Breathing a sigh of freedom

THE hackney car was always driven by a GAA supporter and friend who was combining business with pleasure on the biggest day of our Ulster year when all roads led across the Border to Clones and the football final.

Half of the load would be fathers of the other half, schoolboys with stars in their eyes and maybe two silver half-crowns in their short- trouser pockets. This was not just a sporting occasion. This was a cultural event, a statement of Irish identity against all the odds on the Northern side of the bitter Border that divided the island.

This was tradition and pride in the existence of the GAA in every parish in the Six Counties. We drove under the Orange Arches and Union Jacks and red-white-blue striped curbing of the marching season to the kind of Valhalla that was St Tiernach’s Park in Clones in what we always called the Free State.