Tyrone team survives to carry on memory of linen mill

The mills in Sion may be closed but its cricket team intends staying close to the heart of the Co Tyrone village, writes Fionnuala O Connor

Cricketing in Northern Ireland is largely Protestant, beloved in villages built around linen mills like Donaghcloney and Waringstown in the Lagan valley, and Sion Mills on the Mourne river in Co Tyrone. Except that Sion Mills - "Sion" to the natives - is not a typical Catholic or Protestant village.

It was planned in the mid-19th century by the Belfast Herdman family to produce a community "housed and educated, moral, temperate and God-fearing." Much as they provided churches and schools, mill owners of the time launched village cricket in paternalist style to give their own young men teams to lead and to provide their workers with "suitable" recreation.

In Sion they also strove for balance among local Christians. In 1874 the village had equal numbers of Catholic and Protestant householders, according to newly-erected plaques on the site of what was once the railway halt, beside the empty mill. The primary school built to educate all the mill children still functions.

The plaques were erected by a preservation trust founded by the Herdman family in 1999. By that stage the firm was already struggling to compete with linen produced in the Far East. Three months ago it laid off the final 270 workers.

But on a sunny Saturday in July the cricket team is playing away and a lone man plays bowls on a perfect green behind locked gates under the mill-chimney, where the bustling life of two centuries has been suspended.

Sion Mills is still in shock, though distress seems muted by the village's sedateness: a conservation area for the past 30 years for its schoolhouse, manager's house and recreation hall built in the Tudor-style beloved of Victorian times. The mixed cricket team tends the square beside the empty mill, meets in the recreation club and draws on local loyalty.

"Sion is brilliant," says Fergal O'Doherty, a 30ish native, "when I went to secondary school down the road in Strabane they never believed me about how everyone got on here."

Having a Sunday drink in the wood-panelled club, he shows off the cricket trophies and photographs around the walls.

"We were shaken big time, but we'll survive. The club will definitely survive. Football, the bowls, the tennis are grand. And the cricket's better this year. We beat Eglinton and it was close against Donemana."

He is opening bowler for the team. He recalls the feat for which the village is famous, when in 1969 on the Sion Mills ground Ireland dismissed the great West Indies for 25 runs - a victory repeated in Belfast this year. "The Gentlemen of Ireland" included several Sion players.

The mill's 700 workers got the day off, the West Indies team drank with their hosts in the club and fond stories linger.

"Come here and look at the photo of Ossie Colhoun," Fergal says.

The most capped player for Ireland, Ossie was wicket-keeper in the 1969 match, a fitter in the mill. Cricket players at one point could be sure of a job.

"And here's John Flood," says Fergal, "the spinner you looked up to. When I was about 10 I used to stand with my Da for hours watching him."

Beside the echoing mill the plaques state that the visitors arrived too late the previous night to have even one drink.

"It was rumoured that the West Indies were sabotaged with gallons of poteen but this claim is simply not cricket."

A local family come up to see the plaques. "There's your uncle John," a teenage girl says to her mother. "John Flood," she reads the caption.

"A lovely man," she says to herself.