Keeping on going amid the changes

Tom Humphriesprofiles the Ulster hurling club champions, Dunloy, where hurling flourished even during the troubled times in the province

On a Sunday morning when the National Hurling League isn't sounding its faint siren song the Antrim hurlers gather for their training and toil. They turn their heads to the summer still far ahead and dream hurlers' dreams. They are without their Dunloy contingent for now but teams are always organic and today is what they live for, tomorrow is all they train for. Yesterday is just that.

But the pitch they are training on belongs to Ballymena Rugby Football Club and even the most callow soul hauled out of the minor ranks might pause to think about that. Just a few years ago in this town the DUP would insist on children's swings being chained up on the Sabbath. Ballymena, after all, is the town which banned ELO from playing a venue for fear it would encourage satanism among the town's young people.

The GAA has never been denounced (publicly anyway) in the area as an agent of the devil but GAA men experienced a time in the Troubles when they were legitimate targets, and nationalists of a certain vintage remember local traders sticking signs in their windows: "Position vacant. Roman Catholics need not apply."

There was, though, a time everyone remembers when it was considered unsafe to walk through Ballymena carrying a hurl or wearing a GAA jersey. Not just considered unsafe, but deemed an act of certifiable madness.

Today you might not wear your O'Neill's tracksuit down around Harryville in the south of Ballymena where sectarianism lingers but elsewhere the process of normalisation continues at a welcome pace.

It's not unusual or even striking anymore to see a fleet of buses pulling out of Ballymena Rugby Club or town centre with Croke Park signalled as their destination. That the occupants are going to a rugby international in the house of the GAA seems no stranger than the presence of Antrim hurlers on the rugby pitch in Ballymena. Change has been that fast.

All Saints GAA club in Ballymena are actually getting on well, two pitches and good facilities and plenty of youngsters, more football than hurling, a thriving club. The same in Larne. Strange times.

When All Saints were getting up and running the opposition from within the DUP-controlled council was virulent. The council refused to publish any details of the club's existence and later refused to grant the club council playing facilities, a decision which was capped by a refusal to grant planning permission for the club's own playing facilities at Crebilly, two miles outside the town.

This last decision led to a public inquiry resulting in a Public Enquiry (1981) where the club was successful in overturning the earlier decision. And now the hurlers of Antrim train on Ballymena's rugby pitch on the Sabbath.

Dunloy, whose Sabbath tomorrow brings different priorities to the fore, always existed in a slightly different universe - almost as an independent satellite set within the bible belt that runs through that part of north Antrim.

The village is 100 per cent nationalist though the townlands surrounding it are mixed and Ballymena, the nearest big town is . . . well, it's Ballymena. Enough said.

Dunloy were insulated and by and large were left to get on with it but having their own universe left them in the position to observe the world around them and value what they had all the more. Fiercely.

Séamus Elliot, a cornerstone of the club, works as a hurling development officer for the county board. Change is welcome and novel for both sides. "In the bad times it was very easy for us in Dunloy to keep the hurling going. In places like Larne, Ballymena, Ahoghill and Coleraine the men who kept the games alive there deserve credit. It was different for us."

Different in that Dunloy has always been a little island lost in the lore of hurling while a sea of fundamentalism churned around them. Only occasionally did they stand on the shore and sample the turbulence.

"When we won Ulster this year the boys got an invitation into Ballymoney Council. We won our first title back in 1990 and that would have been unheard of. I would say that back in 1990 even if there had been an invitation I don't suppose we would have accepted it. Too much suspicion. In 1990 there were so many roadblocks and so many checkpoints. Life was different."

Dunloy was insulated from but not untouched by the Troubles. The town has an Orange lodge and for many years the marching season came upon Dunloy like a sore recurring on a young face.

For years, the other side of the house marched from the Orange Hall to the Presbyterian Church in Dunloy through Main Street.

Twelve years ago things spilled over on a day when the hurlers were arriving home having won another county title. The parade had to be put back. All afternoon buses ferried jubilant Dunloy hurling people back from Casement Park 45 miles away. The mood of the marchers soured.

Dunloy had never been a trouble spot, however, and the RUC were underdeployed. There were scuffles and nastiness and for days the town hovered on the brink of anarchy. Such was life just a dozen years ago in Dunloy.

