The UUP leader's enemies in the No camp within the party are playing it cuter this time, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Armagh play Kerry in the All-Ireland final the day after the Ulster Unionist Council meeting on Saturday, September 21st. David Trimble is the MP for a fair portion of Armagh and, as First Minister representing all the Northern people, one would expect him to be joining the VIPs in Croke Park the following day.
Mr Trimble may indeed wish to be there, just as Mr Gerry Adams was in Lansdowne Road when Ulster won the European Rugby Cup on a wonderful Saturday over three years ago.
The odd thing here is that he could find himself better received among the Armagh GAA followers considering how some Upper Bann unionists have treated him.
But to signal ahead of the UUC that he was going to join his, for the most part nationalist, constituents in Croker just might have been more trouble than it was worth.
Generally most Ulster Unionists are above this sort of depressing pettiness, but there is a strong enough rump of his in-house anti-Belfast Agreement opponents who could exploit his travelling South to cause him additional grief at the UUC meeting, a gathering that will be stormy enough without more complications.
This might explain why Mr Trimble told the Irish News last week from the Earth Summit in Johannesburg that he wished the Gaelic football-playing "Orangemen" well in the All-Ireland final but would be using the day "to relax and spend time with my family after a busy political programme".
Journalist Eamonn McCann had a droll take on Mr Trimble's travels and travails in the Belfast Telegraph last week. Given the choice, he wrote, between staying in Northern Ireland to save the Ulster Unionist Party or going to South Africa to save the planet, "Trimble takes the easy option".
As with the best gags there's some truth in Mr McCann's joke. Believe it or not this is the 11th UUC meeting since the signing of the Good Friday agreement in April 1998. At all of them Mr Trimble had to withstand real or implicit challenges to his leadership or demonstrate that it was pointless to challenge him.
This he did, sometimes just shading it with dicey majorities. On some occasions, however, in order to see off his persistent rivals Mr Trimble adopted strategies that shook the structure of the Belfast Agreement and particularly annoyed Dublin, Sinn Féin, the SDLP and to a slightly lesser degree the British government.
But we still have the agreement and its institutions despite the continued assaults from the sceptics. And whatever his friends and foes think of him personally, that is a tribute to Mr Trimble's strategic skills and cunning - perhaps with some luck thrown in - and also to his eccentric if genuine faith in the agreement.
So, can Jeffrey Donaldson and David Burnside and all the rest in the No camp finally topple him?
Certainly, Mr Trimble's internal enemies are playing it cuter this time. They want Sinn Féin out of the Executive but say they won't disclose what motion or motions they will put to the UUC until just before the meeting to try and put Mr Trimble on the back foot.
What Mr Trimble's opponents ultimately hope to achieve, apart from a dangerous political vacuum, raises questions about their mindset.
In a period when, as the PSNI has admitted, most violence is emanating from loyalism do they think either the SDLP or the Sinn Féin section of nationalism, now accounting for up to 45 per cent of the electorate, would allow the 21 per cent who vote for Sinn Féin to be disenfranchised?
Irrespective, Mr Trimble's opponents reckon they might swing some of the party middle ground their way so that his position as UUP leader and First Minister will be untenable by Saturday week. This, as with previous UUCs, is where the main battle will be fought; each side seeking to win the hearts and minds of the waverers.
And there is no gainsaying that there are more doubters this time. There is concern that the men in grey suits might suggest he quit the Northern political stage for something quieter but challenging in the ranks of Toryism.
Some Ulster Unionist Assembly members, who believe in the logic of the agreement yet fear for their seats, wonder if a more hardline leader would enhance their chances of being re-elected. What is crucial for Mr Trimble is that by the conclusion of the UUC meeting he is seen to be dictating party policy.
The IRA could assist him by an act of visible decommissioning and by fading from the political scene.
But there's no sign so far of P. O'Neill rushing to Mr Trimble's rescue. And neither are the British and Irish governments in any mood to endorse a Trimble strategy that would force Mr Martin McGuinness and Ms Bairbre de Brún out of the Executive.
At the end of the day their view is better to save the IRA ceasefire than Mr Trimble and hope that come what may the agreement can withstand all future political tremors, as it has over four turbulent years.
