)

It was a great event to be part of, and it was obvious that this was a club, like many others I’ve visited, willing to take on all sorts of challenges. An event like this one involves far more than coaches and players — there’s endless work behind the scenes in everything from pitch marking to sandwich making. When I complimented them on making the event really successful and fun, the reply I got was “ah sure, we’ve a fantastic bunch of members here – and for an event like this, everyone pulls together”.

I had to leave before the end, because I wanted to attend Michael Bell’s removal in Drogheda (You can drive from the heart of Waterford to Drogheda now, provided you don’t have trouble getting around Dublin, in just over two hours and do it safely and legally. One decent legacy, I suppose, from the Celtic Tiger).

Michael Bell was a trade union official for many years before he became a Labour TD He was a fighter and a loner a lot of the time, preferring to plough his own furrow rather than take Head Office instructions.

He hadn’t actually been a TD long before he resigned the Labour whip in protest at the Social Welfare Bill in 1983.

I was sent to try and talk him out of that decision at the time. I didn’t know it, but he actually had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the social welfare system. He knew, almost to the last individual, the number of people who would be hurt by the cuts being forced on the then government by the economic crisis of the eighties. And he was absolutely immovable in their defence. I got short, though courteous, shrift.

His trade unionism, and his politics, sprang from one core belief — “Ni neart go chur le cheile”. It was what he practiced, and among those who admired him it’s what he’ll be remembered for – “there’s no strength unless we’re all together”.

There’s that word again. Together. Again and again over the weekend I’ve come across it. And it’s a word I was beginning to think had died.

Maybe it’s my imagination, though I don’t think so. Maybe it’s the depth and length of the recession, or maybe it’s events that inspire us. But we’re beginning to find something in us and among us that might, in the end of the day, make a huge difference. At least I hope so. Because I don’t believe it’s a cliché to say there’s nothing we can’t do if we do it together.

It’s just true. I don’t believe Garret Fitzgerald or Michael Bell would have thought it a cliché either. And I’m absolutely certain that Jonny Sexton doesn’t.