Ten years ago when Séamus started work as a development officer the ceasefire was well hardened but attitudes were yet to soften. He was allowed to introduce hurling to the integrated school in Larne. On condition.

"I was in the school in Larne on condition that all the hurling was held indoors. It didn't matter if it was 90 degrees outside. I even took the Larne juniors at night and the hurls had to be carried in the boot of the car and then taken inside to the hall. Again back then in Larne you wouldn't have been seen with a stick or a Kilkenny shirt or an Antrim shirt. A complete no-no."

Dunloy was sheltered and lost in its love of hurling as a form of community and cultural expression but venturing beyond the fringes of the town was always an eye-opening experience. There is talk of distant occasions in the 1980s, urban myths perhaps, of days when the senior team would have to head to Ballymoney community centre to train in a time before floodlights. On at least one occasion they emerged to meet a mob of young hardline loyalists waiting to set upon them. Fighting their way home was the only option.

"I don't know about fighting our way out," says Shane Elliot, selector tomorrow and a scion of the Elliot family dynasty which stretches back in the club to within a decade or so of the founding 100 years ago. "In Dunloy we generally did what we had to do in Dunloy for that reason. We wouldn't have beecomfortable being in Ballymoney with a hurling stick nor would we have been safe. You wouldn't want to be identified as a Dunloy man, a hurling man or a GAA man."

For Dunloy A more memorable difficulty in those dark days was that the Troubles were unleavened by success on the field. It was hurling men like Séamus Elliot and Willie Richmond who in the early 1980s took the community and focused the youth on hurling. What is happening in Larne now post-Troubles had a template in Dunloy back then. A structure was put in place. By the mid-1980s Dunloy were cleaning up underage titles and that senior breakthrough came in 1990. The titles flowed, although in the last few years trickled would be a more accurate description.

Séamus Elliot, with a son on the selection panel and a son on the field, sees the changing place of the game in the areas around Dunloy. The town is a constant in an area of flux. "I couldn't see a problem now, say, with kids from the other tradition coming to play hurling for us. Dunloy is 100 per cent Catholic as a town and I'm not sure that is a great thing. I couldn't see any problem though with a Protestant wanting to hurl. I go into mixed schools and no hassle in integrated schools. Things are looking up."

There won't be busloads going from Ballymoney or Ballymena to Clones tomorrow but . . . "There would be a fair interest this time from the 'other side'," says Séamus Elliot, "from people around Ballymoney. There would even be the one or two that would go to the matches and plenty of others who wouldn't want it to be known that they were following the game. They just haven't come out of the closet. Things have changed, thank God, for the better. That's all great to see.

"I remember going to play championship in Belfast and being stopped by the army outside Belfast. The soldier asked me what time the match was and I said half three. They cleared every bag on to the side of the road and released us at a quarter to four. It makes life a lot easier for us all."

In Dunloy Séamus's son Shane is a selector tomorrow having tended goal on the breakthrough team of 1990. His own son carries a stick around as an extension of himself. The dynasty continues but change in Dunloy post-Troubles is of an unexpected variety.

"We have a couple of young guys coming from Ballymoney to play hurling, Ballymoney's primary school are involved in wee tournaments. That is a big change. That would have been unheard of.

"If there are young fellas in the district who have an interest they are more then welcome no matter what their background. Everyone is welcome.

"Having said that change brings new challenges; we aren't as insular as we were in the past. We have an immigrant community who have their young children in the primary school and we have an influx of people who just saw good housing opportunities in Dunloy, people moving in who would have no association with Dunloy. This was a village where everybody knew everybody and their business. That's the challenge now. The new arrivals haven't been absorbed in the way we would have liked. We need to be more welcoming in absorbing those people. The Troubles were a challenge of sorts but for us, that is the new challenge."

Tomorrow they travel to Clones to play Birr, an extension of a relationship with the Offaly club which has brought regular meetings and a string of heartaches for Dunloy. "I know," says Shane, "but on Sunday history has nothing to do with it. That's what we have said all along. The past is the past."

The past is the past. Shane Elliot is talking on the context of tomorrow. He could be talking about the bigger picture too.